This is an extract from a National Review article that explains much about the causes of the devastating LA fires:
“And while the topography is different - the fires around L.A. are burning the chaparral landscape in the mountains and foothills around the city, not in forests — the lesson is the same, said Edward Ring, director or water and energy policy at the conservative California Policy Center: The L.A. fires have gotten out of hand largely due to poor land management.
"Historically, that land would either be deliberately burned off by the indigenous tribes or it would be grazed or it would be sparked by lightning strikes," said Ring, an advocate of continuing to manage the chaparral land's oaks and scrub brush with grazing animals, mechanical thinning, and controlled burns.
But that hasn't happened, he said, due to public policies, bureaucratic resistance, and pushback from environmental activists. The result: The L.A. foothills were primed to burn.
But Ring and others say the biggest problem that has allowed the fires to do as much damage as they have is tied to a lack of land management in the L.A.Basin. He blames the problem on state and local government bureaucracies, lawmakers in the pocket of environmentalist and renewable energy lobbyists, and legal challenges from activist groups that can grind the ability of landowners to manage their property to a halt.
Environmental groups, including the California Chaparral Institute, the Sierra Club, and the California Center for Biological Diversity, have aggressively fought against thinning and burning that state's chaparral landscape. In a 2020 letter to lawmakers, they argued that "adding even more fire to native chaparral shrublands" is not an acceptable policy.
"They make it virtually impossible to do controlled burns of any kind. They make it virtually impossible to do mechanical thinning. And they make it very difficult and in many cases impossible to even have grazing on your property," Ring said.
"Everything requires an environmental impact statement, and everything requires permits from the [South Coast] Air Quality Management District," he continued. "All of these things are just impenetrable bureaucracies. They just tie everybody up in knots."
Ring said a focus on single-species management, rather than total-ecosystem management, makes it easy for environmentalist lawyers to find a single bird or lizard that could be affected by a land management project to put the project on hold.
"The Endangered Species Act and the California Environment Quality Act have both turned into monsters that have not only prevented any kind of rational land management, but they've actually had the perverse, opposite effect in many respects," he said.”
Thanks for this! I'm currently working on a piece on the LA Fires and you win a lifetime comp subscription for helping me out.
California's ecological antics and bureaucratic boondoggles are legendary, and not in a good way. We've known for a long time that controlled burns help prevent wildfires, but thanks to virtue-signaling morons we can't get them completed.
Yours Truly, Sir Kenaz & the Lovely Sir Cleveland analyze the California 🔥 s, the coming North American Union, & all the ways in which “nationalists” have already given up, long before the fight has even begun. Enjoy, Dear Listeners! 😉 😘
I watched some Fox News after the podcast this morning and was thinking ... right or wrong, our triumvirate is so far ahead of the idiots in media they don't even warrant a seat at the table in these discussions. Face it, compared to those guys we start to look like magic oracles. :)
They should fire the cast of The View and give the three of us a slot. We'd wake up a few viewers and piss the rest off so much they'd hate-watch us and scream on X and Bluesky about how awful we are.
This is an extract from a National Review article that explains much about the causes of the devastating LA fires:
“And while the topography is different - the fires around L.A. are burning the chaparral landscape in the mountains and foothills around the city, not in forests — the lesson is the same, said Edward Ring, director or water and energy policy at the conservative California Policy Center: The L.A. fires have gotten out of hand largely due to poor land management.
"Historically, that land would either be deliberately burned off by the indigenous tribes or it would be grazed or it would be sparked by lightning strikes," said Ring, an advocate of continuing to manage the chaparral land's oaks and scrub brush with grazing animals, mechanical thinning, and controlled burns.
But that hasn't happened, he said, due to public policies, bureaucratic resistance, and pushback from environmental activists. The result: The L.A. foothills were primed to burn.
But Ring and others say the biggest problem that has allowed the fires to do as much damage as they have is tied to a lack of land management in the L.A.Basin. He blames the problem on state and local government bureaucracies, lawmakers in the pocket of environmentalist and renewable energy lobbyists, and legal challenges from activist groups that can grind the ability of landowners to manage their property to a halt.
Environmental groups, including the California Chaparral Institute, the Sierra Club, and the California Center for Biological Diversity, have aggressively fought against thinning and burning that state's chaparral landscape. In a 2020 letter to lawmakers, they argued that "adding even more fire to native chaparral shrublands" is not an acceptable policy.
"They make it virtually impossible to do controlled burns of any kind. They make it virtually impossible to do mechanical thinning. And they make it very difficult and in many cases impossible to even have grazing on your property," Ring said.
"Everything requires an environmental impact statement, and everything requires permits from the [South Coast] Air Quality Management District," he continued. "All of these things are just impenetrable bureaucracies. They just tie everybody up in knots."
Ring said a focus on single-species management, rather than total-ecosystem management, makes it easy for environmentalist lawyers to find a single bird or lizard that could be affected by a land management project to put the project on hold.
"The Endangered Species Act and the California Environment Quality Act have both turned into monsters that have not only prevented any kind of rational land management, but they've actually had the perverse, opposite effect in many respects," he said.”
Thanks for this! I'm currently working on a piece on the LA Fires and you win a lifetime comp subscription for helping me out.
California's ecological antics and bureaucratic boondoggles are legendary, and not in a good way. We've known for a long time that controlled burns help prevent wildfires, but thanks to virtue-signaling morons we can't get them completed.
Yours Truly, Sir Kenaz & the Lovely Sir Cleveland analyze the California 🔥 s, the coming North American Union, & all the ways in which “nationalists” have already given up, long before the fight has even begun. Enjoy, Dear Listeners! 😉 😘
I watched some Fox News after the podcast this morning and was thinking ... right or wrong, our triumvirate is so far ahead of the idiots in media they don't even warrant a seat at the table in these discussions. Face it, compared to those guys we start to look like magic oracles. :)
They should fire the cast of The View and give the three of us a slot. We'd wake up a few viewers and piss the rest off so much they'd hate-watch us and scream on X and Bluesky about how awful we are.