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Comment by mulmen | Hacker News Reader

Are we? Since the 1990s as a school child I thought we already came around on this. But in recent years I am hearing that is not the case, or that we are only now coming around. Did we do a 360?

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We've known since the 60s that letting forests burn is healthier for forest ecosystems. But we've known about a lot of good environmental practices since the 60s and just ignored them.

All it takes is one person building a cabin in the middle of a forest, and all of a sudden it's a fire that threatens property and can't be allowed to burn. We can let remote areas of the national parks burn, but it's going to take a lot of political and social change before it becomes acceptable to let people's vacation properties burn, Or to prevent development of large regions of forest so it can be allowed to burn.

There are a lot of small private holdings within public lands. They should receive some property tax relief, in exchange for understanding that the forest around them is going to be managed naturally.

That doesn’t mean that their property won’t be defended as much as possible, just that stopping the entire fire itself won’t be the goal.

Why relief, and not a higher tax for the additional work required to stop their house from catching fire?

That’s a good way to get voted out if the people in the area all want to have their little cabin some day, is why.

And that's why nothing will ever change. Everybody can't have their own little cabin some day, and nobody ever wants to be the one who has to tell people that.

Well, if all the cabins burn down one year due to it becoming a wildfire nuclear apocalypse, and therefore nobody wants to build cabins - I guess we might get a short window until everyone forgets about it? Usually <= 5 years from what I’ve seen. Though <= 2 years might be more realistic now a days.

And California seems to be heading in that direction, though not there yet.

Why should only the wealthy not only get to have remote cabins, but also the full might of the government to prevent natural forest fires from damaging their property?

Raising taxes to fix things is always the most regressive solution- the wealthy, and only the wealthy, will be able to afford it.

Instead, treat it like a rural flood plain, acknowledge that the land is simply worth less because it is prone to natural damage, and leave it at that. Fire coming? Issue an evacuation order and let nature take its course.

I think the national park service fully accepted the idea that we should let fires burn around the lsat great Yellowstone fire, maybe 1990ish.

I don't know that they speak for the US Forest Service though. Between the different national level parks and forest services and then the state level ones, I wouldn't be at all surprised if there are still a lot in the active suppression camp. Then there are municipalities where people can basically live in the WUI and the idea of preserving only structures is further complicated.

It’s less about the US Forest Service and more about local jurisdictions and smoke from prescribed burns being a ‘nuisance’.

This talk is by someone who works for the US Forest Service.

https://youtu.be/O6Vayv9FCLM

Traditional nature conservation came around years ago and hasn't changed.

Popular conservation, which tends towards absolute preservation, has not come around.

Communities living next to or within forests also tend to prefer we put fires out.

You can do smaller controlled burns in those areas instead of letting the fuel pile up into an emergency.

Sounds like work, it’s no surprise it doesn’t happen. A lot of these areas struggle to rub two nickels together to get safe water.

An awful lot of encroachment into forests is from high end subdivisions that should not have been built.

When the state allows construction and utility connections and so forth, it should also take up responsibility for fire management.

The way I’ve heard it described is that other priorities that are also important, like spare the air days or budget concerns, kinda edged out control burns in the recent past.

Yeah I have heard the same. And it makes sense with communities burning. They will always be the hardest places to coordinate controlled burns because of the concentration of interests.

It would be interesting to correlate forestry management practices and population density.

Perhaps we just need constant awareness. Smokey Bear's website also includes a small section regarding the Benefits of Fire: https://smokeybear.com/en/about-wildland-fire/benefits-of-fi...

The Longleaf Pine episode on Smarter Every Day was also educational: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJWG7raBlT8

Yeah I learned about this forever ago, but as usual, its money that talks. People don't like their houses burned, and so fire suppression policy is dominant. Only now that we are having super-fires that people are opening up to it.

Wildfire management organizations' budgets have been so skewed to remedial action from preventative that indigenous "Cultural Burners" in British Columbia have complained that when they've sought agreement to do controlled burns in spring and autumn they are met with plans for batteries of firefighting equipment on standby. It is a colossal mismatch of scale, since the Cultural burners tend to limit their focus on their own local, ancestral territories. Thankfully the B.C. authorities are now doing a rethink in favour of the Cultural burner concept.

I think it varies by region at this point. https://www.outsideonline.com/podcast/future-fire/

"Only you can prevent forest fires" lays the wrong mindset that humans are the only causes of forest fires. I grew up with that mindset, took some education to realize that nature (lightning) creates fires as well, and that fires have occurred throughout history for the benefit of the ecosystem.

Exactly. Said another way, since fire is inevitable the ecosystem adapted to it, and the species that survived are those that actually benefit from it.

Should also be noted that much of the California natural landscape evolved for several centuries (if not millennia) under the influence of human-initiated burns by the native tribes.

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