California Wild Fires

Those pics are about 4000 feet above the city, so you have 2/3 of a mile vertical drop - very steep terrain - though it's great for hiking!

There's miles and miles and miles of scrub going east and north of there and 5 miles or so to the west. And this is just the San Gabriels. Santa Clarita has the Tujungas that go for miles and miles. And also the area above the Grapevine (many more miles) and the area above Castaic Lake.

This is just one part of So Cal. So many more mountains that go for miles and miles and miles.

I think there's too much land to clear and the terrain is extremely rugged in places.

The idea with the goats is to clear out the scrub brush around the populated areas, there's no issue with open burns in unpopulated areas...This is where strategic logging can help control these fires via firebreaks....Goats don't eat the roots or kill the plants, they actually promote growth so they help control erosion rather than the other way around...

https://goats.extension.org/goat-vegetation-why/

How would you control the goats? I'm thinking they'd migrate to places where the vegetation is available, so once they cleared the area near homes, how could you prevent them from moving further into the mountains?

Also, the local scrub keeps the sun from baking the ground and drying out the creek beds. Back in the late 00's, a developer cleared land for a housing tract in Castaic, but the economy turned south and the land is now an ugly scar - scorched earth. Nothing has grown back and the land erodes when it rains.

Also, our dry season is from May to late November. So if a goat eats the leaves/branches off a bush or tree, I don't know if the plant will survive. With our hot sun baking the dirt around the bush/brush, I have a feeling the plants will die and not come back. The grassy plants will come back, because they die off in late June and come back every year, but the shrubs/trees? I don't think they'll survive.

Control Systems Theory as it Relates to Underbrush Management

Mother Nature has taken control theory classes over deep time. She has realized that negative feedback is the key to stable systems. Humans typically rush to abrupt, brute force, impulse "fixes" which ignore control systems wisdom and thus are doomed to endure the tar baby of unintended consequences that inevitably result.

From the link in #117:

"Instead of spending between $10 and $25 per acre for chemical control, goats may provide a return of $10 to $20 per acre while controlling vegetation." And chemical is likely far cheaper than human underbrush cleaning crews. Attempting to collect the asserted $10 return per acre(using goats) explicitly may be challenging but fortunately is optional.

The chemical control is FAR cheaper than many alternative approches but goats arguably zero or invert the sign of the costs. As goats "move[ing] further into the mountains" the predators will trim their populations. This is negative feedback(read up on control theory) and has a good chance of becoming stable over time if goat introduction is smoothly trickled rather than being erratic. A gentle gradient of trimming from neighborhoods into wilderness is ideal for limiting ember migration of fires.

As you say " I'm thinking they'd migrate to places where the vegetation is available.." This behavior is ideal since they self-control to prevent overgrazing. Once again, this creates a negative feedback for creation of a large, widely distributed but naturally limited goat population. Smoothy increasing predator populations may be mildly concerning but that can be modulated, nearly for free, with hunting policy.

As usual, mimic-ing Mother nature to some degree(via goat ruminants) is a win. She has had deep time to perfect these mechanisms and, to the extent that we johnny-come-lately's have enough sense to achieve a good imitation, we can benefit from her wisdom. This is an engineering forum but it consistently amazes me that emotional, politically dominated approaches to problems seem to swamp all deeply simulated proposed solutions. Rather than adamantly wearing political hats that encourage ever larger government involvement, I propose that we analyze potential solutions that involve principles from engineering disciplines (eg., control theory) that should be a prominent part of our problem solving tool kit with an eye to creating mechanisms which are sustainable and largely self-modulating. I am weary of rising mismanagement costs that I am progressively forced via taxes to fund and which spawn emergency "circumstances" rather than diluting and minimizing them.

