FIRES AREN'T CLIMATE CHANGE

            Yesterday the skies over our Virginia farm were white with smoke from the California and Oregon fires.  It was surreal to see the clear line of smoke coming across the Shenandoah Valley traveling east toward Norfolk.  If you looked south, the sky was white.  Looking north, the sky was a brilliant blue.  I'm not sure I've ever seen that before, and knowing that this smoke originated from 3,000 miles away was mind boggling.

             Anyone who thinks these fires are a result of climate change or have anything to do with climate change is incorrect.  This is the result of land management policy being held hostage by radical environmentalists and anti-livestockers.  The first group shuts down the chainsaws and the second group eliminates the biomass pruners.

             I have written about this numerous times but wow, it sure gets frustrating to see the anti-solution crowd constantly win the media megaphone contest.  Vegetation is a consequence of management.

             On our farm, we've watched vegetation change dramatically based on management.  In one year you can shift a field from cockles to grass.  Or a sterile forest to one with ground cover.  Or no clover to clover.  We've done this for decades and it never ceases to amaze me how responsive the landscape generally and vegetation specifically can be to a different management.

             That change can be mechanical, like plowing, ponds, or hoof action; it can be nutrient based, like compost or feeding hay on an area; it can be sunlight, like adjusting the canopy to change shade ratios.  The way we interact with nature eventually expresses itself in a physical way.  That includes the decision to not interact with nature.

             The problem with withdrawing is that we can't put back all the original natural elements.  The bison, the beavers, the wolves, the routine and smallish naturally-ignited fires, the Native American cultivation and caretaking which included planting, burning, and hunting.  Unless and until we replace those elements in wildness, we don't have functional wildness at the macro level.

             That means for true ecosystem balance, we need to substitute humble, healing touches from the human hand.  That means strategic tree cutting, herbivorous pruning of accumulating biomass, pond building (millions of them) and organic matter stewardship.  It means participating in ways that radical environmentalists and anti-livestockers decry; as long as these groups have the message board, we're going to see nature violently correct our neglect.

             This has nothing to do with partisanship. It doesn't even have anything to do with California PG&E.  And it certainly doesn't have anything to do with climate change.  As my Australian friend and guru of landscape management Darren Doherty would say, "this shows that the hardest climate to change is the climate of the mind."  Well said.  Before we start screaming exterior climate change, how about we start self-examining our mental climate, and change that first?

             What do you think it will take for this simple message to be widely adopted?