Perspective: Where “environmentalism” gets it all wrong and contributes to destructive fires like L.A.'s
Image of Palisades fire by Cal Fire
Several years ago, CA Globe editor-in-chief Katy Grimes spoke at the Silicon Valley Association of Republican Women (SVARW) about traditional vs. modern forest management—and how radical environmentalism has spelled disaster for California's forests by leaving them overgrown, underutilized, and vulnerable to wildfires. Her poignant (and prescient) comments below.
But let's start with the green radical environmentalists who've destroyed our forests. This is a big deal. It might not sound like it, but it is.
The forests are one of our natural resources which used to bring in a lot of revenue. For decades, traditional forest management was scientific, successful until ideological preservationist zealots wormed their way into government positions and began the 40-year overhaul of sound federal forest management through the abuse of the Endangered Species Act—remember the “spotted owl”?—and the no-use movement. The no-use movement means they don't want us using our forests.
I speak a lot with Representative Tom McClintock about this very issue. This is one of his hot-button issues, and he represents an awful lot of the national forests in his district. He says, “Our forests are now catastrophically overgrown, often carrying four times the number of trees the land can support. In this stressed and weakened condition, our forests are easy prey for drought, disease, pestilence, and fire.” [Editor's note: Read the full CPC article here.]
So traditional forest management used to have really simple guidelines. Thin the forests when it became too difficult to walk through. Too many trees in the woods will compete with one another because the best trees grow at a slower rate.
Today, only privately managed forests are maintained through traditional forest management practices: thinning, cutting, clearing, prescribed burns, and the disposal of [what results] in the woody waste. But what's interesting is private lands do not suffer the wildfires that the rest of the state does. But the same climate change that the Left shrieks about hits private lands and forests and national lands, right? But the private forests aren't burning because they're properly managed. Or if a fire does break out on someone's privately owned forest land, it's quickly extinguished because the trees aren't so close together and the underbrush has been cleared away. It's that simple.
We're now living with the result of radical environmentalism ideology, that we should abandon our public lands to overpopulation, overgrowth, and, in essence, benign neglect. Forest fires fueled by decades of pent-up overgrowth are now increasing in their frequency and identity and destruction. (5:17–7:33)
Watch the whole thing here.
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