This is an excellent article on the historical background of forestry, forest management, and wildfires published by the The CALIFORNIA GLOBE
Some things in life are hard to understand and explain. The theory of relativity, for example, or the origins of black holes. Other things are easy to grasp, however.
Such as: California’s wildfire woes. In the past five years summer and fall firestorms have killed dozens of people, wiped out homes, businesses and entire communities, torched millions of acres of forestlands, caused billions in property losses, and swept away untold numbers of animals and wildlife.
The cause of all this wreckage is easy to pinpoint. It’s simple as two words: spotted owl.
In the 1980s California was a superstar timber producer. Nearly 150 sawmills churned out four billion board feet of lumber every year, leading the nation. Working-stiff loggers had money in their pockets, their families thrived, and little lumber towns tucked away in the north woods boomed.
Enter the spotted owl. A night-flying denizen of the deep woods, the owl became a cause célèbre for people who had never seen one and never would. When the government moved to protect it as a threatened species, it ushered in an ugly slugfest pitting environmentalists, California state officials and the U.S. Forest Service against loggers and the timber industry.
The fight was over protecting the owl’s habitat. After lawsuits, protests and even violence, the environmentalists won.
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/two-words-explain-californias-wildfire-woes-spotted-owl/
Kevin Nelson has put together a report that is both comprehensive and succinct. Well done.
It is an article well worth reading and ends with a description of how California has painted itself into a nasty corner and may have little hope of exiting it.
Additionally, the knowledge base is almost extinct. Fewer people know how to do the things that generations of logging families once took for granted, and those who still retain these skills are often old-timers whose time is running out.
The irony here is that environmentalists, the state and the USFS are now in need of the very industry they have vilified and fought for so long. According to Dan Porter of the Nature Conservancy, the critical lack of timber industry infrastructure and know-how is “one of the biggest barriers to scaling ecological forest management.”
So let me be sure I have this right:
You identify a “problem” and then destroy a way of life as a means of solving that perceived problem. But then your “solution” creates an even bigger mess, one that causes you to go back to the very people whose communities and livelihoods you trashed, asking them to help you with your latest bright idea. But these small town Americans have themselves become an endangered species.
Meanwhile, has anyone seen a spotted owl lately?
UPDATE: This graph I prepared last year from USFS data says it all -Anthony
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I don’t really care about the owl’s dependence.. They have survived hundreds if not thousands of years. It’s the environmentalists that are killing and destroying California in less than 1 or 2 decades.
This has to change democratically if California is going to be able to survive. California used to be the Golden State. The present government and their environmental policies are completely destroying it. Soon it will be a cesspool, and nothing more.
Long before humans thought about “environmentalism” new species were emerging while others became extinct. The world is not in danger of running out of a multitude of animals.
It is the human hubris to think that they control that process.
Not unlike the “Climate” nonsense.
The spotted owl problem is the Barred Owl replacing them(their cousin.) Not the lost of habitat. The spotted owl was the poster child for the anti logging group. To bad to many people bought into the lies. Sorry I should have read further I just echoing other below.
It turns out the gold in the Golden State has turned to pyrite. It is henceforth to be known as the Pyrite State.
As It Is Written, So Shall It Be Done.
They are not called Environmentalists by accident.
Thus the (one and only) use of GangGreen.
Look at what they campaign for and you will be certain that the best way forward is to do the opposite.
A shame so very few of our Beloved Leaders realise that.
Arguably, spotted owls are a color phase of barred owls, which are displacing spotted owls by breeding with them.
We have both Barred owls and Great Horned owls on our farm.
It is quite entertaining when the two species have a “hoot battle” just after the sun goes down.
P.S. Does anyone know which trapping methods are legal to use if I find signs of any California politicians on our farm? Also, is there any bounty available for that type of varmint?
There is no point in trapping them, you can’t eat them ‘cos the meat is too rancid and the fat doesn’t even compost well. Better to put them in a not-very-productive field and let them look after themselves. Just don’t let them escape – a big hungry guard dog like the French shepherds have should do the trick.
