If you live in California, or even if you don't, I'm sure you have seen the rapidly increasing amount of fires we have had so far this summer. People are being evacuated from their homes and as soon as one fire is contained, another one begins.
According to a Guardian article I read titled 66 Million Dead Trees in California Could Fuel Catastrophic Wildfires, Officials Say, "since 2010, an estimated 66 million trees have died in a six-county region of the central and southern Sierra hardest hit by the epidemic."
Dead patches have turned a rust colored red and the "mortality from Tuolumne to Kern counties has increased by 65% since the last count announced in October, which found 40m dead trees."
This year marks the fifth anniversary of the California drought. I would rather be celebrating the fifth anniversary of an abundance of water flowing through California, but we don't always get what we wish for. The drought has deprived trees from the water they need which makes them more vulnerable to beetle attacks.
Governor Jerry Brown created a taskforce in October that are trying to find ways of removing the trees that threaten mountain communities. "Brown pushed for burning the trees at biomass plants to generate electricity, sending them to lumber mills or burning them in large incinerators, removing fuel for wildfires."
The Forest Service has donated $32 million to California's current epidemic and "the state budgeted $11m for the California department of forestry and fire protection to buy tree removal equipment and to grant local communities money for their own work." The Forest Service has cut down 77,000 trees that are at risk to people.
Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/22/dead-trees-california-wildfire-risk-sierra-nevada
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