Rim Fire’s intensity takes toll on ecosystem
By Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
Standing on ridges miles away from the Rim Fire, John Buckley has traced the path of the huge Sierra Nevada blaze by watching fire clouds billowing above the Stanislaus National Forest.
The view has been sobering. As the Rim blaze burns its way into the record books, Buckley thinks it is roasting some of the last remaining old-growth stands in the Stanislaus forest, incinerating thousands of acres of young trees planted at a cost of millions of dollars after massive 1987 fires and destroying important nesting areas for California spotted owls and goshawks.
The Rim Fire near Yosemite is one of the largest in California’s history. Photo/CBS Sacramento
The extent of ecological damage from the Rim fire won’t be known until after it dies out and crews survey the burn area. But given the intensity of the blaze and 200-foot-tall walls of flame shooting up canyons, Buckley and others expect nothing to be left on big patches of mountain chaparral areas and timberland.
“It’s making these incredible hot runs where it’s literally wiping out the forest,” said Buckley, an ex-firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service and head of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, which has worked for more than two decades to protect the region’s ecosystem.
For a variety of reasons, the region is one of the most burned in the Sierra.
It’s taking its toll on our health as well.
The view has been sobering. As the Rim blaze burns its way into the record books, Buckley thinks it is roasting some of the last remaining old-growth stands in the Stanislaus forest, incinerating thousands of acres of young trees planted at a cost of millions of dollars after massive 1987 fires and destroying important nesting areas for California spotted owls and goshawks.
Well then GEE, maybe we should ban all lightening fires in Cali-lib Mexico. You IDIOTS!!! This is Mother Nature working here. She is WAY smarter than the lot of you rolled into one. THIS is what nature does. So the birds have to find a new nesting area!!?? They’ve been doing it for thousands of years without stupid, liberal idiots that think they should get involved. YOU PEOPLE are the ones wrecking our environment.You continue to show the rest just how stupid and ignorant you really are. I know 5yr olds with more intelligence.
@Del Que…i kinda sorta agreed with what you were saying…until you turned it into grandiose self righteous politicizing tirade. Do you assume that free market capitalism is morally neutral and ecologically benign? By the way, in all your haughty superior conservative wisdom, please inform those of us with a lesser intellect than yours what ‘lightening’ as it pertains to atmospheric phenomena. Or am just being unintelligent, stupid and ignorant?
^^^@Del Que Just got burned worst than the rim fire! Too soon?
On-eighth of CA’s 20 million acres, or so, of forests burned every year before the two legged creature arrived on the scene. The great meddler contaminates everything. Quite crying and let mother nature do her thing.
Thevalidator, The heat and the type of destruction cause by fires now is FAR different than what what it was in the past. You can’t compare the two any more than you can say my old lady jogging is the same as an Olympic runner’s.
@Lisa i know your old as dirt but… A forest burning is a forest burning. There’s a difference? Nothing has changed to increase the heat and voracity of a fire. If the fuel is there it will burn. There have been great fires all around the world way before greenhouse gasses and globel warming.
Why would anyone need to go for higher education when you can get it right here ?
I have no intention of making light of a very inconvenient fire. But I am surprised at the absence of any mention of Displaced and Burned wildlife.
where have the Bear, deer Mountain Lion and other forest critters gone during this Very large fire.?
Just surprised there is no mention/
All of the bears came to Tahoe. They were swiftly trapped and euthanized.