I am not locked-in to goats. I just perceive them as a solution which mimic's nature's smooth, sustainable means to achieve an end over time at small or negative expense. If others can propose solutions with even less government involvement and less womb-to-tomb tax liability then I am all ears. What might be interesting is a PID coefficient discussion of goat population stabilization from our biologists involving predator and hunting negative(and positive) feedback on goat populations. Unfortunately, I am sure that the politicos will react to my sin of seeking to achieve smaller government using engineering wisdom. They seem incapable of perceiving the unsustainable character of a tax percentage slice of GDP which increases until every shred of (even projected) worldwide productivity is consumed by maladaptive government behavior. We are already walking next to a cliff, you want a positive global space or "margin" of safety between you and a big disaster. Create the Bode stability analysis plot prior to clicking on 'off-topic' and calculate the costs of government programs being retained, expanded, and proposed by, IMHO, every credible presidential aspirant in the US. Looks to me like, well before global climate change can become demonstrably critical, all these programs will run slam out of other people's money.

___________

thewildotter

Good answer.
A ponderable - Australia, many moons ago, bought in goats (albeit for a different reason) they officially became a pest. Now take that same sentence and insert rabbits, or foxes, or cane toads, or carp, or camels (yes we do have more than Arabia/Africa), or ...and so on, instead of the word goats and maybe you can see why mother nature didn't do it in the first place.
BTW rabbits, cane toads, etc actually reached plague proportions.
Sorta helps explain why Australia has, arguably, the most stringent plant and animal import laws on our rock.

Pests, Predators, and Humans in the Wilderness

Yes. Introduced species often become pests. Australia had few predators and was therefore vulnerable. The cougars, wolves, and coyotes in CA can provide the negative feedback on goat populations. Nature again provides the time tested solution. Here, in TX we have lots of goat farms and goats often slip away. I live near a large nature preserve and have had stray goats visit my property for decades. I have always appreciated their presence since fire can be a problem. OTOH, we now have feral pigs and they are curse since they root in the shallow topsoil and kill the vegetation rather than merely browsing it. Coyotes modulated the goat population but they do not seem effective against the pigs. I frequently lost pet cats to coyotes. I have personal safety concerns with the pigs and those concerns may now be greater than my long term concerns regarding rattlesnakes. At least the rattlesnakes were effective rodent control.

In the case of CA there were originally large populations of large ruminants such as deer with associated large predators. Goats are a less attractive target than deer for hunters and are more likely to be able to moderately populate, providing a food base for predators. That is why I was rambling on about hunting laws being a means of moderating the predator population. Of course, the predator population can become an issue as well and needs some census data so that hikers do not frequently become targets of hunger desperation for these predators. This census effort is a small price to pay for the highly leveraged goat browsing fire protection unless you are one of the eaten hikers but one assumes that risk when one decides to intimately commune with nature.

In short, nature has complex webs of feedback and the more complex those webs are the better they seem to work. Diversity is your friend. We just have to learn to interact with elements of that diversity in ways that encourage balance instead of disrupting it. Then we will benefit from moderate stability of understory vegetation for example instead of monatonic accumulation of fuel for fire and then catastrophic natural correction of that imbalance.

There really are only two control system regimes. Either you have negative feedback and stability or you have positive feedback. If you have positive feedback there are two possible scenerios. You either have oscillations or one extreme transition followed by a catastrophic collapse resulting in a long term reduction of diversity. I prefer negative feedback and high diversity. The high diversity regime is often easy to achieve if you understand control systems and mildly but persistently encourage mechanisms creating negative feedback. Everything works this way including electronics, politics, and, pointedly, ecology.

_____________

thewildotter

Here's a great solution, but the bleeding hearts won't let us do it.

We have overcrowded prisons here in CA. Why? Too many criminals. If the penalty were harsher, then the criminals would think twice before committing the crime - not all, but some. The reduction of criminals would reduce the overpopulation of prisons and we could keep the prisoners in jail longer - we have an early release program here - the intent is to reduce the prison overpopulation. So we let the criminals out and they do the same thing and wind up in prison again. Sounds like insanity, right?

