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I'm really interested in hearing from someone that knows much more than me about this question:

Don't we generally know that we need to do more prescribed fire burning? Isn't this generally highjacked by the timber industry to protect valuable "product?"

If that's true, will this federal bill address that? It seems like it allocates money but doesn't talk about the other 53% of the lands that are not federally managed. And, it doesn't talk about whether the 47% lands are the problem or not. In Oregon where I live, the massive fires were ten miles from me in largely residentially adjacent lands. Are those going to be helped?

I love that this bill offers jobs to formerly incarcerated people that have been fighting fires.

If I'm wrong about my first assumption, would really like to know.

Also, I saw a statistic that said California needs to do prescribed burns of about a million acres a year to manage wildfire risk. They are currently doing only 40,000. But these massive fires over the last month are approaching that million acre number: does anyone know if next year we will be safer because of those fires?

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"Don't we generally know that we need to do more prescribed fire burning?"

Yes.

"Isn't this generally highjacked by the timber industry to protect valuable "product?""

No, I don't believe that to be the case. Broadly speaking, prescribed burns are thwarted by a mix of local objections to smoke, noise and traffic ... and environmental objections relating to specific watersheds, protected species and (literally) individual birds that are witnessed in the burn area.[1] Remember: this is California - these people didn't move here to not have their very, very specific voice, and preferences, heard and respected. (I kid because I love)

"But these massive fires over the last month are approaching that million acre number: does anyone know if next year we will be safer because of those fires?"

I can't speak to "safer" but, absolutely there will be less fuel to burn next year. Almost the entire land area of Napa County has burned this year. I suspect they can skate for many decades on this (rapid, violent) fuels reduction.

Personally, as the owner of 25-ish acres of wooded land in this area (Marin County), I am not waiting. We are simulating fire by dramatically reducing fuel loads on our lands. I am assuming these forests will burn and trying to reduce the speed and intensity of that eventual fire.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/26/a-trailblazing...

> Personally, as the owner of 25-ish acres of wooded land in this area (Marin County), I am not waiting. We are simulating fire by dramatically reducing fuel loads on our lands.

As a lifelong sonoma county resident, curious why were you not managing fuels already? It's a duty to your neighbors. CalFire is very aggressive up here in certain areas, and will red tag your property if it gets past a point.

> "No, I don't believe that to be the case. Broadly speaking, prescribed burns are thwarted by a mix of local objections to smoke, noise and traffic"

Can confirm this for Sonoma County, CA. They used to burn a lot when I was young. Not much anymore, mostly because of the $$$ moving up here and they have no understanding of the need for it. Well, this is the alternative.

Also, a lot of land is private.

Nothing in their comment says they weren't managing fuels already. They may have decided to go beyond the standard requirements after seeing the increasing fire risk in recent years.

Unfortunately it's not as clear that fire risk is lowered by a one off burn. There are then many dead trees that are tinder in the coming seasons. Prescribed burns work when they are regular and done in a less damaging season like spring where they burn slower due to plant moisture content etc, and hopefully kill fewer trees.

And much of the later "environmental objections" are hijacked by the former Nimby forces, while the right wing uses this phony environmentalism to point the rural folks at the left instead of real estate and development interests that drive all this.

Firefighter here. Parent is correct. Prescribed burns do not damage big trees; they deprive the forest floor of fuel buildup that -- if it accumulates and burns out of control -- does destroy large trees.

Didn't California just pass legislation that calls for cutting down trees in forests to make them more "spread out"?

This is where they lose me. The reason why wildfires exist in the first place is because of climate change; deforestation is the opposite of fighting climate change. Very strange California taking a cue out of Trump's climate change denying book.

> deforestation is the opposite of fighting climate change.

Yes and no. One of the features of climate change is that some wet areas become deserts while some currently-dry areas become wet. Planting trees in an area becoming desert (like California) will only encourage the inevitable disastrous burn.

Planting trees in an area becoming wetter would do a great deal of good. Those trees are likely to survive to scrub CO2.

Vital missed point from the bottom of the article-

Jack Cohen is a retired U.S. Forest Service Research fire scientist who has spent years determining how structures ignite during extreme wildfires. In a September 21, 2020 article he wrote for Wildfire Today with Dave Strohmaier, they addressed how homes ignite during extreme wildfires.

“Surprisingly, research has shown that home ignitions during extreme wildfires result from conditions local to a home. A home’s ignition vulnerabilities in relation to nearby burning materials within 100 feet principally determine home ignitions. This area of a home and its immediate surroundings is called the home ignition zone (HIZ). Typically, lofted burning embers initiate ignitions within the HIZ – to homes directly and nearby flammables leading to homes. Although an intense wildfire can loft firebrands more than one-half mile to start fires, the minuscule local conditions where the burning embers land and accumulate determine ignitions. Importantly, most home destruction during extreme wildfires occurs hours after the wildfire has ceased intense burning near the community; the residential fuels – homes, other structures, and vegetation – continue fire spread within the community.

