Redwood Reader

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-me-brush27sep27,1,6689585.story?coll=la-news-environment While Humboldt County goes about developing its general plan for the next twenty years, we find plenty of talking points in the news. On September 27 the LA times reported on a new ordnance in Nevada County requiring homeowners of less than ten acres to remove 80 per cent of the vegetation on their property for fire protection. They want defensible space around buildings to be increased to one to two hundred feet. Fire insurance is rocketing as people move into the wild lands at an accelerated pace. Brush covers large chunks of land and is a real menace, but it would cost residents thousands to perform these tasks. There is also the ten-acre issue- why exclude large landowners? There is no provision for those who have invested in fireproof building materials already.
Some residents are well into the brush removal and examples of park like settings are around. Owners who hoped to provide wild life habitat are finding the term synonymous with fuel loading. There are posters that say “Brush: Clear It Or Fear It”. Spokeswoman Nancy Weber director of the Nevada Irrigation District complained it was “a strategy for deforestation”, more about that below. Clearly development is interfering with natural processes and in the end the altered landscape will become suburban.
This practice will deplete the water storage ability and cause even more problems. The need to catch rainfall with vegetation and glomalin is at the heart of the issue. Management for glomalin by growing big trees that pay annually for carbon sequestration shifts the monetary supply to polluters seeking carbon credits. Long-term storage is the goal so it becomes important to disturb the soil as little as possible. Protection of the revenue-producing asset moves timber stand improvement into a more important activity of water and habitat development. It seems as though living in the wild lands is causing the wild lands to disappear. Clearly more information is needed. Removal of the brush will cause even further drying of the landscape, most notably by extending dangerously dry times. Nowhere is rapid recovery of large trees mentioned as a goal to reduce fire danger, although park-like settings mentioned imply that.
Along post by the BC Tap Water Alliance in Waterforum today concerned logging in publicly held community forests in BC. Many of these watersheds were set aside as single purpose watersheds for drinking water. As here, newer regulations demand multipurpose land use, so that recreation and industry must be accommodated. The forest industry claims logging provides better water and more of it, but many studies show undisturbed forest provides the highest quality drinking water. Post logging waters need filtration and other costly processes all but wiping out the publics economic gain. Link to article: http://us.f511.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?MsgId=4965_3783278_14537_1329_11410_0_21836_26004_3282720379&Idx=3&YY=66577&inc=25&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=&head=&box=Inbox. Link to Tap water Alliance: www.alternatives.com/bctwa .
Both of these issues deserves recognition of the subsoil processes that are being ignored and impaired. Both stories are full of people switching sides and industry supported suggestions for community improvement ultimately detrimental to natural systems. .The need to preserve and maintain forests for long term carbon sequestration and water production cannot be overstated. Once investments are made in the wild lands development is inevitable, and so risk reduction measures are taken that degrade natural systems. Industry in business to produce timber cannot be expected to support these ideas initially. Government lands with multiple use mandates likewise are not our best answer either.