Here's my idea. Put the prisoners to work cutting brush back. Make them live in mobile work corps - tents. Chain them like they did in the past - chain gang. Don't want to work today, you don't get to eat or you get beat. Try to run and we shoot you. The state would actually save money, because we won't need to pay a private company to run a prison. The prisoners already get food, so the difference in cost is minimal. Higher transportation cost, but that's offset by the lower cost of housing them. Tents are cheap. Bullets are cheap. Guards already have a belt. Gotta buy some tools, so a cost there. And the clothes/shoes will wear out faster, so another expense. The positives definitely outweigh the negatives. The only problem is that the liberals will say it's cruel. My response is that the current prison system is cruel. Men raping men! Gangs running things on the inside. Need someone killed - no problem, just sneak someone a shank. The most cruel things is that we are teaching the criminals that it's okay to misbehave on the outside, because the penalty is being send to prison where they just sit around - they don't learn a lesson, so when they get out, they do the same thing and wind up in prison again. If their prison stay was filled with 14 hours of hard labor every day (7 days a week), where the expectation is to work hard and earn you daily keep. That would be a change for the better. And a solution to our problem - maybe it won't prevent wildfires, but it would reduce the damage to properties and I believe there would be fewer fires.

I just read your link. Interesting concept and I believe it would work in many parts of the US. I don't think it'll work in So Cal for a few reasons.

1. It doesn't rain here all summer, so the goats will most likely kill the shrub/tree if the leaves are stripped.

2. Once the cover is gone, the ground will be bare and will bake in our hot sun. The top layer of dirt will blow away and we'll be let with the poor quality soil below. Once the ground is destroyed, it'll take a long time to reverse the damage.

3. The article speaks of grass removal and regrowth. For that, you'd need water, which isn't available in the mountains.

4. With the grass, ground cover, shrubs and trees killed, we'll have horrible mudslides when the rains come.

I believe goats can be used in some locations (South Pas is doing it now), but in the San Gabriels, Santa Monicas, Verdugos, Griffith Park, etc - I don't see it working.

It would not be good for the goat. lots of Carnivore in the area. Cougar and coyote and possible wolf would take care of these defenseless creatures.

the other issue is that they will eat the most desirable forage and move on unless there is some sort of tending i.e electric fence, but as someone already stated, this land is pretty tough to navigate.

Good point. I can see a goat becoming a mountain lion dinner very easily. Or a pack of coyotes taking down a goat for a weeks worth of food.

I read that goats retreat to above the tree line (Alpine) as a defense. Natural predators aren't up that high.

And there isn't a way to put up a fence to contain the herd. The terrain is too rugged and the range is too large. The Santa Monica mountains are 40 miles long.

This is ideal landscape for goats.

They love to climb,and are very good at it.

They can go where no machinery or even people cannot go.

Sounds like they would be ripe for the picking to the local cougar, wolf and coyote populations

Cougars would love the abundant supply of goat meat. We don't have wolves here. Though a pack of coyotes could eat for days on a goat kill.

The population of the predators would increase and we'd have an imbalance in a few years.

If you send a herd of goats to clear the scrub near the trails, you'll get a backlash from hikers and bike riders. You're trading beauty for protection against an arsonist. I don't think this is the solution. Also, how many goats do you need to clear an area that's 970 square miles? And if you could get goats to clear the area, what do you do in a few years, when the vegetation is gone and the ground is baked? Then when a heavy rain comes, there's nothing to hold back the mudslides?

I think it's a novel idea to use an invasive creature (goat) to reduce/remove a human created risk (wildfires), but you're messing with Mother Nature and the consequences may be worse than the current risk.

Needles, pee and poo all over the sidewalk. Millions of homeless and illegal aliens expecting free services. The solution so far, pass Proposition 47 and enforce it in a manner that makes being a drug user a sustainable lifestyle. Shoplifting is now a major business group in the California economy.

