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Burn, baby, burn!





Interesting opinion piece of our current fires:



Born to be Wild?



You don't read about fires on forestland owned by private timber companies, which have long used controlled burns and selective logging to protect their assets. Farmers have an intense interest in maintaining the health of their land. Property owners willingly spend gazillions planting trees, flowers and shrubbery--and then protecting it from the elements. Is public ownership of vast tracts of land the only way to arrange for the environmental amenities that we seek? Europe seems to get along without "wilderness" areas, though nobody would deny it has a great deal of environmental charm.
What has always amazed me is the environmentalist assumption that given modern regulation, plus profit motives, lumber industries and the like are just out to destroy the source of their income, i.e. trees. The thought that maybe, just maybe, they see trees as a renewable resource and therefore manage that resource doesn't occur to them, at least for the most part. And when it does, the next reason for blocking the timber industry is because of "old growth" or spotted tree owls.



Nevermind that there weren't any "spotted tree owls" where they said there was. It was a "gestalt" impression that such animals were there, too bad so sad they were never found, oops. That particular area, northern California, seems much the same today, without lumbering, as it did thirty years ago, with lumbering. The only difference are the deserted towns and half-empty cities, the unemployment, and the sense of moving through a graveyard.

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