LOS ANGELES: The battle that is so successful this month in California to save the largest trees in the world of worsening forest blazes seems to offer important lessons: you can fight with fire.
Climate change caused by humans has made the Western United States hotter, drier and more susceptible to increasingly destructive forest fires, which this year has terrible victims in the forest of the region.
It includes a threatening large sequoias like General Sherman, which oppressed 275 feet (83 meters) on the forest floor.
Firefighters can beat the flame when they eat into the California giant forest, thanks to the prescribed burns that starred in the fuel thread.
“It sounds rather strange to say this, but actually there isn’t enough fire in California for about a century,” said Rebecca Miller, a researcher at the University of Southern California.
“There is a policy at the federal and state level in most of the 20th century to prevent fires, because there is a wrong belief that fire is bad for the environment.” Fires are part of the natural cycle of forest life, clean up excessive vegetation, clean pests, and make room for new growth.
In the wilderness, this fire finally burned himself.
But when the human settlement has penetrated further into the wild space which was once, the tolerance of this fire had diminished and firefighters were under the instructions to issue all blazes as soon as possible.
Now there is a growing realization that this policy actually contributes to deteriorating forest fires – giving them more fuel and making it hotter, faster and more destructive.
Instead, thinking is running, we actually have to help smaller fires to burn.
The practice is the key to protecting giant forests, houses for General Sherman, said Mark Garrett, a spokesman for troops who tried to tame the still active complex fire.
Sequoias giant forest, some of which up to 3,000 years have survived countless fires before.
Thick skin they protect them from fire, and their cones really need smaller heat to open and spread their seeds.
But even this impressive giant cannot overcome Mega Blazes which tears the dry landscape of California.
About 10,000 of them – up to 14 percent of the total world – perish in a big fire last year.
So there was a big nervousness when the fire from the KNP complex began eating to Sequoia’s national forest.
Garrett said it was the first time an uncontrolled fire had come so close to General Sherman, who was wrapped in a protective foil.
But thanks to many controlled burns, the fire could not get a lot of purchases, said Garrett.
“We saw things we had never seen before, like nearly 300 trees killed because of small trees between those who brought the fire,” he told AFP.
Controlled burns are “the best tool we have now.” But not everyone agrees.
“This is not an effective strategy and is very excessive,” said Ecology George Wuerthner.
Controlled combustion must be so broad and very organized so it’s expensive.
“We cannot do all the landscapes at such frequencies.
It is still misleading to suggest that it is a panacea to prevent large fires.” The former Forest Service Officer Andy Stahl said valuable controlled burns would cost billions of dollars.
“You can’t burn it, walk away from him and say,” Well I don’t need to do it again for more than 100 years.
“No, you have to go back there in five or 10 years and do it again,” said Stahl, who is the executive director of FSEEE, an organization that focuses on the management of ethical forests.
What explains why there are very few regions in the western United States Where the practice is normal – apart from around the giant forest.
“It’s a very, very small footprint in a small national park.” For Garrett, no choice: “We need more money.
We need more people.
It needs to be done, throughout the mountains and federal land.
“We do not have many new sequoia trees in giant forests because they have not seen the fire for so long.” We need a new generation to replace General Sherman 2,000 years from now.
“