Chaparral Wisdom
To celebrate the magic and beauty of Nature & the chaparral
Reining in Boys with Matches and Chainsaws – Back to Court
Cal Fire and the California Board of Forestry refuse to enforce
court ordered environmental protections
Now that they are flush with cash, boys with their matches and chainsaws are on a roll, burning and grinding up habitat under the guise of land “management.” One wonders how nature survived without us. And they are breaking the law.
Cal Fire and the California Board of Forestry are violating the Appellate Court order we won last year, an order with the intent of preventing Cal Fire from making the landscape more flammable while destroying nature along the way.
Cal Fire and the Board are allowing habitat clearance projects to occur in chaparral that do not follow the environmental protections designed to prevent the conversion of native shrublands to non-native weedlands, as well as ignoring protections in their own Vegetation Treatment Program document (VTP). They are also violating the law, again. (PRC 4483 and the California Environmental Protection Act).
And both Cal Fire and the Board are refusing to accept any responsibility to enforce the agreements they made or even the VTP itself. Experiencing the denials was worthy of a Marx Brothers movie.
One of the fundamental obligations of American citizenship is to stand up for what is right and call out the government when it is in the wrong. And so, we are celebrating this month’s 4th of July by doing exactly what the framers of the US Constitution expected us to do to maintain our vigorous democracy. We are going back to court.
Here’s our new Writ of Mandate we just filed Monday. It is really quite a joy to read.
The End of Wild Nature in California
Governor Newsom and Cal Fire target all wildlands in California
with herbicides, logging, grinding machines, and fire
Part I: The scope of the destruction
One third of California, 35.5 million acres, are in the sights of the state’s new, updated Vegetation Management Program (VTP). Rather than something to cherish, Nature is now seen as the enemy, a thing that needs to be controlled, mitigated, cleared. Using Orwellian double-speak to mask the madness, the clearance and ripping apart dense, biodiverse habitat is referred to as “ecological restoration,” improving “forest health,” and making wildlands “fire resilient.”
In this eleven part series we will be offering an in-depth look into the consequences of the belief that Nature can not function without us, and needs to be forever mowed, trimmed, and chemically treated to create the fantasy gardens of European royalty – open pastures, forests with trees spaced for picnics, and mosaics of neatly shaped shrubbery.
The Nature-as-our-garden belief has seduced environmental organizations, public agencies charged with protecting wildlands, politicians, research institutions, and the public into thinking that if we can just “manage” the entire landscape of California like Indigenous Peoples are claimed to have done, we will be safe from wildfire forever.
We are being lied to.
We’ll first provide an overview of the state’s Nature-is-the-enemy battle plan, then ten recommendations concerning how to change the approach in a way that will actually save lives and property from wildfire, and keep Nature wild.
Part I: The scope of the destruction
February 25, 2026
Dear Members of the California Board of Forestry,
By targeting more than a third of California, the Cal Vegetation Treatment Program update will impact nearly every wild landscape remaining in California under state jurisdiction. And through partnership agreements, it will also influence how wildlands under federal and tribal jurisdiction will be managed.
Consequently, the CalVTP update has the potential of having the greatest negative environmental impact on protected wildlands, state parks, local preserves, and wild open space of any state policy or project on record.
Read MoreGovernment to Mom – Clear Those Damn Azaleas!
The Stupidity of Zone Zero
and Other Feckless Fire Commandments in California
One would think that after increasing losses of life and property from wildfire every decade, California would reconsider its forest-centric, clearance-of-habitat approach to fire risk reduction. Instead, the state is doubling down on removing even more greenery to the tune of millions of acres.
The latest symptom of this plants-are-the-enemy paradigm is Governor Newsom’s executive order to eliminate your right to enjoy azaleas under your bay window. In fact, the government is headed toward requiring not much more than bare dirt, concrete, or jumbles of rock within the first five feet of our homes, the so-called Zone Zero.
Sorry mom, dad, by government decree, the azalea that was part of our family garden for decades would be cut down. And if it wasn’t, the government would hire out to forcibly have it done and charge you for the courtesy. No matter that hydrated trees and shrubs can aid in protecting homes from flying embers, the primary cause of home ignition during wind-driven wildfires.
Mom and dad, proud of the legacy azaleas they had nurtured for decades, next our the family home.
Photo: March, 1994.
What’s the cause of yet another government intrusion into our lives? Paradigm blindness, based on assumptions that are irrelevant to most of us.
The state bureaucracy thinks we all live in semi-rural, forest settings with ranch homes on one acre lots (so we can clear 100 feet of “defensible” space), with trees that need to be “limbed up,” and where “ladder fuels” need be cleared. And, of course, there is a fire station down the street that has the resources necessary to protect us from any fire threat.
Except we don’t. Wildlands are often miles away, and walls of flames coming from a burning forest are not the problem during the wind-driven firestorms that actually inflict the most damage. And, as many have learned during past wildfires in California, a fire engine will likely never show up when the ember rain occurs. We’re on our own.
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