[s1artibartfast]

Unfortunately more fires are the only solution, due to the amount of fuel built up in California forests from a century of mismanagement. 2020 was the highest burn area on record with 4+ million acres burnt, and we would need 10 years burning at this level to bring the state down to 1920 fuel levels. The sad part is that due to the amount of built up fuel, these fires will be very intense leaving moonscapes opposed to healthy forests.

More prescribed burns in the spring and wet years may help, but I don't think the political willpower is there, given the liability if things get out of hand.

[jollybean]

That's very intriguing and doesn't seem to be part of the popular narrative. Is this 'consensus' science, i.e. generally accepted, or is this a novel take?

Also what specifically has been 'mismanaged'? Wouldn't leaving nature to run it's course be a reasonable thing to do, or would this imply 'build up and then big fires every century'?

Also, do you know if it's the same in Australia?

[s1artibartfast]

My understanding is that this is the scientific consensus as the main contribution with climate change as an exaserbating effect. Most media coverage focuses on the latter for more clicks.

The mismanagement in this context is a century long policy of extinguishing natural fires and not letting nature 'run its course'.

The policy was briefly lifted in the 60s or 70s do to overwhelming scientific opposition, but reinstated due to public outcry after a few iconic locations burned.

The wikipedia below has some basic starting information, but generally whitewashes history, suggest that policy was corrected in the 80's. IF you dig deeper, around 100,000 acres were allowed to burn per year on federal land in the 90's and 2000's, which is far too low.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wildfire_suppressio...

Slide 4 of the PDF below gives a an example of the fire frequency in the 1800s in comparison to 1900s.

https://ucanr.edu/sites/firesummit/files/302800.pdf

I have no clue about Aussie fire policy, sorry.

[kibwen]

Re: "popular narrative", I think this is just unfamiliarity with the source material. The unintentionally-disastrous fire management policies of the 1900s have been widely known since at least the Yellowstone Fire of 1988 catapulted forest fires into the public eye: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_fires_of_1988#Fire...

The problem is that nobody wants to acknowledge that fire is a necessary and constructive part of the ecosystem. So they build their homes in wildfire zones and support policies that suppress fires until the pot boils over and the fire turns from constructive to utterly destructive.

[s1artibartfast]

The science goes back far further than that. Scientists were advocating for natural burns in the 1930s, when the Roy Headley, chief of fire control for the Natural Forest Service, wanted to allow burns but was overruled.

[kibwen]

Indeed, I was trying to refer to broader understanding outside of the scientific establishment. It should be noted that the Yellowstone Fire of 1988 was actually a success of proper fire management techniques established in the decades prior; if those hadn't been in place, then the fires of 1988 would have been even worse. But to the public at the time who were uninitiated to the idea of the constructive power of regular forest fires, and facing the prospect of losing their most impressive national monument to fire, and after being inundated with decades of Smokey The Bear, it's no surprise that there was outrage at the forest management for allowing any fires to happen, despite their necessity (and eventual inevitability).