I’m going to post about a New York Times story on the Forest Service, but thought I’d review some past New York Times classics. This one, from 2017, I would argue has not aged so well. It has been less than 10 years, barely a blink of an eye in forest time..
I still can’t figure out why Hansoniana had occupied so much LA and NY Times space, but perhaps less so recently.
Here are a few quotes from the story and a link to the post.
Scientists at the cutting edge of ecological research, Dr. Hanson among them, argue that the century-old American practice of suppressing wildfires has been nothing less than a calamity. They are calling for a new approach that basically involves letting backcountry fires burn across millions of acres.
Yet that awareness has yet to penetrate the public consciousness.People still think forest fires are bad and expect the government to try to stamp them out, even in remote wilderness areas. Federal and state firefighting costs in some years approach $2 billion.
Imagine! Even people in Santa Rosa and LA think wildfires can be bad.. no mention of climate change and megafires.
“From an ecological standpoint, everything I’ve learned teaches me this is a good idea: Stop putting out fires,” said Jennifer R. Marlon, a geographer at Yale who was among the first to use the term “fire deficit” to describe the situation. “These forests are made to have fire.”
For those of you who say.. “Managed Fires can also be good”, I would agree, but that’s a distinction not made in the story as I read it.
When you wrote “Hansononia”, I thought you were referring to Winslow Hansen at Cary and was surprised. I see now that it is Mr. Chad.
Pointing out Santa Rose and LA folks is an important reminder, but there are 245 million acres of BLM/USFS land in the west; that’s a lot of border with private landowners who, rather than run an ideological experiment of using natural ignitions to reset the forest regardless of affect, want planned prescribed fire, fire prevention and suppression cooperation from a neighbor who seems incapable of achieving much of anything at scale except to talk and plan.
Rather than a binary choice, there is a spectrum of both potential treatments and possible outcomes. Some people don’t want to hear anything about that, though. They want it all painted as an ‘easy choice’ that only a lunatic won’t support.