I have seen comments to postings about the wildfires in Colorado that the fault is poor forest management. FYI65% forests in Colorado are federally owned or controlled and the Trump administration took a chainsaw to agencies and their ability to fight wildfires this spring and last year.
https://csfs.colostate.edu/forests-trees/colorado-land-ownership/
"While Trump bills Canada for smoke, his Forest Service is closing 57 of its 77 research labs. On the chopping block: the Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory in Seattle, the lab behind the national Fire and Smoke Map, the exact tool millions of Americans opened this week to see whether the air outside was safe for their kids and grandkids.
Sometimes, well-meaning tenderfeet from the East Coast or Midwest like to give us in Colorado advice about how to deal with wildfires. Trump's vacuuming underbrush is typical. His ignorance and reulting policies have resulted in the Forest Service closing 57 of its 77 research labs, and money for prevention as well. One I got the. other day wondered why homeowners just don't have wells and hose down their property. My response to that was the most kind I could muster: The degree of ignorance is no excuse, and that gem of advice would result in the homeowner becoming a burnt piece of toast. I highly recommend that you also become better educated about the issue and visit the following site for advice from one of the eminent experts, Colorado State University Forestry Service. https://csfs.colostate.edu/
"I don't know where you live, but it does not sound like Colorado...You need to spend some time and get more knowledgeable about the kinds and power of wildfires in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.. If you have ever been near one, you will realize that a handheld hose from a well is no match for a wind-driven inferno, and if you stand there sprinkling your abode instead of evacuating, you will be toast. Some areas do not have "homes" in certain designated national forests; just establishing a perimeter in rocky and mountainous terrain in a challenge. Our wildfires are better known as crown fires and embers jumping onto closely standing, highly flammable pine forests. They leap and spread from treetop to treetop. I have been near one that went 10 miles in one day, and another 23 miles in 3 days. Others border "urban" areas or cabin subdivisions. And like our area, our Fraser Winter Park area governments with urban interface federal grants and state resources over the past several years have just cut down every pine tree for firebreaks for at least one mile downwind from a national forest and prevailing winds..Wind-borne embers can jump miles ahead and start new ones. Homeowners themselves remove vegetation near buildings. Even then, we are always in jeopardy: Mother Nature can be frighteningly awesome, and it is then that you realize how puny and helpless man is. "
Aside from often unreachable terrain, due to global warming, over the past decade, beetles that feasted on lodgepole pines survived winters when they once were killled by well below zero temperatures. The result is the death of much of our ladgepole pine forests, and the affected trees eventually fell to the ground. We are talking many, many square miles in mostly very rugged areas., already inaccessible. Those have lain there for the past few years, making it difficult to traverse the forests and providing fuel for raging fires, like the one burning in Routt Cunty near Steamboat Springs.
