Green love affair with trees

Is Lake Oswego primed for a wildfire?
It seems silly to ask what wildfires have to do with trees.  So then why do some "greens" dislike any tree being cut, and then blame climate change for the ferocious wildfires that follow, rather than their tree-saving forest practices that stuffed the land with tnoo many trees?

Urban forest practices are no different.  Forest thinning and selective tree removal in populated areas, can reduce the risk of urban wildfires, but few understand forest the need for proper tree thinning for tree health, fire reduction, and wildlife habitat.

Lake Oswego had 49% tree cover when last reported in 2009, up from 45%.  Our tree canopy is growing.  No one has come up with a figure of what is enough or too much tree canopy - if not 100% then what?  Note: USC does not condone wild tree-cutting with no regard for aesthetics and neighborhood character, and understands the need for trees in locations to halt erosion and protect streams and wetlands.

Remember when there were NO tree codes?  Yes, Virginia, it's true.  Before government intervention, people used their brains to tell them what to do.

From the Lake Oswego Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan.  Plan is viewable on city website:  from main page, select Departments, then City Manager.  Emergency Info is one of the tabs - there is a lot of good information there.

Get ready for another hot forest fire season
Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2015 
Commentary by Kyle Dickman

With Cal­i­for­nia in the midst of a megadrought and most of the West nearly as parched, this year’s wild­fires al­ready threaten to be­come the biggest, costli­est and most de­struc­tive in U.S. his­tory. Scarier still is that the fed­eral For­est Ser­vice pre­dicts that nearly every fire sea­son for the foresee­able fu­ture will be as bad or worse. That’s why we need to change how we deal with wild­fires.

A cen­tury of ag­gres­sive wild­fire sup­pres­sion has cost the lives of more than 1,000 fire­fight­ers and turned many of Amer­i­ca’s forests into tin­der­boxes. In some ar­eas of New Mex­i­co’s San­gre de Cristo Mountains, there are 1,600 trees per acre where a cen­tury ear­lier there were 200 per acre. The combina­tion of over­grown woods and a warm­ing climate has made wild­fires harder to con­trol.

Part of the prob­lem is that, as the Mc­Cain-Flake-Bar­rasso bill rec­ognizes, the forests need to be thinned be­fore fires can be al­lowed to burn unchecked. Oth­er­wise, even prescribed fires can get out of con­trol. An­other part of the prob­lem is activists who think thin­ning is harm­ful for forests and the habi­tat they pro-vide for an­i­mals and birds. This is not the ex­ces­sive log­ging of the 1970s and ’80s. Thin­ning in smart ways preserves habi­tat by help­ing pre­vent huge, un­con­trol­lable wild­fires.