By Gregory Kubelek
Terry Knight”s Outdoorsman column of Sept. 9 outlines the benefits of burning Cow Mountain and other convenient woodlands.
“Burning provides excellent habitat for wildlife,” he says. Which wildlife is that: regular or extra crispy? The truth of this is that repeating a lie endlessly until it seems true is what passes for truth these days.
The reality is that deer and other animals will browse the spring growth of a burned-over area if my vegetable garden is not handy. They have to; their habitat no longer exists. But wildlife does not live in the meadows; they live in the forest or what is left of it.
Knight is not the only person on this bandwagon. On Aug. 25, the Lake County Board of Supervisors conducted a whisper of a public hearing and then unanimously adopted the Lake County Community Wildfire Protection Plan.
This lengthy fire plan is an entirely fact-free document that pretends to be a scientific document. The only reason for its existence is the vain hope that the county will qualify for federal grants to increase fire protection capacity here. That is clearly stated in fire plan”s executive summary.
The fire plan took more than two years to fabricate and it was drafted by an advisory group known as the Lake County Fire Safe Council. Undisclosed to the public is that the Fire Safe Council is a non-profit corporation created and funded by the insurance industry. Not surprisingly, the Community Wildfire Protection Plan proposes giving the Fire Safe Council both enforcement and legislative authority. Also undisclosed in the plan is how it was funded (logging revenues).
Although I learned a great deal from reading this plan, I still have a couple of questions. The draft of the fire plan was opened to public comments for a period that ended July 1. Why were public comments excluded from the record? How could the public review the final version of the plan for comment during the public hearing since it was never circulated for review? Why was the public hearing conducted in such a casual manner? The chairwoman of the board of supervisors first opened discussion of the plan to fellow supervisors, then invited specific persons to speak in favor of the plan before inviting comments from the general public. The chairwoman never opened the public hearing nor closed the public hearing before the board of supervisors voted to adopt the fire plan.
One day after the public hearing, Aug. 26, a 90-acre controlled burn in Yosemite National Park jumped its lines and became a 7,500-acre, $15 million forest fire requiring the complete evacuation of the community of Foresta. What are the chances of that happening yet again?
Gregory Kubelek
Cobb
