Wild horses, wildfire and wildlife: An overlooked ecological imbalance

Wild horses, wildfire and wildlife: An overlooked ecological imbalance

 20 November 2017

published by https://www.horsetalk.co.nz


NEW ZEALAND: Let’s be clear; the relatively recent catastrophic wildfire issue we are experiencing is not part of any known or historic ‘normal fire cycle’. Genetic lines of fire-resistant conifers are being devastated (no seed dispersal!). In fact, Dr. Paul Hessburg’s (USFS fire scientist) coined term of ‘megafire’ defines a new relevance in regard to massive wildfires now reaching and exceeding 100,000 acres or more.

Yet these new breed of super-hot wildfires are actually quite simple to understand and to explain (but some scientists don’t like it if you steal any of their thunder), and too many people want to make it more complicated than necessary to keep average Americans out of the debate by complicating the debate with acronyms and terminology that take days to learn, or by interjecting pet projects and going off into the depths on side debates, which virtually assures these wildfire disasters will prevail.

The missing two million California deer and some elk (other states, including Oregon have the same issue) were previously consuming nearly 3 million tons of grasses and brush, or whatever grasses/brush the rains would produce. But now without those millions of deer (and some elk), it instead remains standing dry in the long, hot summer sun. Like gasoline, this incredible annual amount of fast and hot-burning fuels is present in and around forests and the wildland urban interface (WUI). This is a new evolution due to the depletion of the deer, nothing more or less.

Each missing deer was consuming about 7 pounds of grass and brush daily. That means that each missing deer was abating roughly 2555 pounds of grass and brush annually; or about 1.25 tons per deer annually. So as we see, 2 million deer times 1.25 tons annually is 2,555,000 tons of grass and brush that was previously abated by deer alone. Then we add a bit more to account for what the elk were consuming.


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