Hacker News Reader

Comment by nineplay | Hacker News Reader

A strange article considering that California has been doing prescribed burns for years[1]. You could read it and easily believe that this is some new and novel approach. Many groups agree that California needs to do more but describing it as "California will begin backing intentional burns" seems intentionally misleading.

The author's digression into European's attitudes toward Native Americans doesn't seem to add much to the discussing except give them some cultural warrior brownie points.

[1]https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/california-needs-more-fire...

> In May 2018, then-governor Jerry Brown set a goal of burning 500,000 acres of wildlands each year by 2023—a start at treating the 20 million acres that California’s Forest Carbon Plan estimates would benefit from prescribed fire or manual thinning.

View on HN

other states have had far larger programs for much longer. The main issue is that California for many years chose to blame climate change alone for all their fires and now they have years of fuel built up that they have to get rid of. The article you posted even says California has already reduced the goal to only 400K and the deadline is 2025 and so far they are at less than a quarter of their goal

Did you not notice that all of the pacific north west and the Rockies have been burning? All these other states that had prescribed burning also had massive wild fires.

The PNW hasn't done much cultural and prescribed burning, either. Most of the west coast -- and most of the USFS-managed land in the country -- was operated under the 10am policy for most of the 20th century, leading to massive fuel buildups.

I want to be clear, I'm not a climate change denialist -- climate change is real, and it's an imminent threat -- but forest fires are not exploding simply due to climate change. The reality is, once you've built up enough fuel, the only way out is by burning it. We no longer suppress wildfires to the same extent, and so they grow much larger.

Also, for what it's worth, the PNW had wildfire season prior to the implementation of the 10am policy. In 1895, in Tacoma, WA, Mark Twain joked about the wildfire smoke: "Really, your scenery is wonderful. It is quite out of sight."[0]

The reality is, our forests grew up alongside not only natural wildfires, but human-instigated wildfires for the purposes of ecosystem management by native tribes. We spent a couple hundred years trying to implement a "better" system, by ignoring the natural processes of the past 10,000 years. It shouldn't be a surprise that we're in a bad place now.

0. https://crosscut.com/2019/09/wildfires-are-burned-washington...

There is a popular conservative narrative that the record number of forest fires we've had in the last 5 years have nothing to do with climate change, and everything to do with "policy" - specifically the lack of controlled burns.

Corner someone at a trump rally, and they may never have set foot in California or a forest, but they'll be familiar with the concept of "intentional burns" because the daily wire or fox news or newsmax would have said it as they dismissed "liberal alarmism" over climate change.

It fits a convenient narrative which is that all of society's problems are just because of big government interceding in their lives.

Telling these people that "Actually California, BC, and North America, do intentional burns all the time" does nothing because it contradicts the propaganda they've heard. And they'll assume it's a lie.

Saying "Fine, we'll START doing intentional burns" may have a chance.

Because the amount of acreage that California burns is minuscule. It becomes especially obvious when you compare it to a swamp that probably doesn’t even need it, such as Florida.

> Florida has done prescribed burns on more than 1.6 million acres so far this year. California has only burned around 35,000 acres. The state is 2.5 times larger than Florida.

~2021, NPR.

Doesn’t seem like they did much between 2018 and 2021

California still lags far behind Florida, a much smaller state, in the acreage of prescribed burns per year. SW Florida is a tropical savanna climate, having a winter fire season. Around 2 million acres per year are burned, and have been since I was a child.

https://www.fdacs.gov/Forest-Wildfire/Wildland-Fire/Prescrib...

> California still lags far behind Florida, a much smaller state, in the acreage of prescribed burns per year.

38% of California is desert, and much of the rest (much of that, too; 47% in total) is controlled by the federal government.

California is not like Florida in a lot of ways more significant to this discussion than being larger.

California is more than twice the size of Florida. Ignoring a third which is "desert" — much of this is actually steppe — doesn't tip the scales. I'm not sure what the arbitrary human-imposed classification of "controlled by the federal government" has to do with anything.

> I'm not sure what the arbitrary human-imposed classification of "controlled by the federal government" has to do with anything

It has a lot do when you discuss California’s land use policy, which does not apply to nearly half of California, including an even larger share of the land to which controlled burns might sensibly apply, which are largely national parks or national forests.

>It has a lot do when you discuss California’s land use policy, which does not apply to nearly half of California, including an even larger share of the land to which controlled burns might sensibly apply, which are largely national parks or national forests.

Many of the controlled burns in Florida take place in Everglades National Park, which includes the largest federally protected wilderness in the Eastern US. I don't see how this objection changes anything. Is the federal government preventing controlled burns? Since when has that ever been a policy?

I think this is a very interesting question, and I'd love to see a concise explanation.

To directly answer "is the federal government preventing controlled burns?" They will definitely prevent controlled burns during the dry season. More, they have to fund doing the burns. Story I saw linked earlier was https://www.npr.org/2021/08/09/1026137249/with-extreme-fires.... https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/prescribed-fire is about as far as I got on my quick dive looking for details on how to run a controlled burn. I don't see an obvious link for seasons that they run these burns.

This story, ultimately, is about finding a way to insure private run large scale burns. The state built up an accredited set of associates, now they are leveraging them to try and make an insurance market for limiting liability.

(At least, that is my read of the situation. There is definitely a ton of talking past each other in this topic.)

> I'm not sure what the arbitrary human-imposed classification of "controlled by the federal government" has to do with anything

I would assume that forests on federal land are managed by the federal government, and forests owned by the state are managed by the state. California might not have a lot of say whether prescribed burns happen on federal land.

no, the controlled burns so far have been miniscule and error-laden. There was a control fight between CalFire and other agencies over every detail. Multiple, massive fires occurred in the intervals when they were arguing about it behind closed doors. The past-Chief of CalFIRE was terminated over this and other issues; his immediate successor was given more than 10x the budget that CalFIRE ever had. Money is a problem in the woods. Firefighting is genuinely harsh and dangerous, the people they have to run it are largely military culture.

None of that justifies a headline of "California will _begin_ backing intentional burns". Already this thread is full of comments condemning California for its wooly-headiness.

I can see regulations requiring them to do a 5 year study per 10 acres for environmental impact on local flora and fauna.

Definitely a misleading headline - Watch Duty shows 14 prescribed burns in the state right now. I live in the WUI and they've been doing burns around here for the past ~3 months.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com