Contractors will be pressured to quickly rebuild that home, but will have dozens of other people clamoring for the same attention.
swiftly run off the mountainside, after all, we don’t use water just one or two months per year.
The possessions lost will need replacing (those that can be replaced). Until the home can be replaced, the family will be DIS-placed in some other neighborhood or city. Chaos is a good description of their lives for some time.
That water is cycled and recycled to and from the watershed by weather actions. Without any of the actions, a drought occurs and we suffer from lack of sufficient water.
We question for the reason this occurs so regularly. Why must people be devastated by wildfire when there are alternatives in many cases. Those alternatives are often just a common-sense change in how we manage public lands. Not all of the following applies to some areas, but where they do, WHY are we not making those changes?? Let’s look at some of the RENEWABLE RESOURCES on many of those public lands. First might be the timber or wood resources. Those tall trees are a renewable source, the raw materials of many products we use. Of course, there is the potential lumber for building homes, furniture, and all the other things wood. That is only the beginning of the list of products those trees produce. Paper products from wood pulp… often a “waste” product of timber harvesting is made from saw dust and small chips created in lumber production. The limbs and other “waste” that once were left behind to either be burned in a pile or to decay over time to add to the top soil of the forest may be utilized in other ways. Those same “waste” products may also be pressed into sheets of wood for building or into wood pellets that burn in stoves for cooking or heating. Next, we have the entire watershed. We all know that water is necessary for life. We all use water in so many ways it would take a year just to name them all. We grow our crops with water. We drink water in many forms. We recreate in water. Watersheds make water available over long periods of time rather than allowing it all to
The next renewable resource is “view shed” or scenery. Every time we see an area, there will be slight nuances of change, yet no matter how many times we see it, the beauty remains. Photography and the simple being with Nature are gained from these views. Then there is grazing. Grazing is more beneficial to the forest than most people realize. By cropping the low growth down, any wildfire will generally stay at a low intensity and burn only the lower growth. That kind of burn is how Nature does it when left to its own devices. Those fires actually fertilize the ground and cause seeds that have lain dormant for long periods to open and germinate. This allows new growth to emerge and bring all of the insects and wildlife a new source of habitat. A healthy forest has new growth, middle age growth, and old growth intermingled for the best of all worlds for ALL forest visitors and residents. Maybe last is recreation. Recreation is a renewable use of our forestlands. We don’t use it once and it’s gone. There are times when our uses may degrade the area if we are not cognizant of what we do, but for the most part, recreation can continue indefinitely. Recreation has two basic ways of being. Motorized or mechanical means and/or nonmotorized/mechanical means. Generally speaking, motorized uses require a road or trail with one exception being over snow vehicles. Motorized recreation takes place in many forms. Some might include: Jeeps ATVs UTVs Motorcycles