Demonizing the Ancient, Wild Feminine to Justify the Controlling, Destructive Masculinity of Industrial “Man-age-ment”
The title above is a mouthful, yet a more accurate title for this essay. But I feared it too abstract and woo-woo for a general audience, despite it being more broadly accurate and pointing to deeper anxieties and psychological maladies of modern, industrial societies. It’s also much less likely to be understood by those men and (sadly) women (too) foresters who practice forest “management” and would think this title and its implicit critique the musings of a weirdo.
Firefighter Mark Brown of the Marin Wildfire Prevention Agency (MWPA, aka Marin Wildfire) is knowledgeable and convincing and this Fire Safe Marin video is a mix of facts and misinformation and, more critically, the omission of facts. And what the public doesn’t know will kill our public forests, heat the local climate, contaminate land and waterways, and scare off thousands of wild animals while destroying their habitat.
From the limited perspective of a firefighter, MWPA’s and Fire Safe Marin’s spokesman Mark Brown, proselytizes cutting into forests — labeling this forest-reduction work with the commonplace euphemisms: “management,” “treating,” “removing” and “thinning.” The Devil here gives himself away with the Orwellian language.
Never will this forest-reducing, plant and tree-killng work be described more plainly and accurately as, “cutting down” trees or “killing” plants or even the more vague, “forest reduction.” Never will it be called what it is one form of: “deforestation.” (Note it is also NOT accurate to label this plant and tree killing, “logging,” Because logging implies felling trees for timber sales. Nor is it “clear-cutting,” which means removing all or most trees in a forest.
Yes, after Brown’s recommended forest-reduction work is done, there are fewer plants and trees, both living and dead, to burn in a fire. But it’s not that simple. Because unless ALL forest plants & grasses are killed and also truck out of the forest or wildland – – and then the ground is literally paved over to prevent future plant growth, will the objective of reduced wildfire danger actually be acheived. Only pavement prevents the re-growth of “flammable” plants. As does the use of thousands of gallons more Dow Garlon and Monsanto Roundup and other herbicides than the already hundreds of gallons of chemical poisons these deforestation projects already will use.
Only clear-cutting and paving can end the danger of wildfires. But even these agency nature-tamers are not (yet) advocating this severe a “treatment” to make humans “safe” from wildfires and to “restore” forest “health.” (More on this conflation of two very different objectives is covered below.*)
Firefighter Mark wants to reduce wildfire danger to homes and communities by preventing “high-severity” wildfires, and to do this focused on “reducing the fuel load” – – which is firefighter-ese for “cutting down tens of thousands of trees both living and dead” — ignoring that all this “fuel” is an integral and essential component of a wild, natural, healthy, and often dense, unmanaged forest. These denser forests also provide far more habitat (fancypants for ‘homes’) for wild animals than do “managed” and “thinned” and “opened up” forests.
Fire Safe Marin VIDEO with misleading and omitted information:
1) MINIMIZES EFFECTIVENESS of HOME HARDENING – Properly treated HOUSES are extremely igntion-resistant – this is what the U.S. Forest Service — an agency, mind you, which cuts down (“manages”) forests and sells timber at, uh, fire sale rates to timber companies — recommends from the works of its own Ph.D. fire scientist researcher, Jack Cohen.
MUST-WATCH VIDEO: Dr. Jack Cohen’s wildfire research.
(Even just the first 90 sec.!):
Fire scientist Jack Cohen, Ph.D., KEY QUOTE:
“It’s the local conditions around the house that are principally responsible for the [home] ignition potential. And I call this the “Home Ignition Zone.” What we can take from this is that the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) fire problem is a home ignition problem, not a wildfire control problem.”
• LEARN MORE about Dr. Cohen’s work on TreeSpirit’s wildfire page, HERE.)
Dr. Cohen’s work is extensive, done over years at his Fire Lab in Missoula, MT One of his many tenets is that the home wildfire problem is not a forest management problem, but a home ignition problem. Meaning, all we need to do is treat houses in what he calls “The Home Ignition Zone” to be what he calls, “Ignition-resistant” and our houses can be safe even with large, nearby, high-intensity wildfires — the exact natural, forest-sustaining phenomenons that Mark Brown, the MWPA, Cal Fire, Cal Parks, the USFS and so on are all dead-set on “managing” into non-existence. “Keeping the fire on the ground” and other such reasonable-sounding, forest-controlling goals which are ultimately also ineffective and unnecessary prescriptions for protecting houses.
Here in Marin County, CA, this means we do NOT need to cut into and reduce our forests. Currently, over 40,000 acres of wildlands and forests — fully 1/3 of all Marin’s forested land — are targeted for a decade of plant-killing and tree-felling “management.”
