Chaparral Wisdom
To celebrate the magic and beauty of Nature & the chaparral
Greedy trees are taking all our water?
In a recent NBC article, Trees vs. Humans: In California Drought Nature Gets to Water First, the anti-forest habitat crusade continues to promote more logging and support the impractical US Forest Service goal of attempting to create “drought and fire resistant” forests through “active” management. Joining the “over-clogged” forest hysteria, we now have the “greedy-trees-are-stealing-all-our-water” propaganda being led by UC engineering professor Roger Bales.
“It seems like a sin of nature that trees may be adding to the misery of California’s extreme drought.”
and… “More trees means more water stays in the forest.”
Is there an ecologist in the room?
What are trees thinking by taking our water before we have a chance to claim it as our own? This reminds us of settlers demonizing Indians for living off the land before “civilization” took it over and set things “right.”
What’s going on here? We have yet to determine where the funds are coming from to promote this vision, but the Association of California Water Agencies, a political advocacy group that promotes water projects, in involved.
Above Photo: Some of the greedy, over-grown trees some feel need to be removed to protect our water supply. Tahoe National Forest.
Wildfire Hyperbole: Falsely Blaming Past Fire Suppression
Whenever wildfire is discussed, you can almost guarantee that someone will say something like the following:
These unnaturally, hot mega-fires are the result of past fire suppression which has allowed an unnatural accumulation of vegetation. Forests are out of whack. And environmentalists have made it worse by their litigation, preventing needed clearing and destroying the timber industry.
How does one explain the million acre grass fire in Texas during March of 2006 that killed 12 people? Clearly it was not the result of over-grown grass thickets.
The 1889 Santiago Canyon Fire in southern California (more than 300,000 acres) that occurred prior to the era of fire suppression.
Map above showing the possible spread of the 1889 Santiago Canyon
Fire from Keeley and Zedler 2009.
The fire suppression story has been repeated so many times that it has taken on the power of myth. We are seeing this over the past week in newspaper stories about the fires burning throughout California.
Read MoreSix Reasons Why We Challenged the Stanislaus National Forest in Court
“These forests were all different but, in one critical sense, they were all the same. They belonged to me, to my children, and to all the American people for today, tomorrow, and forever – unless somehow, we allow this incredible birthright to be stolen or frittered away.”
– Jack Ward Thomas, Chief Emeritus of the US Forest Service, referring to our national forests.
In the spirit of the above quote, we filed suit with our partners (The John Muir Project and The Center for Biological Diversity) on September 4, 2014, asking the court to reduce the scope of the Stanislaus National Forest’s plan to log 32,000 acres of fragile, post-fire forest created by the 2013 Rim Fire.
We do this with regret because we have really been impressed with the US Forest Service’s new efforts to focus on ecological restoration, the recognition of shrubland habitats, and their plans to account for the impacts of climate change on California’s ecosystems. However, it is our opinion that management on the Stanislaus National Forest has yet to come on board with the new approach. We provided extensive input to help the Stanislaus understand why their post-fire logging plan was unsound, but they ignored us – hence, our lawsuit.
Here are our 6 reasons for filing:
1. To Protect One of the Rarest, Most Fragile Habitats on Earth
One of the most damaging practices in forestry is logging a burned forest. The science is clear on this point. Thrashing through the fragile, post-fire environment with heavy logging equipment, dragging felled logs across delicate soils, and leaving behind a wasteland of broken limbs and crushed wildflower, shrub, and tree seedlings crucial to forest recovery is an ecological disaster. Yet the Stanislaus National Forest claims such logging, “is the first step in the process of long-term forest recovery” in its logging plan. Few statements could be further from the truth.