As Western states contend with increasingly catastrophic wildfires, some are looking to the Southeastern U.S., where prescribed fire is widespread thanks to policies put in place decades ago. From 1998 to 2018, 70% of all controlled burning in the country was in the Southeast.
While a continent apart, both regions have a similar need for fire. For thousands of years, forests and woodlands experienced regular burning, both sparked by lightning and used by Native American tribes, which prevented the buildup of flammable growth. Without fire, the landscape is prone to intense, potentially devastating wildfires…
“We have this generational gap in fire knowledge in the Western U.S. that we’re trying to rebuild now,” says Lenya Quinn-Davidson, a fire adviser for the University of California Cooperative Extension. “But Florida and the Southeast still have it.”…
The level of burning and the “back off” space required in the West is much greater. I am very happy to read that the southeast is doing this correctly.
{ Average precipitation (1,297 mm for years 2000 to 2021) for the southeast region of the USA (AL, FL, GA, SC, NC, VA) is about 45 mm greater now than 100 years ago. Since 1895, there has been 8 years with rainfall greater than 1,500 mm and 6 of those occurred after 1960. }
The SE is famous for hot n humid, sultry, women n mint juleps. Alligators n water moccasins.
The West is famous for dry. Arid. Tuberculotic gunfighters. Gold and grizzlies.
Just saying.
It might be easy to compare an alligator to perlite, but that doesn’t mean the conclusions are useful.
Sure. The SE does have a “dry” season.
But this topic is controlled burns. Controlled burns are NOT carried out during the dry season.
What a load of horsepucky. Does anyone really think that wild land managers in CA don’t know about controlled burns? Of course they do.
And it’s absolutely ridiculous to try to compare controlled burns between FL and CA. Florida has several months each year when those burns are possible. California can sometimes go 2 or 3 years without an opportunity to do any burns because of drought.
Then there’s differences in the land topography. Florida is very flat. The highest point in the state is a hill at the far west end of the state, just a few miles from the border with Alabama, at the impressive height of 310 feet. (Give or take a few feet because I didn’t look up the exact number.)
California has actual mountains with inaccessible canyons that can funnel even a controlled burn into a firestorm.
And it’s not like we’re unwilling to do burns. The central valley is filled with smoke every year from farmers burning their fields. (Flat land, well irrigated, no trees or large shrubs.)
Yes, there is a reluctance among the population to do controlled burns, likely born from the many burns that have gotten out of control.
Bottom line, it’s vastly harder to do controlled burns in California than it is in Florida.
A 2020 paper by Miller et al. found three types of barriers in California: risks, resources, and regulations. The risk is a fear of liability for privately conducted burns. Lack of resources by the state is straightforward. Regulation is mostly air quality related. There are many local AQ boards; multi-day burns are difficult to permit. Particulate and CO2 emissions from controlled burns are considered anthropogenic while wildfires aren’t. The state needs to hire people dedicated to control burns. CalFire is required to put out all fires; some flexibility would help.
It is estimated that California needs to burn some million acres a year rather than 5% of that.
And yet she was chosen by the University of California. Is she a political hack?
Lenya Quinn-Davidson has been named director of the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources’ Fire Network, effective April 1. UC ANR’s statewide Fire Network will build connections and capacity among UC ANR scientists, practitioners, land management and regulatory agencies, policymakers and communities to work toward fire resilience in California…
“Lenya has more than a decade of work in fire science and has carried out her work through partnerships and community engagement,” said Glenda Humiston, UC vice president of agriculture and natural resources. “Her experience and successful track record will enhance how we coordinate our many layers of research and education related to fire prevention, recovery, public policy and workforce development.”
Obviously the conditions are quite different. The point of comparison is that California has not been allocating the resources and doing the work needed to address their problem.
Are the problems more severe in the west? Then the state needs to do more work, much more work, perhaps 20x as much as it currently does. The problem can only be ignored for so long.
