I don’t normally get involved in such discussions, but this one hits close to home.

The reason why we have such devastating fires is due to a cluster of a forest management plan in So Cal. On one side we have the “don’t cut/don’t burn” team and on the other side the small timber interest that have been chased out of the tree farming business in the Pac Northwest and have been forced to grab what they can down south. Both sides are highly suspicious of each other’s motives. What we end up with is a management policy that is a stagnant morass that needs a major shake up.
We need to do controlled burns, and we need to have selective harvesting that includes removal of dead scrags and replanting.

I consider myself an environmentalist but folks need to get off their high horse and focus on reasonable use of public lands that includes a forest management plan that includes recreation, economic considerations and preservation. I was a member of the Sierra Club since I was sixteen, but quit them three years ago because of their inability to literally “see the forest for the trees”.

I got my degree in anthropology and the record shows that indigenous populations regularly burned forestlands that ensured healthy forests for game and harvesting. While I have no illusions of the backward thinking idea of the “noble savage”, we need take a hard look on how natural and man-made burns have helped maintained healthy forests.

Doug