“Uncontrollable extreme wildfires are inevitable, however, by reducing home ignition potential within the HIZ we can create ignition resistant homes and communities. Thus, community wildfire risk should be defined as a home ignition problem, not a wildfire control problem.”

A cousin of mine spent about 10 years as a Hotshot[0], and now runs an engine in Plumas County, CA.

A few things that have stuck with me over the years of discussing his work:

* Much like floods, he returns the same burn areas year after year (ex. Paradise, CA and surrounding area). Some of that is recent encroachment into wilderness boundary areas, but much is also historically-inhabited land whose climate has changed drastically.

* Prescribed burns quickly run up against environmental regulations (esp. those intended to reduce smog), property rights concerns, and coordinating the patchwork of agencies and individuals who own and manage this land - BLM, USFS, CalFire, Sierra Pacific Industries, &c.

* To hear him tell it, CalFire is woefully incompetent and fiscally irresponsible, leaving much of the work to over-burdened and under-funded federal agencies. I live in a CalFire "State Responsibility Area" (i.e. any fire in my area would be served by CalFire), and I've seen very little actual evidence to contradict him.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotshot_crew

To be fair so much of the overall land prone to fire is under control of the feds - literally 47% according to the article. Having grown up in northern CA there’s just vast swathes of land to cover, and I doubt they’re spending nearly enough on controlled burns for the current climate. It’s 100% true that the land just wants to burn, pine needles 1-2” thick across an area half the size of New York State.

Why aren’t those needles degrading naturally? Perhaps nitrogen fertilization will help?

Probably another one of the uses that active fungi management could help with. I know most about Paul Stamets, but the TED list [1] is fascinating.

[1] https://www.ted.com/topics/fungi

Pine needles are pretty slow to break down. They're actually a great weed guard around garden beds.

I’m sick and tired of this ego protection through projection. These attitudes go nowhere. The CA fires are “wildfires” right? They start in those beautiful golden Californian grassy hills. Imagine if the state leadership took care of that land they own through back-burning to avoid forest destruction. What can the state control today; better land management. Let’s start there and see how far it gets us. Global warming isn’t an overnight fix but land management might.

> Don't we generally know that we need to do more prescribed fire burning?

Yes, everyone generally agrees we need to do more prescribed burns, but it's easier said than done. The three main impediments (at least in CA) seem to be: [0]

1. tight environmental regulations

2. limited resources

3. concerns about negative public opinion.

I think the biggest problem is there is a patchwork of air quality regulations in CA plus federal regulations like the Clean Air Act which makes it very difficult to do prescribed burns.[1] So this bill might help with the federal regulations but I'm not sure how it would impact local regs.

[0] https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Top-scientist-knew-Bi...

[1] https://reason.com/2020/09/14/western-wildfires-can-be-preve...

We absolutely need more prescribed burns. This needs to be combined with selective cutting and brush clearance. The selective cutting can pay for itself much of the time with timber sales. On forest service land, timber cruisers select trees to cut based on scientific concerns, and then private companies (often smaller ones) come in to remove the trees.

It's worth noting that whenever you see big clearcuts, its almost always private land (aka, "tree farms"). That is where most of the wood comes from these days. I'm really not sure about the regulations on those lands, considering they can pose a hazard for neighboring areas if improperly managed.

The total amount of burned area in California is very small compared to the area that is susceptible to severe fires, so unfortunately this year didn't move the needle much. Worse, really hot fires kill everything, and actually make it easier for dense brush and stunted trees to pop up again.

What you really want in drier areas is an open forest with few, large trees.

>What you really want in drier areas is an open forest with few, large trees

This is what the aborigines in Australia used to do:

'To Help Australia, Look to Aboriginal Fire Management'

https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2020/01/13/australia...

Something like 3% of the total land area in California burned this year.

> Isn't this generally highjacked by the timber industry to protect valuable "product?"

At least in some cases, the main restriction is environmental protections laws and liability concerns. You want to start a controlled burn? What's the risk? What species live in the area? Are any endangered? Are you sure? Will anyone be hurt during this blaze? Have you filed the environmental impact statement, risk mitigation plan, incident management documents, and obtained approval from all relevant agencies? How much smoke will it generate? What's going to be IN the smoke? What do you mean you don't know the exact contents of the smoke; how can you get a permit for emitting smoke without knowing what in it? Etc.

