Really great interview, with lots of good information. Tim, you ought to write a book. You have so much on the ground knowledge.
Regarding climate, back in the 1970's, scientists talked about land change (things like logging and grazing) as causes of climate change, because of what they do to water cycles and land/atmosphere dynamics. By blaming all human caused climate change on CO2 we let the FS off the hook for their role in creating a hotter, drier, windier west.
indigenous burns were done in a time when there were no invasive plants ready to move in on disturbed soils, and much more marshland and lakes and many beavers creating flooded areas and dliwing stream runnif which may have mitigated any drying effects of their more parklike endevours and to the extant that their burns created open canopied forests, they did so in a way that created more varied food and plants of utility to themselves as well as the wild animals such as berry bushes and vines and forbes and oaks in amongst conifers at least according to one indigenous advisor for yosemite conservancy. Yet other historical comments extoll the open parklike terrain which meant there would have been little
In Colorado, they dropped 3 young people in the middle of a desert wilderness miles from homes in a pinyon-juniper forest with sparse vegetation that has a several hundred year fire cycle in extreme fire weather to die. That would seem the low hanging fruit in terms of reforming the Fire Industrial Complex?
Really great interview, with lots of good information. Tim, you ought to write a book. You have so much on the ground knowledge.
Regarding climate, back in the 1970's, scientists talked about land change (things like logging and grazing) as causes of climate change, because of what they do to water cycles and land/atmosphere dynamics. By blaming all human caused climate change on CO2 we let the FS off the hook for their role in creating a hotter, drier, windier west.
indigenous burns were done in a time when there were no invasive plants ready to move in on disturbed soils, and much more marshland and lakes and many beavers creating flooded areas and dliwing stream runnif which may have mitigated any drying effects of their more parklike endevours and to the extant that their burns created open canopied forests, they did so in a way that created more varied food and plants of utility to themselves as well as the wild animals such as berry bushes and vines and forbes and oaks in amongst conifers at least according to one indigenous advisor for yosemite conservancy. Yet other historical comments extoll the open parklike terrain which meant there would have been little
In Colorado, they dropped 3 young people in the middle of a desert wilderness miles from homes in a pinyon-juniper forest with sparse vegetation that has a several hundred year fire cycle in extreme fire weather to die. That would seem the low hanging fruit in terms of reforming the Fire Industrial Complex?
Adam, thanks for pushing back on prescribed fires.
Maybe we need a "fire tax" so that folks that build too close to forests pay their share of mitigation costs.