I remember meeting an old time rancher in California who would hunt mountain lions for the bounty in the wintertime. The local game warden, who paid the bounty, was fond of mountain lion liver. So, to stay in the good graces of the game warden, he would present him with not only the ears, but also the livers. Perhaps you could advertise to see if there is anyone who would pay you for politician’s livers. 🙂
Eating carnivore livers can be deadly, vitamin A poisoning known as acute hypervitaminosis. Being at the top of the food chain and as the liver accumulates Vitamin A although necessary for various functions too much is not a good thing. Inuit will not eat the liver of polar bears or bearded seals due to them contain dangerous amounts of Vitamin A.
In California, you can call them in with Chinese spies (Chauffeurs, concubines, etc.).
So, first you need to acquire a Chinese spy. Your best bet in finding a Chinese spy is to try to infiltrate the Cal higher ed system and make it know that you have useful/unique information; after that, they will seek you out. Once you have possession of the Chinese spy (a Korean may work just as well) you just stake them out and wait … the politician will become attached and stay them even without any kind of restraint.
There is no bounty on the Cal politicians. The damage that they do is not yet apparent to the (majority) city folks; until it is, the Cal politicians will just be allowed to roam free.
The Spotted Owl subspecies that is in the most trouble is the Northern Spotted Owl. In the territory of the Northern Spotted Owl, a major threat is competition by the Barred Owl which is an invasive species there. This is getting too little discussion, while environmentalists say the answer is more trees and preserving trees. The Barred Owl invaded the territory of the Northern Spotted Owl from eastern North America, because Americans thought it was a good idea to plant trees where they are not native in the Great Plains, such as in urban areas of the Great Plains.
Update: I just learned that now, the California Spotted Owl is also getting serious competition by the Barred Owl.
is that the ones they found nesting behind the KMart sign?
It’s not just California. Oregon and Washington were devastated also.
After lawsuits, protests and even violence, the environmentalists won.
_________________________________
And they are winning today. I had hoped to see the Global Warming non-sense collapse before I depart the planet. But with my 1944 DOB it looks like my grandchildren will be the ones to finally see it come crashing down as it ultimately has to. Probably won’t crash, it will just be forgotten by the crowd currently pushing it for political gains and nothing else.
1950 DOB and fear the same thing
1940 ditto.
Emphasis on the word “lawsuits” in this case, and its connection to the CAGW issue. Who was one of the main handlers of the spotted owl lawsuits? Victor Sher.
Which law firm is it that’s handling 15 of the current “Exxon Knew”-style CAGW lawsuits, copied in what I term ‘boilerplate’ fashion from one state or municipality to the next? Sher Edling, headed by …. Vic Sher.
If the author is suggesting that trees be cut and the land cleared, the answer is simple.
Declare an area suitable for wind and solar facilities, and cough up a lot of money.
In case one hasn’t noticed, logging machinery has evolved. Videos are instructive.
We have the same problem in Australia. The logging of native forests here has been decimated because of the perceived threat to threatened species. Even when there are comprehensive timber harvesting plans, authorised by specialists in their field of expertise, that lay out particular measures to protect the habitat of any threatened species that ”may” be present.
Now it has reached the stage where the same procedure happens when a Fuel Reduction Burn (FRB) is planned. If there is the threat that the habitat of an endangered species ‘may’ be compromised, the FRB is cancelled.
In the mean time, because a lack FRB’s have been conducted, we get uncontrollable wild fires occurring. And guess what the official ’cause’ of theses fires are? You guessed it, Climate Change.
… and greater destruction of wildlife than what would otherwise occur.
So true Streetcred
The two endangered species identified near us will be just fine when the bulldozers come in to install the wind and solar. The developers bought certificates, that’ll save them.
didn’t it turn out that they liked new growth forests too?
Sadly the problem is simple to solve.
