I read a wildfire article today that was breathless about the scope of total acreage burned across the drought-stricken northwest US and of course included a climate change angle. This is the first wildfire article I’ve read that did not include some mention of decades of ill-conceived fire policies in the intermountain West.
Let’s not mince words: a lot of fires are burning on a lot of acres this year primarily because of those man-made policies. Millions of overcrowded acres of forest because people put tiny fires out for decades and allowed trees (fuel) to grow and grow. Fire is a natural process that we purposefully interrupted. Prior years with extensive fires also generated media and environmentalist attention. As I stated above, the difference between then and now is climate activists politicized the science. An EcoWatch article now contains no mention of historical decisions because it is more important to satisfy the environmentalist base by claiming nature is pure without humans and impure with us.
This is disappointing but not surprising. For now, I am glad there are more responsible media outlets that continue to acknowledge the very real and dominant influence people have on forests (forest management), the very real and strong influence nature has on forests (drought), as well as the growing influence that people will have on forests in the future (climate change).
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