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<p>My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a
professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber
management. He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in
disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the
United States Forest Service. He was dedicated and loyal to the
spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists. He spent
multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and
Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes
and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first
Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3
of my growing up years. My father died 10 years ago
(Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains
in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a
(nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this). Within the
year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact
spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!). <br>
</p>
<p>Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now
acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project
that was fundamentally "unwise". They *were* (for the most
part) doing the best they knew how. Most everything they did
(from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual
bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear
the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for
cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and
*timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as
they called it. The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of
the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to
be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were
much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome. The
National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM
for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of
resources"!!!!) <br>
</p>
<p>And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was. But in the
same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations
of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really
good thing"... and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we
will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting
wholeheartedly in the name of "progress". <br>
</p>
<p>This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.</p>
<p>- Steve<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAPerSOKMUMb9DdUT3RUY09xxgfg3-e_-TNGABRG3oKyH2JST-A@mail.gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div dir="ltr">Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the
wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.<br>
<br>
<a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox</a><br>
<br>
<p class="gmail-css-10j7zqa"
style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 0px
1rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-ligatures:common-ligatures;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5;font-family:GuardianTextEgyptian,"Guardian
Text Egyptian
Web",Georgia,serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(18,18,18);background-color:rgb(254,249,245)"><span
class="gmail-css-cw340e"
style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px 4px 0px
0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:2.625rem;line-height:1.15;font-family:"GH
Guardian Headline","Guardian Egyptian
Web",Georgia,serif;vertical-align:baseline;float:left;text-transform:uppercase;color:rgb(224,94,0)"><span
class="gmail-css-o4cepu"
style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 4px 0px
0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:118px;line-height:99px;vertical-align:text-top">B</span></span><span
class="gmail-css-10j7zqa"
style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 0px
1rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5;vertical-align:baseline">efore
this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast,
California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding
destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By
periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees –
known as the forest understory – <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/california"
style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;border-width:0px
0px
1px;border-top-style:initial;border-right-style:initial;border-bottom-style:solid;border-left-style:initial;border-top-color:initial;border-right-color:initial;border-bottom-color:rgb(220,220,220);border-left-color:initial;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(203,71,0)"
moz-do-not-send="true">California</a> avoided fires
growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century.
The way this was done? Fire.</span></p>
<p class="gmail-css-10j7zqa"
style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 0px
1rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-ligatures:common-ligatures;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5;font-family:GuardianTextEgyptian,"Guardian
Text Egyptian
Web",Georgia,serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(18,18,18);background-color:rgb(254,249,245)">Every
five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest,
killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing
the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such
groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people
who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop
growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently,
the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible
material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature
trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we
are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded
by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.</p>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22,
Jochen Fromm <<a href="mailto:jofr@cas-group.net"
moz-do-not-send="true">jofr@cas-group.net</a>> wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="auto">
<div dir="auto">Due to climate change there will be more and
more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in
the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires
early.</div>
<a
href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection</a>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">-J.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
</div>
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