Abolish the concept of Democracy.
While we have Democracy, we will have Politicians.
And politicians will lie & cheat to stay in their nice well paid jobs..
So what do we want, a nice Dictator.
So what do we end up with, a Stalin.
Perhaps if instead of our present firm of government, we had instead a form of Refumen, via the Intenet, we might find that what are just ” Nousy minority I es” would never gain support I r
As for that other form if “Government” the Media, that will have to be controlled.
The big problem is HOW.
One suggestion, get a copy of the film, “Seven days in May”..
The question then is what sort of rules would the character played bu Burt Lanchester have become.
The ancient Greeks had a solution of sorts.
Appoint a Mr. FIX IT” give ho
I’m or her Unlimited Power.
Then when the Mess had been cleaned up, exile the man who fixed it.
And what was this man’s Tital.
A Tyrant.
Michael. VK5ELL
I’m becoming ever more convinced that the Celts had the right idea.
Elect a Corn King. Parade him around at midsummer so people will think he means something.
But the year the crops fail, sacrifice him to the gods and choose another.
To relate increased wildfires to climate change it has to be that increased CO2 promotes increased fuel growth and this occurs mainly in the wetter seasons. Fuel growth during droughts or driers seasons is minimal, so those alarmists who relate climate change to droughts being the primary driver have got things back to front and thus so too any solutions they promote. Cause and effect?
The planet is covered in one of the most flammable natural fuels available and anyone who thinks that the history of the world has not seen a continuous cycle of the growth of such carbon based lifeforms and its subsequent destruction by fire as part of a natural cycle must be from another planet.
Actually, increased CO2 levels also increases drought resistance in plants, so they also have higher growth rates under drier conditions.
Kal, you said: ❝𝑇𝑜 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑑𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝑙𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 𝑖𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 …❞
I suggest: — your premise is faulty. Wildfire has been decreasing, when looked at over the longer term. Granted, since ≈1980, parts of the western USA, *maybe* have had more wildfires, but (supposedly) “Climate Change” has been with us since ≈1880 or perhaps even back to 1750, and, GLOBALLY, wildfires have been on the decrease. Trace gas analysis, as a proxy for wildfire emissions, using Acetylene, trapped in ice cores, shows the global decrease. Satellite observations show less burned area, now.
Forkel 2019: ”Despite the occurrence of major catastrophic wildfires in recent years … total global burned area (BA) apparently declined between 1996 and 2015 … This finding is based on satellite-derived burned area data such as from the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED) …”
Arora & Melton 2018: ”The area burned in [European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative] product, in Fig. 2, is lower at 346.2 million hectares per year and its trend is -10.38 ±5.97 Million hectares per year squared. The negative trends in the … satellite-based products indicate that burned area has been decreasing.”
Doerr & Santín 2016: “Instead, global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago.”
Nicewonger 2020: “Acetylene is an atmospheric trace gas produced by combustion of fossil fuels, agricultural and domestic burning, and wildfires. In the preindustrial atmosphere, the major source of acetylene is from wildfires. We measured the abundance of acetylene in the air bubbles trapped inside polar ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica over the last 2,000 years for the first time. Variations in the atmospheric abundance of acetylene over Antarctica indicate large changes in preindustrial wildfire emissions. Using a model, we find that preindustrial wildfire emissions of acetylene during the Medieval Period (1000CE to 1500CE) could have been several fold greater than what is observed today. Acetylene emissionsdeclined by about 50% at the onset of the Little Ice Age (1650CE to 1750CE).”
Nicewonger, Melinda R., 𝑒𝑡 𝑎𝑙. 2020. “Reconstruction of paleo‐fire emissions over the past millennium from measurements of ice core acetylene.” Geophysical Research Letters
https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL085101
Forkel 𝑒𝑡 𝑎𝑙. 2019. Recent global and regional trends in burned area and their compensating environmental controls Environmental Research Communicarions
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/ab25d2/pdf
Doerr, Stefan H., and Cristina Santín 2016. “Global trends in wildfire and its impacts: perceptions versus realities in a changing world.” Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/1696/20150345.abstract
Arora, Vivek K., and Joe R. Melton 2018. “Reduction in global area burned and wildfire emissions since 1930s enhances Carbon uptake by land.” Nature communications
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5904128/
Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it. The green devils got it in spades. Yikes.
