Five MORE Facts About California Wildfires

[athelind]

REUTERS: Five Facts about California Wildfires

Here are five more facts that they left out:

1. Wildfires are a natural part of California's chaparral ecosystem, especially in Southern California.

2. Many chaparral species depend on periodic wildfires to reproduce -- some species, for example, produce seed casings that only rupture under conditions of extreme heat.

3. Many of these species are threatened or endangered.

4. A century of intensive wildfire prevention has created such a build-up of brush and detrius that even minor fires can quickly rage to catastrophic proportions.

5. Much of the damage and destruction of the 2003 Cedar Fire Reuters mentions occurred in areas populated by a large number of wealthy conservatives who voted to cut taxes for state services -- including firefighting budgets.

I'm just sayin', is all.

Comments

[ladyringo.livejournal.com]

I hate the Santa Anas, but I grew up in So Cal.... and even I, as a child, knew that the fires were part of the ecosystem there.

You're think Reuters would be better informed....

[athelind.livejournal.com]

It's pretty typical anthropocentric thinking. It's not that they don't KNOW; it's that they view the story entirely in terms of its human impacts. They talk about "dry brush" strictly as a hazard, not as an ecosystem with its own patterns and rhythms and needs of its own.

[shdragon.livejournal.com]

I grew up in the Midwest and *I* knew as a child that the fires were part of the ecosystem. And we don't HAVE fires there. Well not big ones anyway. and certainly not nearly as often.

[shdragon.livejournal.com]

1) Yup.
2) Yup.
3) Yup.
4) Yup.
5) Hah, Karma!

[athelind.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure 5 even counts as "karma". It's more like straightforward cause and effect.

[shdragon.livejournal.com]

Somewhat.. I kinda see it like this:

Cause: Rich people vote for less funding for fire fighters.
Effect: Less control on the fires that start so they burn longer.
Karma: A fire that, due to Effect, burns down Cause.

[richardf8]

Point 4 gets a lot of attention from Miron Heinselman in his book of the Boundary Waters Ecosystem.

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately for number 5, the rich people had federal propped up insurance systems and the like. They didn't suffer too much, alas, from the destruction of their homes -- and I'm sure a number of them got some fat profits off of it, even. :/

[wy.livejournal.com]

Mmm.. fire. Fire is definitely good. And about time.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Fire is a natural part of a hot, dry ecosystem. City folks forget that.

[kolchis.livejournal.com]

Is this where I can get a 'Dramatic Irony' point by quoting Jerry Pournelle's old line from that old novel...

"Think of it as Evolution in Action"?