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To Help Prevent the Next Big Wildfire, Let the Forest Burn

nytimes.com

71–73 of 73 posts

Re: To Help Prevent the Next Big Wildfire, Let the Forest Burn

#71

Wouldn't it be better to practice proper forestry and harvest the timber, rather than let it burn and release hundreds of kilotons more CO2 and pollutants into the atmosphere?

Stephen Pyne, an environmental historian who studies fire, emphasized that logging would not keep wildfires at bay. “Logging takes the big trunks and leaves the small stuff because there’s no market for it,” he said. “Fire burns the little and leaves the big.”

I wonder if there is a way to find a market for this smaller stuff? Or grow something harvestable in place.

Re: To Help Prevent the Next Big Wildfire, Let the Forest Burn

#72
There is a fact in wildfires that is often ignored. Often, (very often) this is not a case of bad luck or neglected nature, is just a problem of sabotage. A crime. Twenty five starting points in the same area the same night. People keep blaming nature instead.

You can't stop criminals just removing combustible and cleaning. They can and will provide their own combustible. A few gallons of gasoline is all that they need.

We would need something like the ink companies do since years. A way to put a fingerprint in the gasoline so, after a wildfire (or a home fire) some harmless chemical compound could remain in X concentration and point to the fuel station selling the combustible. Maybe a mix of several aditives in different concentrations and different times could provide enough variability to make a short code with station and month. Then you have the arsonists and their vehicles filmed in camera. Still a lot of people to check but, as many arsonists are recurrent, you can look for patterns. Could be silently implemented only for conflictive areas by the government and fine tune it to week or even day.

Re: To Help Prevent the Next Big Wildfire, Let the Forest Burn

#73
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the rate at which these fires are happening and the size of the regions they are burning, I'm not sure how "let it burn" is materially different from what is currently happening, even with our best efforts to put them out.

Let it burn includes intentionally lighting fires as well.

My area used to do controlled burns but due to budget cuts hasn't in years, it's a tinder box in some of the forests.
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