My mother read us the story “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly” when I was about five years of age.
It is a morality tale about being smart enough to not take actions that make a situation worse than it was before.
I am an Idiot, but apparently at the age of 5, I was wiser than all of the California politicians and environmental “scientists” put together.
Translation to Joe Biden English:
Three Words Explain California’s Wildfire Woes:
Spotted Owl
Chuckle. That was my immediate thought as well.
I would blame the lack of forest management on money — California trying to save money.
Not that forest fire acres burned are related to slight changes in the global average temperature.
Up to 90% of forest fires are man made — a slight change in the temperature will not cause more accidental fires.
Acres burned could be affected by rainfall. But California fuel gets dry every fire season. Once fuel is already dry, and vulnerable to fires, it can’t get any drier.
How’s preventing proper forestry saving money when otherwise they would get money or royalties from the wood harvested?
The reason is politics and the pandering idiots who will do anything to get elected, especially trying to look like heros by jumping on the bandwagon flavour of the month.
Nobody has seen a spotted owl lately because the NWF Plan failed to protect the species. Since 1993 when Clinton and Gore held the Timber Summit, the Northern Spotted Owl population has plummeted from 20,000+ to less than 2,000 today, a 90% crash that is still plunging. Part of the cause is that 10 million acres of owl habitat have been incinerated.
No Touch, Let It Burn, Watch It Rot has not only devastated rural economies across the West, it has totally failed in its green mission to save the owl.
The cost plus loss for this useless fiasco of enviro fraud has been $20+ billion per year for 30 years and counting, and millions of acres of heritage old growth forests destroyed.
Is the 2000 true? I remember the spotted owl debates but haven’t heard anything since then.
I don’t see a lot of Let It Burn, and there is the matter of excessive fuel presence that is still a problem from past excessive fire suppression. Excessive fire suppression was a long time problem that started when the white man took the natives off the job of forest management. Leaving more trees present was continued, even with policies to favor leaving dead trees standing, to help the Spotted Owl. The Spotted Owl has three subspecies, and the one that is in the most trouble is the Northern Spotted Owl. One factor that is harming the Northern Spotted Owl and that is getting too little mentioning is competition by an invasive species, the Barred Owl. The Barred Owl invaded the territory of the Northern Spotted Owl from eastern North America because Americans thought it was a good idea to plant trees where they are not native in the Great Plains, mostly in urban areas.
Update: I just learned that now, the California Spotted Owl is also getting serious competition by the Barred Owl.
No. The Barred Owl does not attack, eat, or aggressively drive out Spotted Owls. That theory is 25 years old and not supported by evidence. Barred Owls are nearly identical in size and habit. The two “species” interbreed.
Even so, for the last 15 years the USFS, BLM, and USFWS have been shooting Barred Owls. Flunkies in pickups with shotguns are paid to blast away at owls. Never are the carcasses fetched back to the lab for DNA analysis, so nobody knows what variety of owls are being shot. More tellingly, despite a decade and a half of Barred Owl blasting, Spotted Owl (Northern, California, and Mexican) populations continue to decline.
Of course, the strictures on forest stewardship and management, and on the economy, have never been removed. The ruling theory, familiar to everyone here, is that if humans sacrifice and suffer enough, a vengeful Gaia will show mercy and stop wrecking Planet Earth. Also it will rain more. It’s Mayan voodoo science, and it doesn’t work.
Instead, banning forestry has led to massive fuel build-up and catastrophic million-acre fires that k*ll all the wildlife. The madness continues, however. The new “solution” to our forest fire crisis is carbon taxes, as if shutting down the economy will prevent fires.