In California in particular, controlled burns need approval from the local Air District, and they have to give approval on the day. It's not unheard of for a planned, approved burn to be shut down at the last minute because the day is a bit too smoggy already. There's always someone willing to pop up and argue against the controlled burn; local residents worried about safety, or even the American Lung Association worried about smoke inhalation. Also, the people in charge of starting burns can be held liable if they go wrong, but will not be held liable if they opt not to start a burn, and then disaster ensues.

It's possible the timber industry is somewhere behind that, but we seem quite capable of hamstringing ourselves "honestly" too, so I'm not sure.

In any case, yes. California burns around 20k acres per year, but needs to be burning more like 1m acres per year, AND needs to burn a 20m acre backlog. Everyone is in agreement that this needs to happen, but (just like so many other Californian problems) there's no obvious path forward. The system is setup at every level to stop this, and it has enormous inertia. Experts hope than in a few years, they might be able to get up to as high as 40k acres per year...which won't even be a noticeable improvement. There's no single villain causing an otherwise functioning system to fail; the system is the problem.

I found this article quite interesting: https://massivesci.com/articles/megafire-california-climate-...

Living in Idaho, loggers are not against controlled burns. Fires can destroy timberland. A controlled burns the small brush and dead trees on the ground, not timber. Also logging done with proper clean up also can help reduce the severity of fires as there is less trees in a logged area. This can limit how fast a fire can spread.

No - it’s not the timber industry. Fires are bad fire them. Environmental interests are the main issue. There is always some “compelling” interest that manages to block a planned burn, no matter how niche or how much it might actually help their concern long term.

Keep in mind that "environmental interests" is a cover worn by numerous other interests as cover for their actions. It is simultaneously strongly sympathetic and a convenient scapegoat, whilst masking true motives or dynamics.

Here, fire is strongly related with farmers and also with crime activities.

For example is known that narcos expecting to land a cargo of drugs typically start wildfires at several Km of the landing point. They use that to trick the police to concentrate in the opposite extreme of the map.

Where is "here"?

https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-...

"In February 2020, Nature Sustainability published this terrifying conclusion: California would need to burn 20 million acres — an area about the size of Maine — to restabilize in terms of fire."

Cost estimates I'm seeing say the cost/acre for prescribed burns is ~$100/acre. A very large works project but So maybe more achievable than it sounds, and it could be spread over a decade.

Naïve calculation thus puts the cost at 2 billion dollars, or about 1/3rd of the final cost of the east span of the Bay Bridge. :)

Well, the Camp Fire in 2018 caused $16.5B in damages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018)

And more than $1.6B has been spent on fire suppression in California this year alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_wildfires#cite...

So when you think about the alternatives, $2B to clear California's fire debt sounds pretty reasonable.

Prescribed burning is resisted by folks for environmental reasons. The alternative is going in and cutting down trees and mulching brush which runs into the "we are damaging a natural environment" groups.

An interesting counterpoint is to look at a managed forest in the northwest to get a feel for what companies that harvest wood do to manage fire risk.

Or southeast Georgia. They do burns every year. Because they do farm for southern pine so they have an interest in keeping fires under control.

Most of the opposition I've heard from environmental groups centers around fear that logging interests are using thinning as a "foot in the door".

I have heard those arguments as well. One wonders what we could go with a "Civilian Conservation Corps" which provided employment for the unemployed and addressed both forestry issues as well as infrastructure issues facing the nation.

Of course that was one of FDR's most successful programs, and one which I feel could be applied here as well. The country needs both tradespeople and infrastructure maintenance in a big way and doing that by funding large engineering firms is extremely inefficient.

That is an excellent idea.

For some people just getting the experience of going to a job (as well as a resume line) would really help them, and... we need some stuff done for sure in the US.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results

There was humid areas with lakes and lots of animals in what is now the Prehistoric Sahara, burnt for pastures until desert

There was lots of extinct species in what is now Australia, and it was more humid in the past. Arid, subdesert, desert again.

Brazil has a huge stupidity problem, some new deserts ordered and in the way

Indonesia idem,

Russia has extensive wildfires in 2019, happily running towards the same path

We don't even understand well the dynamics and ecology of soil, and all that we can parrot again and again is lets burn more, lets burn more, that will solve it all... we are not burning enough fast.

We know that fallen trees are essential for many species of invertebrates and vertebrates, Not allowed anymore it seems. We must clean the area and turn nature into a cartoon.

Being an arsonist is not only the perfect crime, it seems that is even the fastest way to became a local hero. We are even justifying and giving reasons to them

> The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results

No it’s not.

1) Fire is a necessary part of many forest ecosystems.

