If you burn it, they will come. That movie-based logic is how federal dollars get allocated for forests, say foresters, scientists, environmentalists and others familiar with how fire risk gets handled in the Sierra Nevada range.
The Rim Fire that started Aug. 17 and burned more than 400 square miles has already run up a $127 million price tag for firefighting. On Friday, federal officials announced another $4.3 million in funding for post-fire treatments to damaged watersheds.
But cost-effective efforts that might prevent such catastrophic fires languish due to lack of funding and political will, observers say, even though thinning forests using controlled fires to reduce the fuel load would, in the long run, save taxpayers millions.
“Would you rather spend $130 million fighting pretty unsuccessfully a wildfire, or would you prefer to have those dollars spent proactively reducing any potential for such a massive fire?” asked John Buckley, executive director of Ebbetts Pass Forest Watch. “Taxpayers would prefer to have far less smoke, a healthier tourist-friendly forest and abundant habitat for wildlife.”
The kind of devastation the Rim Fire caused is exactly what the Amador-Calaveras Consensus Group has been trying to prevent on the Mokelumne River watersheds that supply water through San Joaquin County to the East Bay.
From Recordnet.com: https://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20131016/A_NEWS/310160325