Comment by silexia
The government has over and over again proven itself totally incompetent at managing public forests. These should be sold to private owners who actually care for them.
The government has over and over again proven itself totally incompetent at managing public forests. These should be sold to private owners who actually care for them.
Might be good for making a few people rich, but seems bad for long term forest health. We've seen how private capital can come in, suck all the value out of something and leave only a husk. Over and over again.
You may have accidentally fallen prey to timber baron misinformation. It just isnt true that private owners "actually care for them" in some way that prevents fires. [0][1][2][3]
And even if it were true, lets pretend we give all of the forests to timber barons--then we get to 1) still fight the fires anyway, and 2) we'd end up having to bail the timber barons out after the fires. The end state is more burned forests that we now dont own, or get to use, or have any say over, yet, we still pay for it all and the billionaires walk away with everything.
At this point we know they wouldn't care for the forests any more than the forest service.
[0] https://news.oregonstate.edu/news/osu-research-suggests-fore...
> OSU research suggests Forest Service lands not the main source of wildfires affecting communities
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[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/despite-what-the-logging-...
> For decades, Oregon’s timber industry has promoted the idea that private, logged lands are less prone to wildfires. The problem? Science doesn’t support that.
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[2] https://missoulacurrent.com/study-wildfires-land/
> Study: Most destructive wildfires have started on private land
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[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-06002-3
> Human ignitions on private lands drive USFS cross-boundary wildfire transmission and community impacts in the western US
Most private owners are tree farms, right? Those burn like crazy. I've seen very few well managed tree farms, they do exist. Anecdotally, after observing several thousand linear miles of west coast forest, just a handful were well managed and fire resistant. The majority is a dense mass of q-tip like trees with dense underbrush. There in grows not trees, but tree trunks and the habitat is good for rats and no large game. (Sorry for the rant, I've got strong feelings on how gross tree farms are. To see how peevelant they are - check satellite images. It looks like a checkerboard, it is not due to images being stitched together, it is the boundaries of clear cuts and tree farms- and it is just everywhere (west coast))