2) Forest fires have been controlled and contained for the last ~100 years on the west coast of America.

3) Forests are not being burned at anywhere close to the rate that they would naturally.

4) Fire is not the process by which these places became arid.

1) As I said before, fire is just a chapter in a bigger history

The problem is that we can't survive just with this technique anymore, because we desperately need more forests in a "safety level of rainforest" or close to it, to have any chance to heal the climate. Unless we create a CO2 extracting machine, trees, plants and algae are still our best bet.

This rhetoric of "lets manage ecosystems as they did in the roman empire", maybe could work 200 years ago but now we are in a different situation.

4) Places became arid in part because there is not topsoil anymore, so nobody can grow here enough fast, so there is not water storing creatures anymore. This happens often by past fires followed by rains that first mineralize the soil, then turn it into dust and then wash it down the streams in a mud flood.

Removing mechanically the dry weeds, would have the same effects but without the counterparts.

And we should not forget that prescribed fires kill the new sapplings, so the forest can't regenerate from this point and start decaying. We don't see it because they decay very slow, but this does not change the fact that a forest can not grow anymore in this places. Is just a logging reserve.

Trees will pop out a new batch of seeds the next year. trees will plant themselves more trees. The idea for controlled burns is to do them once a decade or so.

This conveys a lack of understanding of the lifecycle of a forest. When old and dead trees are removed, there are more resources available for new growth. Yes, available light/water/nutrients are the limiting factor on new growth in any forest ecosystem.

(...talking about lack of understanding, here comes the tunnel vision)

Hem, not. Obviously. Is several levels more complex than that. You forgot at least two really big factors here.

Fires are not a major cause of erosion. I'm not sure why you would think that - fires do not obliterate the organic material that binds soils together. You are conflating human land clearing with forest fires.

Any loss of plant life due to a forest fire is quickly replaced as new growth is able to take advantage of new light/water/nutrient resources.

There's a reservoir near where I live (SW US) that was nearly filled in from erosion after severe fires. They had to go in and clean it out with equipment. You can see the large scale erosion on the hillsides. This was 100% caused by the fire.

But, it was a massive uncontrolled fire. A lower temperature controlled burn may (probably?) not have caused that. Also if it had not occurred on such steep slopes maybe erosion wouldn't have been such a problem.

What impact did this have? Is this a problem because humans built a reservoir there? Have those ecosystems recovered? How long ago?

And what of those ecosystems down stream that would have benefited from the influx in nutrients?

Other then impacting the human made reservoir (and roads and other structures) I don't know that it was a real problem at all (for the natural world), you may have a point.

The erosion was quite heavy though as the fires were followed by very heavy (and unusual) torrential rains. You could see the deep channels in the slopes and the roads were also covered with sediment. They had to bring in heavy machinery for that as well.

The area is recovering nicely now, it's grass with small saplings and I was up there this year and didn't really see any new erosion at all.

I agree with your point and disagree with parent. Fires are natural and are needed.

But I remember reading (somewhere) part of the reason Australia became arid is repeated mass burning by Aboriginal people. Anyone know how true that really is (or is not)?

You have no idea what you're talking about. The problem here is we've stopped the natural fires, and thus caused damage; what's being discussed is returning to something closer to natural.

Misguided, fact-free views like yours cost lives and damage the planet.

Ahhh, I didn't think about the Lumber Industry pushing for less prescribed fires. Makes sense.

Some things to research:

1) the lumber industry obviously prefers clearcutting in the short-term, but generally follows selection laws if they get access to more forests and the logging equipment fits, but that means logging roads.

2) It's needed to harvest fallen trees within about a year of a fall for lumber. By 6 years they're rotten and not economically viable, but still contribute to fires - this was a problem in 2020.

3) Generally scheduled, controlled burns only quickly burn the forest floor (detritis like branches, deadfalls, etc.) and some outside bark, which trees evolved to tolerate, and not the inner core of trees, so doesn't affect logging.

When you wait too long, trees actually heat and explode, setting the canopy on fire far and wide. If you make charcoal, that's a more persistent fire.

Source: very lucky to have grown up outside a national park, which makes one a hard-core ecologist.

A rotten trunk is spongy and soaked in water, because is rotten, so is less burnable than an alive tree. Could act in part as fire retardants

If we manage the forest as a company and monoculture of trees, then fallen trees are money and must be harvested for profit. If we manage the forest as an ecosystem, fallen trees create entire sub-ecosystems and provide necessary refuges for amphibians, mammals, birds and invertebrates. They belong to the forest, boost biodiversity, and shouldn't removed necessarily. Not unless they block a road or lie in a problematic area. Not by default.

Fallen timber in much of California dessicates rather than rots.

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