MACS wrote:Um... hey Delta1...
California Gov. Jerry Brown appears to have quietly admitted President Donald Trump's suggestion about improving California forestry was correct and is now urging state lawmakers to loosen restrictive logging regulations put in place to appease environmentalists.
The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports that Brown is proposing one of the most significant changes to the state's logging rules in nearly half a century.
"Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing broad new changes to California’s logging rules that would allow landowners to cut larger trees and build temporary roads without obtaining a permit as a way to thin more forests across the state," the paper reports.
Environmentalists in California aren't on board. They've been pushing for years to make California's logging rules more restrictive, not less, but in the wake of the deadly forest fires that ripped through the state this month, prominent lawmakers believe a change must be made before more people die from a preventable situation.
"Under Brown’s proposal, private landowners would be able to cut trees up to 36 inches in diameter — up from the current 26 inches — on property 300 acres or less without getting a timber harvest permit from the state, as long as their purpose was to thin forests to reduce fire risk," the Sentinel reports. "They also would be able to build roads of up to 600 feet long without getting a permit, as long as they repaired and replanted them."
Forests, particularly in northern California, California lawmakers admit, have become dangerously overgrown. But there's currently little incentive for landowners to clear their trees — they are only allowed to clear dead and decaying wood and undergrowth and can't clear healthy tress. By allowing landowners to recover some money from the process — letting them create and sell lumber, for instance — it could incentivize them to make bigger changes.
just read this...good start, but these proposals apply only to privately owned land...the vast majority of forest land in CA is publicly owned by the state and federal governments...to do extensive forest management in all these areas will require massive amounts of money/taxes...maybe we can contract out to private logging companies to do the work at discounted rates with the lumber they harvest as their incentive to pay for this...
the problem though is that forest management can't control the meteorologic conditions that create more dangerous scenarios in places where fires naturally occur...prolonged drought contributes to drier more flammable vegetation...extreme rains encourage thicker growth of underbrush, stuff that grows rapidly when we do get rain, then dies when drought conditions return...more frequent periods of fast winds with low humidity now occur regularly throughout the year to expand the "fire season" year-round...
the Paradise fire was not in the middle of the forest...what made it so deadly was the speed at which the fire spread, driven by dry winds, the lack of an effective warning system, poor and narrow roads...
other contributing factors will require legislative fixes: restriction of allowing residential development or growth near fire hazard zones...restricting utility companies from installing their infrastructure in high fire hazard areas or requiring them to install their lines underground and to clear large areas around their stations...electrical utilities have been identified as the "spark" that set many of the massive wildfires in the past few years...high winds can stress electrical lines causing them to spark, especially when a utility line is downed...
so, Trump is right to some degree, this is a forest management issue...but it also must address issues exacerbated by changing meteorologic conditions that continue to heighten the risk of deadly wildfires...