Proper forest management is important and we should all care. Realistically we need to look for a Plan B where something positive can actually be accomplished in our current, suspended reality political climate. Common sense and "tough love" seem to have fallen from the top of the list in most places and California is one of the leaders in that.

California is VERY GOOD at passing laws and regulations. They are probably the best state in the union at that. Concrete block or poured concrete houses with metal, tile or slate roofs and strong Dade County compliant windows are becoming more common in Florida. Partially due to building codes and partially due to common sense people are spending about 10% more to build houses that better resist hurricanes and insect damage. Neighborhoods built this way and maintained in a "fire responsible" manner could be protected by CalFire with a high success rate and very low risk to fire fighters. Add in about a 100 yard "fire kill zone" buffer around the neighborhood and you could expect (with a little CalFire help) the wildfires to harmlessly burn around the neighborhood. California could easily pass laws to make this happen for all new construction.

But wait, my suggestion would mean you can't have tree limbs full of sap and dry pine needles directly over your wood frame house with asphalt shingles. Sorry, my idea will never work. Changing the Earth's climate does seem easier.

..."Today California isn’t doing nearly as many controlled burns as it should: In 2017, the southeastern US burned 100 times the amount of land as California, even though the region is only five times bigger than the state. The consequence is a state built to burn, and burn explosively."...

..."Residents have a responsibility to create a defensible space around their property and "harden" homes to make them fire resistant. California law requires creating a buffer by clearing out trees, brush and grass within 100 feet around homes in wildfire-affected areas."...Oct 28, 2019

100 feet?! It should be at least 300 ft...imo

...."The state has spent, conservatively, more than $4.7 billion from its emergency fund in the last 10 years to fight fires. Cal Fire, the state's firefighting agency, has been chewing through its firefighting budget only months into a year, leaving little to pay for thinning California's overgrown forests and helping rural communities protect their infrastructure and water supplies"...

https://laist.com/2019/10/28/california-fires-explained-why-they-are-getting-worse.php

Trump calls Putin, offers help putting out Siberia wildfires – Moscow

Donald Trump called Putin to offer help fighting Siberian wildfires...

Firefighter Union Leader Responds to Attacks From President Trump

Get real!

So you want to change the topic to Donald Trump. I'll bite. I'll let HTRN report it if he wants to. Thanks for telling us some of the good things our President did! Does sleepy Joe Biden even know what country he's in?

Putin can pay for the help....what, you thought is was for free?....

I see from post #3 that Lyn is temporarily banned, so he is not likely to respond soon.

Poor li’l fell’r... not surprised...

what, you thought is was for free?....

Thoughts,...no,... impossible,... lyn’s a liberal parrot... parrots don’t have to think...

Bruce,

Yes, we have a horrible homeless problem. Thanks to our leaders who support the ne'er do well; Let it be known to everyone in the world that we in California will accept all potential and truly homeless deadbeats to come here! We'll take care of you. We're a sanctuary state! Free food, free cell phones, free money, free medical - don't worry, the middle class will pay. They're too busy trying to make ends meet, so we just raise their taxes - they may grumble a little, but they can't stop us!

Prop 47 is a joke. It was created to reduce prison population by re-classifying crimes. The big one was the change in Grand Theft to anything over $950. So, criminals can now "shop" at their favorite store and as long as they walk out with less than $950 in goods, it's just a misdemeanor - unless they have a previous record or are on probation. Oh yeah, here's the best part - if a store owner (or manager) grabs a shoplifter (can only do it after he has left the store) and hurts him, the shoplifter can sue the owner and walk away with a nice paycheck. Store owner now tell their employees to let the thieves walk out. It's true! I was at a Rite Aid (Walgreens type drug store) in Santa Clarita a couple weekends ago. The store manager told me that a couple just walked out with something. I asked why he didn't go after them. He said it's company policy to just let them go. Why? He told me that they don't want an altercation, which can turn into a lawsuit, so they let them go. I checked and back in 2004 or so, Rite Aid had a policy to observe and take information only (description of person(s), how they left - on foot, bike or car and license plate and which direction they went, etc). A manager was actually fired when she followed a shoplifter (an employee) in her car.

