The wildland fire policy in the US is focused on forests and forest management, while many of the wildfires do not happen in forest areas, wildfire scientist and fire ecologist Dr. Chad Hanson says.
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00:00From what I understood from excerpts of your book, fires are part of the natural course of things in forests.
00:09They play a role, as you say in your book, as important as rain.
00:14So doesn't this boil down to the fact that humans have decided to live in areas that come with a huge degree of risk?
00:23Namely, if you live near a forest, there will be fires.
00:25Yeah, I mean, there's certainly a land use planning issue here.
00:29But the reality is, is that in the United States, our forest, our wildland fire policy, our fire policy is basically focused on forests and forest management.
00:42This idea that if we remove a bunch of trees from forests, that's somehow going to stop fires or curb fires.
00:48And that's going to stop them from reaching communities miles away.
00:52Here's the problem. Number one, most of the communities that are impacted by fires and that are at risk from fires are nowhere near a forest.
01:03These are not forest communities in Los Angeles that are being impacted by these fires.
01:08They're in grasslands, they're in foothill vegetation, chaparral, shrub habitat.