i'm going to try to remember


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Archive is Monday Night Talk, if you missed it.

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To tune in for this. It's not that I take such a dim view of prescribed burns for drill, knowing what firebugs men are, how much they enjoy this shit, it's that there are too many fuels in most places for the indian way of forest management to work right.

AND, that now there are far too many burnt acres limping back to some sort of recovery with severely depleted soils from all the logging done in previous centuries. I'm saying it again, yes, fire adds nutrients to the soil, if it's not too hot, doesn't turn the dirt into glass, but nothing so much as the centuries of forest duff decomposing into the soil.

You log too much, you deplete the cycle of added duff nutrients, and then the forest grows back somewhat weaker and the next fire to come through doesn't add enough to fix that — in fact, subtracts so much that little or no forest grows back and whatever might is riddled with weed species trees and detrimental brush so thick that you can bank on any more fire turning the entire area to permanent, or for our purposes permanent, bare earth.

I need to remind you also that the dark green from the conifer forests of the Pacific Northwest is what attracts the rain to water us. Regrowth isn't as dark and doesn't do the job as well. Bare earth doesn't do the job at all.


pipe up any time....