Straightgrain3016
Silver Member
Officially Fire Season in PNW with IFPL raised to level one
IFPL One, "hoot owl"
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Hay Dude
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How will we survive? More stuff for people to panic over. 
ericm979
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How will we survive? More stuff for people to panic over.
Pretty much all of the west coast has a climate where there is no rain in the summer. It's hot and dry even in places that see a lot of rain in the winter. That's why the three west coast states have a lot of wildfires.
It's important for people to know when it's too dry to risk mowing or doing other things that can start fires. California mostly leaves it up to people to find out on their own and to do the right thing. Of course some don't, and then they start fires. Oregon makes it much clearer what people should not do and when they should not do it.
People in my part of Oregon are touchy about fire after a big fire ran through some small cities a few years back. They're still rebuilding.
OP
Straightgrain3016
Silver Member
It might not be so bad in Oregon if the CCC hadn't planted millions & millions of trees 4 foot apart and if public land didn't have the "dreadknotts" forestry policies.
Millions of Jack-Pines in some of the Fort Rock Unit are 6" apart. Tillamook State Forest is a mess and ready for another Tillamook burn...ladder fuels all over.
Millions of Jack-Pines in some of the Fort Rock Unit are 6" apart. Tillamook State Forest is a mess and ready for another Tillamook burn...ladder fuels all over.
ericm979
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I could go on at length about mis-management of forests, both public and private. But we're saddled now with the results of a century of fire suppression and a lot of poor forest management practices like even age stands of the same species with too many stems per acre. We've gotten the generational shift of the people making decisions (I mean the managers not the politicians who are largely stuck in 1960's thinking), but there's still a generation or two of trees that are often the wrong trees in the wrong place, or too many of them.
The fix is not easy. Just increasing logging won't do it. It's not a good time to log more- the mills I see already have full log decks and log prices are low. We need more thinning, biomass generation to make thinning more affordable, and more prescribed fire. For about 40 years.
The fix is not easy. Just increasing logging won't do it. It's not a good time to log more- the mills I see already have full log decks and log prices are low. We need more thinning, biomass generation to make thinning more affordable, and more prescribed fire. For about 40 years.