Drought could lead to record wildfire season
By Mark Koba, CNBC
Three years of severe drought have made plenty of misery for California and other Western states. Now to make matters worse, the extremely dry conditions are creating the potential for a devastating fire season.
“All the pieces are in place for a really bad season of wildfires,” said Malcolm North, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service. “We’re likely to set a record for fires this year.”
The drought has hit hard in states like Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and especially California, where the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is at 12 percent of the annual average. Snowpack in the Cascades in Washington and Oregon is also below normal.
That has dried out the trees, shrubs and grasses that end up fueling the fires.
Yep. After that smoke came into the basin last summer, I coughed for weeks afterwards. Stock up on masks?
Our “man made” forests are now at risk of going up in smoke. Decades of fire suppression efforts combined with environmental policies virtually prohibiting logging and forest thinning are going to come back to haunt us this summer.
BitterClinger, you are spot on!
The sad part is that for many decades people have argued for a balanced and healthy approach to forest management and the environmental extremists have used legal system to stop it. Not protect the firsts… now this.
The environmental extremists should be held to account for what the’ve done.
Seems the article is a little late for Tahoe. Seems the biggest problem we had with precipitation was after about 1 year of serious drought, the heavy wet snow snapped branches off of dry, brittle trees. If this wet season continues to be wet, the underbrush will be the issue.
Blaming the Forest Services mismanagement on ‘environmental extremists’ obscures the issue and is disingenuous economic sleight of hand.
Such is the legacy of decades of rampant industry-led environmental policy. A species that wants to survive needs to think beyond next quarters profit margin.
@hmmm
Are you kidding? Are you joking?
Our forests are not natural. Look around you, look at the density. This is the cause of decades of misguided environmental policies prohibiting the removal of trees.
In a natural environment, you have fires that burn the forest undergrowth and those fires are part of the natural process. The weak are weeded out, and the strong survive.
When fire suppression efforts went into effect, the forest became overgrown. Logging kept that overgrowth in balance by thinning out the forest.
Today, what we have is the equivalent of a munitions depot ready to blow with a spark. Unless there is a sudden epiphany by the environmental movement on forest thinning, you’re looking at a tinder box just waiting to burn down your neighborhood, town, community, and the entire basin.
” Logging kept that overgrowth in balance by thinning out the forest. ”
Which era of logging are you talking about?
@AB-I don’t disagree with much of your statement…but I’m curious as to why there are so few old growth trees left. Did they just up and walk away? Or were THEY removed? A mature forest has little undergrowth, therefore fires that sweep through don’t decimate it. Since when do logging companies want to take young trees? I am not joking. Rather than mouthing ‘knee-jerk reactions’ blaming ‘environmentalists’, perhaps you could dig a little deeper and look at who and what influenced Forest Service policy making…it wasn’t environmentalists who created the mess we’re in.
@hmmmm… In case you are curious as to why there are so few old growth trees left, take a good look around. The majority are in the old estates of the turn of the century (think last) gentrified. They had the money to keep the trees. The rest are in either accessible areas of the basin or areas that had not yet been raped for their timber yet were on the list. The railroad and the mines in Virgina City took a huge toll on Tahoe’s timber. Easily accessible and transportable across the lake, Tahoe City supplied the Union Pacific Railroad and Glenbrooks many still visible pier pilings supplied Virgina City. Old Tahoe photos show the evidence of the clear cutting that was wide spread through out the basin and only the occasional tree was spared.
@worldcycle…thanks. The ‘curiosity’ I expressed was rhetorical. As early as the 1920’s Aldo Leopold was arguing the benefits of natural forest fires for the health of forests. I was referring to the deforestation of the old growth stands of entire west, and the collusion between timber company lobbyists and the Forest disService in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.
There are no old growth trees because the basin was basically clear cut in the 1800’s to build the mines in Virginia City.
“There are no old growth trees ”
That is untrue, biggerpicture.
There are old growth trees, and there are even groves of them.
The definition of “old growth” trees was changed. It used to be trees over 100 years old, then they changed it to over 50.
Nice to know I’m considered an antique now.
Dawg, the definition was not changed in such a simple matter. You might be referring to the TRPA’s classification, which is not exactly relevant to the the comment I was addressing. ‘Old growth’ is much more complicated than age of a tree. It involves structure, habitat, and even considers dead trees.
Here is a paper on the subject:
http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/science-update-4.pdf
I go out of my way to share resources like these, because I know that you and others will read it.
To Bitter, CJ and Dog. There weren’t any “environmentalists” in the 1860’s. There is no old growth forest around the lake. The clear cutting started about 8 years after Fremont “discovered” Lake Tahoe. The timber was used in Virginia City and other areas for mining and building. The lumber companies left behind timber they did not want and cut an estimated 90-95% of the mature timber around the basin. What was left was a mono forest with little diversity.
Then by the 1930’s the Forest Services Official policy was to suppress all fires. Finally during the 1960’s, dendrologists realized Giant Sequoias had stopped producing new seedlings because of a lack of fire; fire needed to germinate seeds.
So, we are still stuck with the forest leftover from the Comstock era cutting 140 years ago. For reference, Jeffrey Pines live about 400-500 years of age, Ponderosa Pine about 300-400 years, Incense Cedar 500-1000 years, Sugar Pine 250-500 years.
Cosa, please forgive my generalization. But the old growth trees and groves make a very small percentage of our basin forest, do they not? And they are mainly found in the higher steeper elevations, are they not?
Oh those pesky facts, tied to historic events. You won’t hear that kind of truth on Faux News. There are a few stands of old growth pines in the basin…for example around Tallac Historic Site/Pope Beach. This place must’ve been downright sacred before the termite people came.
Since when was a 100 year old tree classified as ‘old growth’, and by whom? It does not make any sense. Changing the legal definition of a thing may change the marketing of it, but it does not change the truth of it.
Ok CJ-let’s look at your term ‘environmental extremist’. Wouldn’t someone who suggests that the environment we all live in-(and need to survive) is an infinite commodity without listening to scientific fact that is based on volumes of data, not on corporate funded industry skewed, profit driven interpretations of that data- better fit the definition of an ‘extremist’? Humanity’s clinging to our limited, self-centered, outmoded and dangerous view of the delicate interplay between elements of a system with little or no understanding of the complex chemical dance between atoms, molecules, and organisms whose wonder we cannot even begin to fathom is a rather extreme and trusting approach for a species or society to hold towards interrelating with one’s environment…kind of like pissing in our only bottle of water, knowing that our children-and everyone else’s for that matter- must drink from it. I’m not trying to be be argumentative or insulting, I’m trying to illustrate the point that we don’t live in a vacuum, and, like it or not the planet does not belong exclusively to homo sapiens sapiens. Some would even suggest that individuals of other species may be inhabited by souls. Holding a belief that we are the only species that matters on this planet is far more extreme a viewpoint than seeing us as merely a single strand in a web that goes on and on and on. Saying that environmental extremists need to be held accountable for their view simplifies the picture and creates an ‘us versus them’ game in which we all lose. There is only one island, we can’t vote people or species off of it(there is nowhere else to go) without the harshest of consequences. To distill things into political platforms and ideologies is, again, an oversimplification of things. Blessings.
‘Cosa, please forgive my generalization.’. Sure. And yes to the rest.