if it seems that wildfires are burning
nearly all the time these days
that there's no longer a definable fire
season in california
you're right around 8 million acres of
forest was burnt this year with a record
of 60 million acres in just the last two
decades
it seems obvious to most people that
these wildfires need to be prevented and
extinguished
at all costs in the 1900s the united
states forest service had an aggressive
policy to not only prevent wildfires
but to extinguish any that started
within no more than 24 hours
this was working great and there was a
sharp decline in the wildfires for
decades
this however stopped around 1970s when
the average blaze started burning hotter
faster and much bigger than it used to
so what went wrong
fewer fires have led to denser more
flammable forests packed with the
combustible needles of all conifers
and the dry branches of dead or dying
trees up to 90 percent of trees are dead
in some places with around 149 million
dead trees spread throughout california
we are just stockpiling fuel for bigger
and bigger wildfires
all the while delaying the inevitable
wildfires unlike what we thought earlier
are an integral part of the forest
habitats
the trees are huge and the canopy formed
by them is dense
this makes it virtually impossible for
new plants to grow unless the old trees
are burned partially or completely
the density of dead trees keep
increasing without full-scale natural
wildfires
wildlife which remain mostly unaffected
before a century are now suffering
severally due to this increase in fire
severity
seeds of trees like the bishop pine and
sequoia have evolved to withstand high
temperatures
and only open when they are heated trees
with thick layers of fire resistant bark
help them regrow after the fires are
extinguished the united states forest
service has now started taking counter
measures in the form of controlled
burning
use of machines to clear out the dead
trees and even leaving some natural
fires to burn their course
if feasible this seems to be working the
loss of trees during wildfires dropped
from 92 percent to 47 percent
in areas which were recently thinned by
cutting and controlled burns
but so far the vast majority of fire
management funds are allocated to
emergency measures
rather than preventive ones as
counterintuitive it may sound
some wildfires are meant to burn if you
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