WILDFIRES

Another year and California is burning. Oregon has fires but don't seem to be quite as bad as California. Yet. Last week saw temps. hit 130 degrees in Death Valley. The bad heat only lasted three or four days but in California the heat was accompanied by dry lightning. Thunderstorms with no rain. The bain of wildland forest fires.

The West has been in drought conditions for at least two decades. Ranging from semi to parts of the Central Valley in California actually collapsing as the underlying aquifer collapsed. And on the subject of climate change. In the mid seventies I bought a rhododendron for the folks for their anniversary. We planted it at the SE corner of the yard next to the porch. It was usually the last to bloom and was usually bloomed out by mid June. By the early 2000's I realized that I was deadheading that rhodie at the end of May. At least two weeks earlier most years

Drives up the river to Oakridge revealed a reservoir at Lookout Point that seldom filled anymore. So I can't prove it but I'd say the climate is warming up in my neck of the woods. Back to wildfires.

When dad started working for Pope & Talbot out of Oakridge he noticed trees that had been scorched. Older loggers had stories of how the local tribes had set small fires to burn out the brush and create more graze for the animals they hunted. Same stories about some of the sheep herders. And when a traditional logging company goes into a unit they clear cut it. Yes seedlings are planted but somehow those units don't get thinned to take out the extra seedlings. Instead of a stand of larger trees a few feet apart you get what my dad used to call pecker poles. A lot of skinny trees that don't get a chance to get big enough to withstand a fire. You get an old growth Douglas fir three or four feet, or more, in diameter and that fire probably won't affect it.

And the US forest service handbook mandated fighting every fire. Even the little ones that would probably have burned out while taking some of the fuel with them. Managing the forest they call it. Overlooking the fact that one, creation had been managing those woods ever since trees and lightning met each other. Two, because of that synergy there are tree species that need fire to allow their seeds to sprout. And there is a funny thing about forest fires. Often they skip. The wind carries embers hundreds of feet often leaving many of the trees in between unburned.

Top it off with more and more houses being built in the urban forest boundary. And frankly once a firestorm hits no kind of defensive landscaping is going to save a wood framed house. Want proof. Google Paradise, California. Fire and high winds went through that community like a bulldozer.

Anyway back in 2018 the current occuapant had to make his opinion known while the west burned. Finland, he told us, had lots of forests but didn't but they were better taken care of and they raked them.That claim had most of us going "what" and the president of Finland stating that raking wasn't mentioned that last time they met.

I doubt that the current occupant can read a map but here is the Koppen map of California climate.

 It ranges from Mediterranean in the north to desert in the south east. The thing with Mediterranean climates is a rainy winter. And the west has not been getting those rainy winters, at least not much in the way for rainy winters for several years.

Now look at Finland.

Much lower temperatures and no deserts. Also California starts at about 30 degrees latitude and goes to about 40 degrees latitude. Finland STARTS at about 60 degrees latitude and has a significant piece of real estate above the Arctic Circle. The climate is described as Boreal. Warm summers, freezing winters As in up to one hundred days of temps. below freezing and snow. Lots and lots of snow. Apples and oranges folks, apples and oranges.

Honestly I've just skimmed the surface. And the stories about the Native Americans tell me that there has never been a so called "wilderness" where man has never influenced the landscape. But the Native Americans never tried to "manage" the landscape. They worked with it because they lived in it. Europeans culture has tried to exploit and "manage' a landscape they really knew nothing about and saw it mainly as X number of board feet to be exploited as quickly possible, as cheaply as possible and then move on.