Regarding our laws, CA has some interesting ones. I was told about CA legislature - Things are very loose here, until someone tries to make a law. If and when it becomes law, we have some of the toughest laws. For instance, there is a Usury Law, which limits interest rates to 10% APR, however IF the loan has a repayment schedule, then the sky is the limit. I've seen over 100% (interest rate) car title loans. It's also one of the easiest states to start a business, but one of the toughest on air quality, water pollution and cancerous material handling and disposal. We're required to put a sticker on the drivers side window of every vehicle sold - it states that a car has some cancer causing materials.

Concrete block houses won't work in CA. We have a lot of earthquakes here - concrete doesn't move well as the world rocks. Cinder block walls fall all the time after an earthquake. Wood frame houses do move - so they're good for earthquakes.

A better idea - close up open eaves. Embers find their way into an attic via openings in the eaves. Once in the attic, poof! Sealing an eave with Hardieboard would be an option, but it's taking away one of the design aspects of the home - vented attic.

CalFire isn't what it sounds like. It's Cal Forestry and Fire Dept (CDF or CalFire). Here's the kicker! One of my houses is in a rural community, so CalFire decided to charge us an annual fee. We already pay for the LA County Fire dept on our property tax, but this is another fire agency. Or so we thought ... My house location did not fall under the jurisdiction of CalFire AND IF I called CalFire, because there was a fire in my neighbor's yard, they would refuse to come put it out - it's the responsibility of the LA Co Fire Dept. So, why were we being taxed???

Would a 100 yard perimeter around a tract work? It would help, but embers fly over a mile under strong wind conditions, so 100 yards won't stop embers. The other questions are:

1. Who would pay for clearing the area?

2. Due to the steep hillsides, some places can't be cleared easily.

3. I can only imagine the residents complaining about the unsightly 100 yard ribbon around their beautiful tract - I think this is the biggest hurdle!

OK everybody has had their anti environmentalist, capitalist, agrarian, non-agrarian, urban, rural and whomever else rant, offered one 1/2 assed solution or another, and basically missed the one key factor.

The forests since Gifford Pinchot founder & first agency head of the US Forest Service across the USA have been mismanaged in multiple ways because of multiple competing interests by just about every single person involved. Commercial interests denigrate the scientists and the scientists return the favor. Agricultural interests think only of their crop, environmentalists think only of the pure nature, and NOBODY is willing to take a well planned, balanced, and technically sound approach. The politicians take full advantage of all the keeping voices cashing in and doing nothing to injure their political position.

This has gone on for nearly 1.25 centuries yu'al; so yeah what do you expect?

And then the Spring Rains cause mud slides in the burnt areas.

It's just a case of poor property management by the government and the private property owners.

Fire prevention is very low on their priority list.

It's so much easier for them to rely on the federal government pay them for their losses.

Watch Netfix's "Fire in Paradise" before you express your "politics"! 84 people died horrible deaths. They needed fire shelters underground not clear-cutting or goats.

I think 100% of the people participating in this thread agree that the people that died had a horrible death. I don't think that makes fire shelters the automatic answer.

If someone only has one road out then they should BOTH have a fire shelter and plan to leave. The plan should be to leave. The fire shelter should only be used if the fire progresses too rapidly and the one road out is blocked.

You should evacuate if you have a fire shelter and a fire hardened house.
You should evacuate if you have a fire shelter and a clear cut area.
You should evacuate if you have a fire shelter and 1000 goats maintaining your property.
You should evacuate if you have a fire shelter and a sprinkler system fed from a huge swimming pool.
You should evacuate if you have a fire shelter and (fill in any statement except "trapped").

