It is incompetence though. They're slowly starting to learn but the problem has existed my whole life. There's no money for forest management... and then everything's on fire and there's all the money in the world to fight the fire. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
The majority of money for forest management in the west didn't come from taxes until the 80's and 90's... You know, when boomers came to power? Prior to that, it was primarily funded by the logging companies. The more the logging companies have been heavily regulated, prevented from logging most of the year, prevented outright from logging on many state and federal lands, the worst it has gotten. A couple of the duties of the logging companies that were faithfully carried out for well over a century? Clearing out the underbrush, clearing out the dead and fallen, and replanting 3 trees for every 1 cut down.
Add in the fact that cash crop logging was being performed on many of the state and federal lands for so long, there's no forest diversity. You have cash crop trees that were never intended to go uncut for longer than 20-30 years, are high in pitch and easily catch fire, and the picture becomes clear pretty fast.
record rain = lots of new growth
lots of new growth + drought = fire risk
its not a grand conspiracy
When you are eliminating dams and other means of water storage and retainment, excess rain runs off to the ocean and fresh water is not available as either firebreaks or to combat drought. You can't fight fire with salt water, fren. You salt the earth and insure things don't grow if you try. Most of California's drought isn't due to lack of rainfall, it's due to regulations designed not to protect anything, but instead to impose the maximum taxes and fees for any form of infrastructure. Not merely the building of said infrastructure, but it's continued existence and maintenance as well.
This post was edited by InsaneBobb on Jan 8 2025 09:27pm