Burn, Baby, Burn
The Economist covers the impact of forest fires in the Western United States and what condition they leave the surrounding areas in their wake. Due to civil lawsuits and new state/federal policies, these fires are being allowed to burn longer, which in states like Idaho is creating some of the most destructive fires since records began in 1960.
“The goal is no longer to stop fire but to limit property damage. A final reason is environmental: most scientists now think fires are beneficial to forests and the animals that live in them.”
The article goes on to say that years of fire prevention have created a situation where forest floors are lined with extra kindling to help fires expand. Since most states that have high fire damage are less populated, the main concern is protecting infrastructure and areas with population.
One issue that the article doesn’t address is that forest fires release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. While scientists tout the environmental benefits of forest fires, there are other considerations to keep in mind.
pronatalist
posted on September 16th, 2007 at 12:31 am
comment title: And why can’t some remote parts of nature, remain “wild” a wee bit longer?
I don’t think I would go so far as to say that forest fire are “beneficial” to forums, but rather that they are too costly to fight all the time, and not as “destructive” to forests, as the Smoky Bear mascot would have us to believe.
“Only you can prevent forest fire fighting.” what Smoky the Bear would have said, had he been free, quipped some website
I read somewhere that trying to remove natural wildfires from wilderness makes it less wild. Well maybe taming wilderness is a good idea, but not out in places so remote as to not be cost-effective.
Because wildfires too often are too hard to put out, grow too large to practically coral with hastily constructed firebreaks, and because there’s practically endless fuel and endless oxygen, during some hot temporary summer drought, might it be all the more cost-effectly to let wildfires burn out some of the fuel, and steer or guide them around populated areas and protect human interests and property, but leave the more neglected forests more to nature to manage?
Sure, better management of forests, logging, letting people use their forests for many interests such as camping, mining, development, can help, try to prevent accidental wildfires and reduce acres burned somewhat, but once a forest is on fire, why exactly are humans “obligated” to “help” nature manage wildfires that nature didn’t seem to need help with before?
Even during drought, let forest fires expand naturally, even in forests too dense or with too much fallen kindling, in whatever wilderness places too remote to justify costly suppression efforts, and link up and merge with other unchallenged and growing forest fires, as we can’t water the entire forest, and apparently are unable or unwilling to thin or log everywhere to remove overly dense growth, and leave it to the fickle weather and nature to fizzle out on its own, eventually. Most wildfires soon fizzle on their own, but those that spread provide natural firebreaks to slow the next outbreak of fire. If God sometimes lets nature be wild and let’s the forests burn on occasion, why do we have to get our hands dirty and intervene again? The old idea of getting every forest fire out by 10 am, may have worked temporarily, when considering the greater cost of fighting a fire that has grown, but in remote wilderness areas not deemed cost-effective for fire suppression, why waste $millions of taxpayer dollars pouring on tax dollars until it rains, trying to stop some large forest fire that stretches for 50 or 90 miles long, due to weeks of lack of rain to get a chance to hem it in? That’s what? 200 miles of bulldozed firebreaks to cut before the fire can spread to where the firelines are to be cut, and then backburns to expand the fire once again, to hold the firebreaks. And then the take credit for the rains or change in the weather that actually slowed the spread? Sometimes, lighter steering management, or temporarily monitoring by a small staff to close roads and hiking trails for public safety, would be a lot cheaper?
One thing I don’t get, is these idiotic restrictions on what can be done in the wilderness. Sure, bring in the heavy equipment, bulldozers and stuff, if suppression is necessary. Don’t waste money on inadequate hand tools like shovels, as if nature was “fragile” or “sensitive.” No nature is wild, especially neglected remote wilderness. Either watch it burn for public safety and tracking, or fight it. Don’t run up huge suppression bills, pretending to fight the fire. Nor should they wait until they think it was somehow human-caused or accident, and then have to fight it then, because it supposedly isn’t as “natural” as a lightning strike? Like the forest or nature can tell the diffence? No, the difference is liability concerns, a reason to avoid doing too much costly prescribed burns, and do more “Wildland Fire Use” or whatever they are calling “let burn” now? Rather than branding forest fires as so much “destructive” or preventable, might it be more accurate to call them “inevitable?” Often during a drought when forest fires are prone to self-propagate and spread through the forest, while they often burn “patchy” and don’t wipe out everything, there can be so many new forest fires breaking out, that surely it makes sense to “pick and choose” where fire fighting is worthwhile, while other fires remote enough that pose little actual risk, go unchallenged so as to concentrate on the more important ones. It’s not how big a forest fire may grow, but whether it’s headed towards populated areas, that would be the major concern, so complete “containment” may often not be necessary, when a few backburns may be enough to keep it from crossing a road too close to people’s property.
And it’s not the carbon dioxide that poses a problem, as the atmosphere is practically “unlimited” oxygen, but rather the smoke pollution that may drive some weaker or elderly people to evacuate, terribly inconveniencing them. But often I think, most people can stay put and go on with life as normal, as it will soon pass or the wind change direction blowing some of the smoke away.
One time when I went with my Church group on a hike, somebody said that a forest fire had passed through, noticing some charred bark or something? Really? I couldn’t hardly see any evidence or “damage.” Still looked beautiful. Probably one of those far more frequent minor creeping fires, that rarely ever makes the news, that probably fizzled on its own.
Sure humans should tame and alter nature, for human benefit, but we really can’t tame nature everywhere at once, until we can expand our population numbers all the more to settle more thickly more of the land, to make it more cost-effective to manage it more for human benefit. I also don’t believe humans ought to use “birth control,” because contraception is unnatural and disrespects nature and nature’s creator God. Natural increase is quite natural for humans. Ugly tattoos and body piecings are similarly unnatural and bizarre. I am no enviro-wacko, but I think people have been becoming very strange, altering and experimenting on their own bodies with unnecessary, shoddy contraceptives and unnessary, unnatural coloring, tattoo inking.
international cost for forest fire damage
posted on May 25th, 2008 at 1:11 am
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