I hadn’t heard your new theory, that trees in the Midwest are responsible for decimating Spotted Owls, but it’s a corker. Are you an Expert? In any case, may we please manage our forests now, since the owls are nearly extinct, and all your goofy theories have proved to be bunkum?
“While barred owls look similar to spotted owls, they are larger, have a stronger ecological impact and outcompete spotted owls for habitat and food.” “A 17-year study in Oregon, Washington and California found that removal of invasive barred owls arrested the population decline of the northern spotted owl” These are from https://today.oregonstate.edu/news/removal-barred-owls-slows-decline-iconic-spotted-owls-pacific-northwest-study-finds
Complete horsepucky. From the same frauds who ginned up the scam in the first place.
We want our land back. Stop incinerating the West. Not yours to burn.
According to a study I read some years ago, long after it was too late, the spotted own decline was realized to be due to a different species of owl invading the spotted owl territory and out competing them. Killing the timber industry helped the spotted owl not at all, timber activities didn’t matter to the owl. Their numbers continue to decline because they are not up to the challenge, something that happens to many species at time goes by.
Much like climate change is just the vehicle by which the socialists seek to eliminate capitalism. Spotted Owls themselves were never the issue, they were just the stalking horse that the socialists used to eliminate the lumber industry.
Australia also has impediments, such as this two-word one (using POTUS counting) named the Orange Bellied Parrot. It is a go-to whenever species extinction needs connection to existential crises.
The bird lives an the west coast of Tasmania, the big island South of the mainland population about 570,000. A lot of land for the population of a small city. The west part of Tasmania is belted around by the westerly winds of the Roaring Forties. The climate is as hard to live with as many places. Mostly negative features like strong winds, horizonal rains feeding horizontal scrub. Long term leaching of poor soils gives low vegetation density. Animals find little to eat.
The Orange Bellied Parrots living on this west coast seldom see people because people seldom go there, especially south of Macquarie Harbour. We spent several summers exploring there and it was tough going. No towns, no shops, no pubs, one short narrow road, no golf courses.
But the claims on Wiki include:
The 2000 Action Plan for Australian Birds identifies the following potential threats to the orange-bellied parrot:
All very theoretical, but hardly practical. Hardly due much to the hand of man, even if data did exist. My theory of survival claims that the birds are too dumb to survive (Darwin). Here is an image of one. This fledgling is about to go forth and multiply, providing that other birds with romantic intent can overcome the ugliness and the stupidity of choosing to live in one of the least comfortable parts of the globe. Good luck with that! Geoff S
http://www.geoffstuff.com/parot.jpg
You forgot to list “sea level rise associated with climate change;” – yes it’s listed on official government blatherings:
https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/animals-and-plants/threatened-species/nsw-threatened-species-scientific-committee/determinations/final-determinations/2004-2007/orange-bellied-parrot-critically-endangered-species-listing
PC,
They inscribed a huge area of this ugly wasteland on the United Nations world heritage list. That tells them that the sea better not rise to spoil the place, or someone will have to answer to the might and fury of the UN.
Incredible.
World heritage is a tool to stop mining. Happened to our company, 4 times in widely scattered areas where we had to quit exploration soon after we started. In three cases they “allowed” creation of new military training areas, an easy excuse to ban people from entering. What that does for wildlife is debatable, but no debate was allowed. All or most was under leftist governments.
Geoff S
Only one word to describe everything:
That word is= “wrong”
The logic of saying that the loggers were saving the forest is immaculate.
But what were loggers doing if not removing timber and organic material from trhge ground that the forest stood upon.
And with every truckload, a tiny little piece of ‘something’ was also removed and never came back.
That ‘something’ being the micronutrients and organic soil material that fed the forest.
There is completely no way of constantly growing, harvesting and removing anything from anywhere continually – logging is as unsustainable as growing wheat on the same field year after year after decade after decade.
