Heading South on i77 and discouraged by the condition of the trees. Lots of broken tops, dead fall, widow makers, poor shape, unthinned, BAD looking woods. (Disclaimer*** 1. Bad time of year for a farmer to head out for a little vacation, but the kids are off on break and we have a free place to stay. 2. I've not seen the rest of the country this time of year for comparison.3. Just looking from the road, no doubt it will soon be paved over. ) Mud season so I'm not surprised I didn't see any trucks or logs around. It appears there really is more $ in leasing to hunters than thinning and working a woods. Or is it more invasive species damage?
On this side of the country the greenies pretty much have stopped any kind of forest management. The bugs are wasting away the trees which make great fire starter and the hot summers now make for miles of fires that don't get put out until it rains. It's awful depressing to know that legal beagles in another part of the country can file lawsuits that actually cause such devastation and eventually loss of life for those trying to put out the fires happening most every summer now days.
Spring burning of the swamps and woods used to be common place here before the dead grass would green up. Spring burning never hurt the healthy trees. Now you hardly ever see a spring burn. But 20% of our population has been treated, not all successfully, for Lyme disease because of a wood tick population that is out of control. Spring burning was a good way to control the population of them when mother nature was no longer allowed to burn.
Yep. Look at what happened to us in Fort Mac last summer. Forest fire blew through and wiped out about 2500 structures. Nasty stuff.
Haven't seen any fire. Yet. The uncontrolled, Mile-a-minute, wild grape, multiflorarose just adds to the lack of thinning. Looks like the wetlands determination have stolen the woods from the landowner. I don't know if people have given up or don't know/realize just what a mess they have. A friend move from an uptight town to 60acres. He has bought a chainsaw but hasn't ever run one, can't identify any tree that doesn't have an apple hanging from a branch.
There is part of the problem, I call it "unreasonable expectations" Around here, and I suspect there, 60 acres is way too much to take care of but too small to make a living off of or pay for its own upkeep. So it sits and turns to trash.
I believe it has as well. The EPA and it's "navigable water way of the United States" regulation basically gives the EPA the authority to regulate every ditch, drainage swale or wet weather stream as they all eventually drain to a "navigable waterway" - water does run down hill.
Not to get into politics but I read somewhere not long ago that regulation was on the chopping block in the short future. Do we know if it got chopped yet or not?
Yeah , trees are pretty damn resilient . If you want to start a forest just quit mowing the grass . Amazing how fast trees grow & can take back cleared ground without mowing & farming it .
Same down here td, I reckon if we stopped killing trees completely, within a generation our grazing operation would be close to being unviable.
Around here managing the forests has become "stay completely out of it and let nature do its thing" thanks to the greenies who know it all. Even dead trees that fall down are not to be touched as that is part of natures recycling. Can't cut down a tree within certain distance of a road without a permit. It is out of control. We grew Christmas trees for years - they would protest us harvesting our crop as killing a forest. Like we would grow 30 acres of these for the fun of it. Cripes. Now we grow nursery stock and the trees they plant on their lawns. We thin and clean our forested areas as best we can, fire is not a real danger here, but widow makers are not good when unsuspecting kids are playing in them. Rent a spider lift every few years and clear them out. As for invasives, we got sumac a few years ago. Nasty, nasty stuf to get rid of. Direct application of undiluted herbicide for 3 years to the stems. Guy next to me won't use herbicides so his keeps spreading over here. Don't even get me going on wetlands etc. Try building a farm pond these days.
Spot on Queenslander . Kind of spooky looking at pictures of Pripyat 30 plus years after the disaster . Forrest is taking it back . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pripyat
Anyone out there getting affected by the interior BC wildfires burning right now? I'm about 60km East of the 5000ha Gustafson fire by 100 Mile House. Smoke gets pretty thick at times here but so far so good. I've got no work coming in as most of my customers have been evacuated. I get most of my parts and supplies from the town of 100 Mile House and it has been evacuated. It's been hot and dry with no rain in sight, our forests are full of fuel. Our power is on and have enough supplies to last a while, we're just going to wait and see what mother nature brings our way.. Or until we are told to evacuate! They have declared a province wide state of emergency.
You aren't too far from me. I'm a bit north of Little Fort at the moment. Have some family there and I'm ready to lend a hand to help them out. I went through this hell last year in Fort Mac and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
Your in Clearwater? My escape route if need be is the Camp 2 road into the town of Clearwater. I'll probably be going there for groceries etc it's only 40km away.
Dang, good luck boys....
For now I am. I'm from Alberta but I had some time off. Decided to come out to help in case my family and friends needed a hand getting out if the worst was to happen. Clearwater still has food and gas. Gas stations are very busy during daytime hours but the Esso cardlock is usually pretty empty.