Bruce,

You make a point that is very logical and it works in most parts of the real world, however it didn't for those poor people in Paradise. Here's what I was told. The fire hit so fast that people didn't have time to get out. The roads out of town were full of cars and traffic barely moved. Add to this the decreased visibility and you understand how people became dis-oriented and panic set in.

The reason the fire moved so quickly was the high winds and many Pine trees had died so there was too much fuel. Some sort of invasive beetle killed a lot of trees in the area.

Evacuation is the key, but for the people in Paradise, the fire moved too quickly. They didn't have enough warning.

To put things into perspective. One day a week, I drive over the San Gabriel mountains. The drive has a mountain stretch that's 35 miles or so. Unfortunately, anywhere in this stretch, some idiot can toss a flare or some other device to start a fire. There's no cameras, so the only witness is someone in another car - unlikely. Or a person hiking in the area also unlikely.

So the demented arsonist knows he can start a fire with the chances of getting caught nearly 0.

If we put more effort into catching the arsonist and punishing him/her severely, that would be the answer. Working on a chain gang clearing brush for the next 60 years - that would be a just punishment. Too bad the liberals won't let this happen.

Just so everyone knows this "occurrence" isn't like the Yank "World Series" - everyone gets it
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50341207

Not sure what your point is but:

munichre.com/australia/australia-natural-hazards/bushfires/economic-impacts/significant-bushfires-australia/index.html

There is one aspect nobody has focused on, yet. In many places, I suspect the brush is the only thing preventing mudslides during the monsoon rains that California is also known for. These rains are much more common than fires, hence one of the key reasons for thick brush growth. So if too much growth is removed by a controlled burn, goat, logging or whatever; a different disaster occurs.

I refer you to post 117and the link therein..RTFL.

Good, so we are in agreement. Just removing fuel can lead to other problems.

No, you are in error....Goats promote healthy plant growth and fight against erosion and mudslides...

https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/EPO/Pages/BI_Natural-Disasters_Landslides-and-Mudslides.aspx

Please, reread my statement. There is a fundamental difference between "can" and "always" or "must."

Clearly managed goats can mitigate undergrowth in a variety of terrains. But don't tell me that goats cannot produce a different disaster.

I don't think anybody is suggesting introducing a feral goat population, these would be managed herds....so your point is irrelevant...Paid to clear land and harvested for meat, this a money making venture...

I understand your point and I think in some areas it would work. In areas where fire risk is high, like in the Santa Monica or San Gabriel mountains, how would the herd be controlled? Fencing the herd in is not an option, because it would be too difficult to build a fence - the terrain and sheer size of the mountain range! Remember that the Santa Monica Mountains are 811 sq miles and the San Gabriels are 970 sq miles.

For a small area like the hills outside of South Pasadena, it would work, but not in the big mountains. And that's where the bulk of the wildfires are.

That's why you use dogs....

https://nypost.com/2017/10/17/hero-dog-that-refused-to-leave-goat-herd-survives-wildfires/

Wow, that's a good story! I like hearing things like that. Our four legged friends are something special!

Local Political Personality Participates in Predator Negative Feedback

Managed herds would work well as SE notes. I am, however, the beneficiary of feral goat activity modulated by coyote predation. That also works, but you must have the predators to keep negative feedback applied to the goat population. In my case the coyotes are more effective than I would really prefer and the understory vegetation has risen to a more fire prone level than I would like. Despite frequent drought, the goat browsing has never caused increased erosion. Goats have a height limitation and have not overpopulated to the extent that they begin stripping bark and killing trees. I think human pets provide more reliable food for coyotes and thus provide a partial excess of coyotes which keeps the feral goat population overly suppressed.

Former TX governor Rick Perry notoriously killed a coyote on a morning jog. I wish he would jog by the nature preserve near me and trim our coyote population a little. While he is at it, he could exterminate our feral hogs which have reportedly been digging, totally devastating gardens, destroying dirt anchoring roots, and causing accelerated erosion.

