Comment by jmspring | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmspring | Hacker News Reader

Sadly a lot of our forest eco-systems, especially in CA are at risk. Drought, poor forest management, bark beattle, over forestation, etc. Were forestry practices 100+ years ago good, not really - a lot of these ancient trees spawned eco-systems in themselves (evident in the Headwaters groves).

That said, modern "do nothing" approaches pushed by environmental "concerns" are the exact opposite of the over-logging. Sadly, no middle-ground was approched with towns that relied on sustainable logging and good forest management practices. I don't ever recall a conversation about such happening.

The recent debacles with PG&E? They are highly to blame for funneling "maintenance money" to their parent corporation for profits. However, in California, the National Forests vary greatly in their management practices as well. Plumas is pretty good at cleaning duff, downed trees, etc. Some of the others, not at all.

During the Detweiller and related fires, PG&E was offering to work with the NPS around Yosemite to clear dead trees due to bark beattle. NPS said no. Why? It would ruin the ambiance (of dead brown trees).

Drought, the beattle, etc. cause a number of issues for our forests in CA. However, management practices and hinderances due to some over reactions in environmental policy are jsut as bad.

Can you explain what's wrong with the "do nothing" approach?

It seems to me to be the most natural and clearly the cheapest too.

Perhaps simple steps like putting up fences or signs saying 'nature reserve, keep out" might be worthwhile, but I don't see how any more invasive steps will lead to a more natural forest.

Global warming is a likely suspect for changes in the insect ecology that happen faster than any forest can adapt, such as beatle infestation. Some species may profit by, for example, surviving winters that would usually kill them in large numbers. Even more species might suffer, either because they are eaten by the former, or because their lifecycle may require harsh winters.

Of course other factors than just temperature are swinging widely: California is probably drier than before. Increased winds may make fires more likely etc.

Other natural phenomena also don’t respect entry bans: invasive species come to mind, and so does pollution.

I don’t claim to know if interventions are helpful, nor if they could ever be helpful enough to make a real difference. And of course nature will survive, and even forests may eventually adapt to the new regime. But of course the knowledge that there will again be a forest in that location in a millennium or three is of little help to someone who wants to show their grandchildren an old-growth first.

Death is the natural outcome of heart attacks, but you don’t seem to apply your logic to what hospitals do. There’s no a priori reason to believe the “natural” outcome is a good outcome.

Large wildfires are natural, like heart attacks. If we want to let nature be nature, we need to stay well clear, put up defined firebreaks, and let the forest burn down everything next to it periodically. And then accept half or more of certain states will be clouded in smoke some years.

Since people generally seem unwilling to do that, and live next to the forest, or just don’t like smokey cities, the next choice is to manage the forest and minimize the intensity of forest fires while having some control over the timing through managed burns. This has side benefits like increasing the air quality across the whole state, because you never get these giant fires.

The worst outcome seems to be having people live next to the forest while doing nothing, because we periodically have random disasters and financial messes.

Part of the reason we see such extremes in forests now is how we treated them in the past (and still do, in terms of putting out small fires that should clear fuel without causing total destruction). Why not provide some management now to help them moderate again?

Large, devastating fires can be prevented by clearing out fuel and doing smaller controlled burns.

Because massive blazes are part of nature too and people yell for theire overgrown backyards to be protected by firefighters from their own Disney enviromentalistic stupidity. Finally.. You can not have half a nature. In nature various ecosystems battle one another for light and resources. Forrest fights savannah. Without all the foot soldiers (massive bison numbers etc. this half nature grows unchecked to the absolut limit of burnable material. Either humans replace animal roles and restore a healthy state or the neighborhood gets bbqued once every season

Are any of those issues comparable to cutting all the trees down? Fires and beatles and dead wood are natural.

For the beetles in particular, they're only natural inasmuch as logging is natural. The beetles are able to survive because of human activity. Logging is just as natural, because it's done by humans, which are a natural species.

We have to have some common sense boundaries on what is or is not natural for the term to have any usefulness in environmental discussions. In this case, the beetles are unnatural and invasive. Moreover, they're harmful in that they kill trees more quickly than the forest is equipped to handle.

Japanese beetles are not native to the area and wipe out hundreds of thousands of acres at a time. Then it is a tinder box.

Drive Sonora pass sometime and look "south". So much dead forest. That isn't particularly natural.

No it is not.

The fact that you would need to do dead tree removal is a sign that something is wrong. A natural, thriving forest should not need such measures.

I don't think a lot of imagination is needed to come up with the reason why we see these changes. It will only get worse before it gets better.

I think the problem is not just lack of dead tree removal but rather the combination of fire suppression AND lack of dead tree removal. Also of course, the encroachment into the forest by development / housing. A "natural, thriving forest" has regular fires but that isn't compatible with human housing / development.

I'm no expert, just what I've gathered from paying attention to the news.

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