Be safe and best of luck with the weather. Cam Langley BC
Wild land fires rank up there with volcanos, hurricanes and tornadoes as far as I'm concerned. I wish you guys good luck!
I used to work in that field and in my opinion it is way worse than it ought to be. Wildfire is a predictable natural event and can reasonably be mitigated. All you have to do is cut down the fuels. Around here, there were cattle ranches where the cows chewed the brush down, they also bulldozed a lot of it. If you didn't live there you lived in a town. Nowadays everybody has their 5 acre parcel with 4.5 acres of tinder brush that they have fallen dearly in love with, and their wood frame house in among it, on a dead end road. If your property is properly fuel modified, fire will just pass right by. If it can't be such, maybe there should not be a house there. Insurance companies live in the realm of reality, and are starting to figure this out.
Greg and 92U, my thoughts are with you guys. Be safe
Birken, I agree with you as it pertains to the US in some places. If you interviewed some of the people in Okanagon, County, Washington State I'm sure you will get a lot of disagreement. A lot of those fires could be blamed on bug kill and the affect of greenies preventing any type of land management. On the other hand there was still nothing that stopped the burning till the rains came down. Regardless of the cause the end result was the same as a volcano, hurricane, tornado or earthquake. Lots of people lost their homes and possessions. I think the sticks are a lot farther out in Canada than they are in the US. One only has to look at the fires they had up there last year that took out homes and parts of towns. While there are plenty of greenies in Canada one has to wonder what affect they might have had on the causes of those fires.
Part of the problem here in BC is the shear size of the forest, around 149 million acres, that's 1 1/2 times the size of California (almost entirely government "Crown Land"), over half of which will never be logged. They have always put wildfires out to protect people and property, hardly if ever do any controled burning to reduce fuel next to populated areas, combine that with a ton of bone dry beetle kill pine and spruce, and hot dry unpredictable weather. The fires get so big and hot they create there own wind, jumping rivers and lakes, they will never just pass right by. Homes lost in these fires have nothing to do with how the private property is managed, the problem is simply the way we have managed the fires in the past, creating the perfect opportunity for these massive wildfires to spark up.
I don't mean to be argumentative but I did not state I spent some years firefighting in the PNW as well as up and down California. So I have seen plenty of forest and it is pretty much forest here too. I agree the government does not do much with its land, which makes me wish they would just sell it to someone who cares, but my comment above there still stands: if your house is going to be too close to unmanageable gov't land, don't buy/build there. When I saw the Ft. Mac fire going looking at that land on Google I could not believe how miles and miles of unbroken forest come right up to houses. I realize it does not get to burning conditions there often, but you have to account that sometimes it will. I ask myself, if a fire was to come through here, would the place stay standing on its own, or at most with help from me and my garden hose, if not, it is time to get the saw out before it happens.
You may not have heard about Slave Lake, AB. Back in 2011 about 1/3 of the town was wiped out due to a forest fire. I believe as of today, that fire was the 5th costliest disaster in Canadian history (Fort Mac holds 1st place). Its clear that the lessons learned there were not applied to Fort Mac (or really any other communities). I mean the forest ran right up to the edges of Fort Mac, within 50 feet of homes in many cases. I still can't believe how fast that fire spread. It was something like 8-10 kilometers away from town when I headed south that morning to do a couple quick jobs. 5 hours later I'm heading back to town and I'm driving straight into Hell. The RV park is on fire, Beacon Hill and Abasand are already lost causes. I still have the odd relapse and nightmare about that day.
Here in Princeton with a good sized fire 10kms from town into day 6 of fire there must be at least 50 to 60 white Government pickups running around town that have never left the pavement yet. But I did see 4 guys last night that were dirty from working the fires. I am sure a 12 loggers with Cats and a buncher or 2 could of had it contained on day 2.
Forestry/Wildfire management are now taking about how they planned/are planning this year to start creating fire breaks around the populated areas and cleaning up/burning excess fuel in the forests here in the Cariboo. At little bit late I'd say....
The Dunn Lake fire is up on top of the mountain now and getting out of the rocky ground. If we get the 70 km/h wind they're forecasting tomorrow afternoon and it blows north, Clearwater is in deep ####.
I was in Clearwater this afternoon, pretty smokey down there, 15km up rd2 it clears, sky is nasty at my place but staying way up there. Gustafson fire is smoking bad from the wind today, they've been preparing for tomorrow's winds but only so much they can do..
I just went out to get a sub in Little Fort. Leading edge of the Dunn Lake fire's directly East of Roundtop Rd. That's about 10km from the south edge of Clearwater following the highway. As the crow flies its less. Guessing about 8 or so estimating off a map. I've got a bad feeling about this TBH. I'll be doing my best to get out on a water truck or something if things go sideways.