2) DEFORESTATION IMPACTS are IGNORED – This Fire Safe Marin video omits the massive, harmful ecological impact of cutting down literally tens of thousands of trees and plants (so-called, “thinning”). Ignored are the climate-cooling, moisture-retaining, fog-condensing, oxygen-producing, carbon-sequestering, wildanimal habitat-creating services that naturally dense, wild forests provide. This omission alone reveals the sophistry at work. Only the alleged “benefit” of reducing a forest’s “fuel load” are considered, a supposed “benefit” — while the larger “cost” of deforestation is simply ignored.
What’s even more chilling is that the public goes along with this impartial, inaccurate ecological assessment.
3) INCREASING FOREST ARIDITY and WINDS – In “opening up” forest understory vegetation, the winds which feed wildfires are increased. Also ignored is the desiccation of a healthy forest. Only the maintenance of some forest canopy is mentioned, as if only it matters, and shrubs on the ground have little purpose or effect.
4) CONFLATING “forest health” and “wildfire danger” – As the number of forest-reducing “management” projects increases, a false narrative has taken shape to sell them to the public, using two premises:
First, wildfire danger is falsely claimed to be in part an “overgrown” forest problem. TreeSpirit has written extensively about this myth (and really it’s an outright lie), so if you still believe that wild forests are so dangerous we must cut into them all, please read this blogpost on this key topic: https://treespiritproject.com/deforestation/vegetation-management-war-on-nature/
And read TreeSpirit’s wildfire page which also address the “overgrown” forest falsehood — because there is no such vegetable.
Second, today’s forests are being falsely categorized as unhealthy and repairable (or “restored”) with industrial tools. All the typical, natural and, yes, healthy components of a wild, unmanaged (by humans of any era) forests, included beetles, insects, blights, and trees stressed by drought and higher temperatures are labeled as unnatural or unusual signs of an “unhealthy” forest. And worse, that these non-issues will be fixed or cured or made healthy by the industrial treatments of these projects: chainsaws, masticators, and herbicides. This is both nonsense and non-science.
Third, all the current deforestation projects are sold to the public as simultaneously curing both imaginary ills — when there is none at all. Treating houses, and leaving forests beyond 100 ft. from houses, alone fixes the wildfire “problem.” And nothing in a forest is ever “fixed” or “restored” with chainsaws, masticators and herbicides. (Yes, of course, using a saw to smooth cut a broken branch can help prevent a tree disease, but this too isn’t necessary to help a wild forest.
5) WILD ANIMALS DEATHS are IGNORED – Most glaring perhaps is the insistence that thousands of hours of operating high-decibel machine like chainsaws and masticators will not drive countless thousands of wild animals – thousands of mammals, birds, insects, et. al. away. And destroy their understory homes. See and hear beyond the pro-manangement propaganda to see an actual (small) forest masticator — also known with the euphemism, “mulched” — in action on this TreeSpirit webpage created just for this eye-opening purpose: https://www.treespiritproject.com/mastication
6) WHAT HAPPENS in the YEARS AFTER INDUSTRIAL DEFORESTATION? – This Fire Safe Marin video omits what grows after the masticators are done mowing down plants. Namely, more ignition-prone “non-native” plants, like the mentioned (and demonized) French broom, which are pioneer species that grow in disturbed-by-machines areas. The video argues the opposite; that for reasons unstated the supposedly good “native” plants will magically reappear and the seed bank of supposedly “bad” non-native” broom will not resprout – – but why? What scientific studies — or for that matter, anecdotal evidence — demonstrates any truth in their assertion? In fact, the hardiness and persistence of demonized French broom is legendary for being quick to grow and difficult to eradicate. Read more about the non-science of Invasion Biology, HERE: https://www.treespiritproject.com/InvasionBiology
In Cal Parks joint Cal Fire deforestation project at Tomales Bay State Park, “prescribed herbivory” is included in this so-called “restoration.” That’s fancypants for “goats or cows.” Which means that an over 100-year wild forest will be thinned, wild animals driven out, and domesticated animals brought in to fix the new problem the deforestation project will create.
Here is the now typical one-two gut-punch prescription of deforesting/de-vegetating wildlands:
a) Cut down trees and masticate smaller understory plants and shrubs, then;
b) bring in goats or even cow to “graze” down the so-called “invasives.”
c) this “treatment” will need to be repeated, creating a forever ‘vegetation management” need where there wasn’t one before with the climax ecosystem that is a forest. The pro-cattle industry Nature Conservancy is planning to do exactly this expensive, destructive “treatment,” using cows, to reduce the “non-native” vegetation brought into and now rampant at Point Reyes National Seashore, a problem caused by cows in the first place. Thus, again, the problem is pitched to a misled public as the solution.
The stated and also implicit assertion here is that goats or cows will only eat “bad” “non-native” plants, and leave good “native” plants alone. But why? Anyone even casual observation of what goats do to Marin County landscapes reveal goats indescriminantly consume almost all vegetation, right down to bare dirt, including any tree leaves they can reach.
Instead of leaving wild forests and other wildland habitat to take care of itself as has been done for millions of years, these agencies will, at great expense, endless “rake the forest” — but with industrial chainsaws, masticating machines and herbicides — again and again and again.