The Anatomy of Wildfires
At an elevation of 6,329 feet, the summit of Homestake Pass in Montana is also the Continental Divide between the Pacific and Atlantic watersheds. The City of Butte is on the western side and the Town of Whitehall is located some distance to the east.
A number of years ago, the mountain pine beetle devastated a significant portion of the evergreen foliage on the pass. Personnel at the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest office decided that the dead standing trees were a definite fire hazard, thus the area should be logged out.
Securing out-of-state funding, the Forest Service was sued by environmentalist Susan Johnson and the case went to district court. Johnson contended that any machinery brought into the area for the purposes of logging could start a wildfire – even though the conflict encompassed the same predicted and calamitous end result for the area, Johnson won the case. The browning landscape of Homestake continues as the big loser.
In the matter of Forestry Management, I have written extensively on the wildfires in California as well as those a couple of years ago in Australia. Unreasonable environmentalism does not seem to understand the fire ingredients formula of fuel, oxygen, and ignition. The drier the fuel the easier a fire is to start, the hotter it burns and becomes easier to spread. Environmentalists seeking court orders to stop thinning, clearing and removal of fuels have apparently never lit or watched a campfire.
In their reports on state wildfires, Calfire, a division of California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection articulated that climate change is not a participant. Excess fuels are constantly being created because of anti-logging legislation, a deficiency of prescribed burns, elimination of fire breaks and berms and no forest floor clearing and cleaning.
This is the exact same situation in Australia where protestors continually stop the removal of any superfluous fuels from the forests. In both California and Australia, after investigation, it seems that the ignition point for many fires ends up in handcuffs and led to jail.
In the forests of the Black Hills of South Dakota however, visitors will see piles of slash - mounds of dead trees, shrubs, limbs, leaves, pine needles and miscellaneous fuel. Typically in the winter, these slash piles are safely burned to remove the excess “fuel overload”. I link a article on this management practice here.
In the last couple of decades, despite forest fires being decreased by 25% worldwide, the climate alarmists continue to point their green finger at the fallacy of climate change, rather than the obvious answers – quite often themselves.
Climate Realism writes about this here.