GREAT FEEDBACK ON FIRES
First, let me thank everyone for your wonderful comments on my fire posts, especially those of you who live at fire ground zero. My heart breaks for you and your communities. Few devastations are as overwhelming and complete as fire; it's akin to losing a spouse because it's all your hopes, dreams, and "youness." Be assured none of my posts are meant to be condescending, insulting, or unfeeling.
Many of you have commented that fires are a natural part of the western landscape. Yes, they are. In fact, here in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia we have certain pine trees that require fire to release their seeds and germinate. These trees are, of course, declining precipitously. The oaks too thrive under what we call "cool fires." These fires creep along the understory and never get into the canopy. They absolutely help the ecology. This is a viable part of the management rotation.
At the same time, we've been running pigs in the forest for some time, using electric fence to control them. We move them around from area to area. They till the leaf litter into the soil, root around tree trunks and eat out caterpillars and bugs, and even root up mountain laurel, which is a high resin native evergreen shrub highly susceptible to fire. It's noxious when left unchallenged.
I'm not suggesting fires are unnatural, or even that we eliminate all fire. I am suggesting that we have some clever and technological innovations that the native ecology does not have. We now have tightly controlled livestock capabilities unheard of before electric fencing and plastic water pipe. I know that after our pigs have gone through an area, there's no way in the world a fire could possibly survive there. I also know that lots of new species germinate in that slightly molested area. It does indeed change the vegetation; as much as a fire? No, but over time, yes.
We humans like recipes with known outcomes and we want results fast. The kind of long-term incrementalism created by yearly touches isn't dramatic and cataclysmic enough to get folks excited, it seems. I don't know how you mobilize people for incremental action. It's a conundrum. To my knowledge, no one has done side-by-side studies on the efficacy of fire versus carefully managed pigs in fire-prone ecosystems.
I know a farmer in California, near Nevada, who ran goats through the forest. A wildfire came through and stopped at the forest the goats had pruned. You could call that a treatment. I saw the line personally and it seemed like a compelling story.
Running livestock, whether cows, goats, or pigs, through thousands of acres of federal lands in California is a stretch, for sure. What bothers me is that we can't even have a discussion about that kind of thing. All we seem able to talk about is climate change, insurance rates, and millionaires building in the trees. Those are all factors, to be sure, and I'm certainly not suggesting that we discontinue talking about or addressing these issues.
What I'd like to see is healthy comparisons and conversations about mega-fauna and human interaction in these ecosystems. Right now I see a solution going begging while people retreat to their various corners of the boxing ring. If I sound like a logger promoting chain saws and a rancher promoting overgrazing, it's only to try to balance the anti-cut and anti-animal mentality of the loudest current narrative. It seems like our biggest problem is taking everything to excess.
As permaculturalists suggest, we need more forests and fewer trees.. It's all about thinning, pruning, and management. We can probably do something about that faster and more realistically than we can reverse climate change. And just like you get your oil changed, perhaps we should burn on a rotation. Figure out what it is and then do it. If the government lands in California are like the ones here in Virginia, they are by far the worst managed lands in the area. Privatizing is another alternative, but that gets hooted down before it's out of the box.
Can you imagine the federal lands of California being managed with goats, pigs, and judicious pruning?