Decades of fire suppression had nothing to do with
Southern California’s wildland fires this past October. I am
extremely disappointed that you would ignore the past 20 years of
scientific research and instead repeat the same old tired
assumptions about wildfires “in general” as being driven by
“unnatural” fuel loads and apply them to California
(HCN, 11/12/07). While fire has definitely been
excluded in some Western forested systems due to fire suppression,
this is not the case in Southern California’s shrubland ecosystems,
especially chaparral.
The fact of the matter is there is
too much fire on Southern California landscapes. Fire frequency has
been increasing dramatically over the past century, leading to the
elimination of chaparral and coastal sage scrub communities over
vast areas. In their place, depressing tracts of non-native, weedy
grasslands have filled the void.
It is nearly impossible
to find a patch of land in San Diego County, the site of the most
destructive infernos in October, which has not burned over the past
40 years. Very few beautiful, old-growth stands of chaparral exist
anymore due to excessive fires. The remarkable elfin forests with
20-foot-tall manzanita shrub-trees are no more. If fire suppression
was responsible for the region’s 2007 wildfires, why did huge
portions of these fires re-burn areas that had been consumed in the
2003 fires? In Southern California, chaparral wildland fires are
about dry Santa Ana winds, not misapplied assumptions from
ponderosa pine forests in Arizona.
I implore you to
please not accept standard explanations about why and where
wildland fires occur, and instead do the required research to get
the story straight. Anything less only perpetuates mythology that
can lead to highly destructive land use policies. We have lost
enough chaparral in Southern California due to excessive fire. We
can’t afford to lose any more due to misguided land management.
Richard W. Halsey, Director,
California
Chaparral Institute
Escondido, California
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Burned again.
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