One day your field will simply pick up and blow away in the wind.
There is precedent.
I would liken it to the contemporary human condition involving Vitamin C
Vitamin C is our immune system – it is an essential micronutrient, although not so ‘micro’ in actual fact
Letting the trees burn is in now way different to what the loggers were doiung, all they were really doing was exporting the flames and smoke to somewhere else.
But when they did, they exported the forests’ ability to make its own version of Vitamin C – its immune sytem fell apart, it could no longer defend itself from attackers. Be they – low rainfall, insects, sun, wind or heavy rain
So the forest dies, as we do from lack of Vitamin C
And The Wrongness here is gigantic and mind blowing
That the Recommended Daily Amount (RDA) of Vitamin C for a human adult is about 80mg
Twice as much as wards off outright Scurvy. Fine, nobody wants to get Scurvy
Except that, had we been still making our own, we’d be making and using (typically) 3,000mg daily.
There’s the disconnect, there’s the wrongness.
Even more wrong in that if someone anyone admits to dosing themselves up with anything near that amount, they are ridiculed and sneered at.
By obese, demented and cancer riddled folks crawling with myriad autoimmune disorders.
Neither funny nor sad.
At least the RDA for us is an actual positive number
The amount we allow the forest is well negative – and that is why it burns
Ashes to ashes etc etc……
Do not pass the buck onto a feathered freind, Jesus wept, how pathetic, childish and truly sad is that?
See the wrongness now, see the urge to destroy ourselves?
If that were true then why do the trees grow back?
Is it better to you that thousands of acres burn, killing untold numbers of animals and people as well for the sake of the micronutrients you are always going on about?
Micronutrients are carried on the winds, the Amazon’s dependence on the windswept sands of the Sahara is probably the best and biggest example people might have heard of.
The micronutrients come from the bedrock via tree roots. They are not limited. Peta has never seen the forests he/she blathers on about. You can’t fix stupid, though. Plenty of sheeple believe any superstition whether it makes sense or not.
Charles, good posting of an excellent article. I grew up on the other side of the border, in Douglas County, Oregon, the heart of timber production in North America. We almost all worked in the forest or sawmills as either summer jobs or as a career, and it was hard and dangerous, but well-paying, work. Along came the Spotted Owl issue, ironically the same year that Oregon achieved 100% replacement of all stage classes of replacement timber, and the industry shut down. For what? Not only was the Spotted Own rarely seen, but DNA studies show no difference between Spotted Owls and Barred Owls. Another example of self-induced grief via culture dysfunction.
Let’s bring back the dinosaurs and Cro-Magnon man!
The best way to preserve species that haven’t found a way to successfully compete in an ever-changing world is to preserve a few strands of their DNA until Earth’s current top-species figures out what to do with it.
The only constant is change.
Weren’t Cro-Magnon H. sapiens?
Bringing back H. neanderthalensis would be cool, though.
We never left … we just blend in when we need to.
There are striking parallels between the anti-logging types and the anti-oil types. They oppose things because of perceived environmental harm with having considered the consequences of getting what they want.
The same thing is happening to Maine lobstermen, only it is the Right Whale that is the issue. Of course in our case it is offshore wind that is the real culprit, the whale is just the excuse to close our industry.
Went to wildlife.ca.gov. The spotted owl is indeed in decline. There are two reasons.
Once again California gets it bassackwards.
Propaganda from abject failure wildlife biologists who have zero data to back up their assertions. When, when, when are you going to stop believing folks who lie for a living?
I haven’t seen a Spotted Owl, but I have spotted an owl on occasion. Does that count?
I’ve never seen a Spotted Owl,
I never wish to see one,
But I can tell you anyhow
I’d rather see than be one.
With apologies to Gellet Burgess.
For it to count, the spotted owl would have to be a spotted owl.
Slow, cool fires have been replaced by fast, hot fires. The solution is logging, cleared zones near dwellings and if it hasn’t burned in 50 years, burn it soon