Yeah, it is a bit dumb to talk about "cleaning" forests. Or at least I've never heard anyone who spouted that line who I thought had any understanding of the situation. Mostly they are just salty that the forests aren't actually profitable for logging, but they can't say it like that.

Like a lot of things in the US, the resources are "there" for this stuff, because it's a lot of individual labor instead of something that can be turned into a massive payoff for a couple of "investors" there's no "market incentive" so nothing will be done.

For context, I live on 40 unimproved acres in CO, and much of my spring and late fall is spent moving downed wood and cutting down thickets of gamble oak.

That is a lot of work, and I hope (over the next decade) to eventually get it somewhat under control. The idea is to not have, for instance, a dead tree leaning up against a living tree and to try and tamp down or increase the space between the floor and the first couple of branches in the trees. I also collect up wood for heating in the winter (better to burn it to stay warm than to lt it go in an eventual wild fire.

This is a lot of strenuous work, and not just because I have some love and respect for the situation of all the individual flora and fauna that populate this chunk of land. I've know several wildland firefighters here and they are doing similar things in a hurry out in the hills with hand tools. Because you can't get large equipment around to do the work- there aren't roads in a lot of these places.

It'll all probably burn at some point, anyhow.

But I try because at least in the couple of acres where I actually live I might be able to get the underbrush cleared so a fire could be fought.

But the idea of setting it on fire is prepostrous- I might as well set the shack where I live on fire while i am at it.

That more or less scales up.

The process of mitigating wildire (usually done on a line near an active fire) is largely a bunch of 25 year olds with shovels and chainsaws.

I am all for that work- I'd much rather have them doing that than geraing up to go to Iran or Cuba or wherever.

But hey, the ecology of this place is fucked. My ancestors destroyed the megagfauna to prevent folks from subsisting off of the concentration camps/ reservations. The folks who are still "into" that racist, genocidal, ecocidal project aren't going to do anything to fix it; they'd rather burn their own houses down first.

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