California is adopting former Donald Trump’s plan to thin out the state’s 33 million acres of forests with controlled burns and raking the woodland floor – after state officials essentially laughed off the former president’s idea a few years ago.
Trump had suggested in 2018 that the Golden State start sweeping its forest floors of debris that often aids in the spread of wildfires.
But by Aug. 2020, at the peak of the state’s wildfire season, his suggestion became an ultimatum when he withheld wildfire financial aid on the basis of California’s failure to clear its forests of dead trees, branches, and leaves, Politico reported at the time.
Now, California is putting Trump’s plan into practice statewide as groups of 12-person crews set about a $500 million effort to thin the state’s forests with controlled burns and sweeping the forest floors of pines, redwoods, and firs, according to a recent Bloomberg report.
‘I see again the forest fires are starting,’ Trump said at the 2020 rally in Pennsylvania. ‘They’re starting again in California. I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up (in flames).’
‘Maybe we’re just going to have to make them pay for it because they don’t listen to us,’ he added at the time.
During the 2020 California wildfires, 31 people died and another 37 suffered non-fatal injuries due to 9,639 fires spread across the Golden State, according to the website Cal Fire, which tracks wildfires throughout the state.
Then-President Trump continuously blamed the Democrat-dominated state for not doing enough to prevent the widespread wildfires in 2018 and 2019 during his presidency, while threatening to withhold relief funds as environmentally-conscious Californians balked at his ideas.
‘I’ve been telling them this now for three years, but they don’t want to listen,’ Trump said at the August rally. ‘The environment, the environment,’ but they have massive fires again.’
While the state begins to implement Trump’s wildfire plan, those in the climate and forestry sectors continue to remain divided when it comes to the former president’s solution.
Director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University Michael Wara admits that attempting simply being reactive and fighting fires as they start is ‘a forever war,’ he said.
‘You don’t win those. The solution is to change your strategy and really rethink what you are doing.’
For now, that solution is for a handful of 12-man crews, equipped with chainsaws and axes, to thin out the state’s forests as a new wildfire season nears, Bloomberg reports. On a good day, these crews can clear up to a quarter of an acre a day.
But whether or not that plan is sustainable remains to be seen, with some skeptics questioning its longevity.
‘As soon as you cut it down, it starts to regrow,’ said Steve Hawks, manager of the wildfire planning and engineering division at Cal Fire, which maintains firefighting duties for 31 million acres.
‘It is going to be a constant thing,’ Hawks tells the news outlet.
Read rest at Daily Mail
If you want to live in a fire prone environment, you had better be prepared to manage the risk. Not deny managing it as a threat to the enoronment that wants to Kebab you. If course the people denying the risk in CA are the officials who live in cities where there isn’t any, leaving the vulnerable tax payers who are at risk to burn. And still they vote them in.
I do favor having the Eco-Freaks help with putting out the Fires most of the fires in my area are started by Lightning during a Thunderstorm which are not the resluts of Global Warming/Climate Change
When alarmists are blaming climate change for increasing forest fires, they start with 1960. That is the year that environmentalists became successful in blocking effective forest management. I’ll never forget about reading about two devastating forests fires in Arizona. Both went out when they reached the forest manages by the Apaches. This was because the Apaches had less restrictions placed on them so were able to apply better forest management.
David, the same issue has occurred here in Australia. The Aborigines managed the bush very well before European settlement. We cannot admit that for over 40,000 years before Europeans arrived, the Aborigines had it worked out. Later, it was decided that European ideas were better and of course we have to “look after the environment”, so we locked up many areas, declared National Parks and the end result is big really hot fires every summer.
Australian Forester Vic Jurskis wrote an excellent book on how to care for the Aussie bush called “Firestick Ecology” and it’s an educational read.
If only our authorities would pay attention to people who have studied our bush, fire habits, Aboriginal methods and then follow good advice rather than listening to activists, we would not have the massive serious asset and life destroying fires that occur every summer.
I used to live in a forested area in southern France, and we had fires around us every summer. I remember an ecologist pointing out that in the past (say pre WW11) the forests used to be “managed”, in that people made their living from the forests, such as charcoal burners and goat herders, so large scale fires were relatively rare, as the forest floors were swept clean of debris.