____________

thewildotter

Here's an interesting observation. I've hiked hundreds of miles in the local San Gabriels and I haven't seen a single coyote in the hills. I've seen deer, squirrels, lizards and even a rattle snake - I heard it, but I didn't see it. I've seen bear scat on the trail quite a few times - we have CA black bears in our hills.

I've seen coyotes in the parking lot across the street from my house. A couple weeks ago, one ran across the street toward my house, then tried to go between my house and my neighbors house.

When I was living in the Santa Clarita Valley, I saw plenty of coyotes in the hills (while hiking) and I saw/heard many, many coyotes walking down the street or on the empty land next door to me.

The only thing I can think of is that the mountains are very rugged out here, so the coyotes don't live in the hills. I don't know, it's just a guess.

You took the words from my mouth. Mudslides are already a high risk if you live near the hills, but with no vegetation, it'll be much more dangerous.

After a fire destroys brush/scrub, the rains in the fall will create mudslides. Some are worse than others, depending on the terrain and type of dirt. Also, being So Cal, the rain patterns differ substantially - it could be pouring on one side of the valley, while it's dry on the other.

Great point! GA for you!

In addition to local arsonists:

national-security/2019/11/08/islamic-state-media-encourages-jihadis-set-forest-fires-u-s-europe/

Wonderful! Someone I spoke to said something about how easy it would be for terrorists to break our state financially with wildfires.

Not just the US

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50357103

We heard you in #115.

I re-read your original post and your base question is a good one.

From someone who lives in one of the hotspots, my take is that it's not feasible to remove the fuel (brush/shrubs/trees). For one, there is just too much land to protect. Then there's the rugged terrain. Yes, goats could be used, but how do you control the goats? And also, how do you protect them from predators? And since we get less than 2.2" of rain in the six hottest months, how do we keep the roots of the plants from dying - if they die, then we risk mudslides. People do care about aesthetics and they'll complain about the ugly land about their homes. Since embers can fly over a mile, to effectively protect homes, you'd have to clear at least 1/2 mile from the nearest home.

Redwoods Take Time, Start Now

Goats work well. Predators can control goats. Pistol packing, pointy booted politicians can control predators. Goat excrement can protect plant roots as long as you eliminate any feral pigs. Embers fly more when there is fire beneath the trees. Dirt dries less when trees provide partial shade. Do not clear vast areas, just eliminate the accumulation of fuel near the ground. Giant Redwoods often survive wildfires, grow some big ones right where they once cut them down. Do not complain about how long it will take; start now in that "ugly land about" your home. Think about how improved the neighborhood aesthetics and resistance to mud slides will be in only a few hundred years. Space them generously. Relax and listen to old recordings of Olivia Newton-John singing "Have You Ever Been Mellow ?" and "Hopelessly Devoted to You" to your new arbolito.

____________

thewildotter

P.S. I am not kidding. I would plant Giant Redwoods if I thought they had a chance in TX. I have planted native pecan trees here. Since I do not have alluvial soil, I have had mediocre results despite efforts to produce deep holes in my limestone and giant deer deterrent fencing around my arbolitos.

The trees in the San Gabriels don't grow well in the hilly terrain. Once up pretty high, the pine/spruce type trees grow. In the valley (flat lands), there are oak trees. In the other areas, it's more scrub than tall trees. Maybe small trees, but nothing like a redwood.

Here's what our scrub looks like. I think the goats would devour the bushes and ground cover plants. There's not many trees - not enough to protect the ground from getting baked.

Here's a link to the Palmer development that went south when the last housing bubble burst. The company that held financial papers is trying to develop it now. As soon as they get approval, they're going to sell the development off to a builder - or they'll parcel it out to multiple builders. http://archive.signalscv.com/archives/112406/