TO: Ray Haupt – Siskiyou County CA Dist-5 Supervisor
CC: Concerned Citizens, Et. Al.
RE: Bias Impacting Public Perspectives and Wildfire Policy Decisions
Via Email ONLY – OPEN LETTER (may be published)
Dear Ray:
As you know, I have reached-out to you via phone messages, texts and emails in an attempt to discuss our local wildfire situation, and you have failed to respond.
So now, I have to herein say what many others may also be just thinking.
I think that along with myself, the thousands of Americans who have read your quoted statements in Epoch Times, and are wondering where you get your information? And also sense your personal bias based upon your ownership of a forestry-related business, creating an arguable personal conflict of interest for instituting a forestry related solution, funding for which may benefit you personally, and such solution being seriously disproportionate to addressing the much larger grass and brush problem driving most deadly catastrophic wildfires in California and beyond, as the hard data shows.
Your quoted downplaying of the Herbivory Solution (livestock grazing) is seriously flawed, and raises questions and concerns. Especially considering that our County (Siskiyou County, CA) has seen a disturbing trend of failure in reducing our local wildfire risks and resulting losses.
Furthermore, your comments avoid the central cause of catastrophic grass and brush wildfires!
According to numerous peer-reviewed published scientific studies and reports from wildlife experts, the collapse of our cervid (deer & elk) populations in California, which is down 1.5-million deer & elk over the past 2-decades has resulted in about 3-million tons of un-grazed annual grass and brush that is primarily located on remote vacant wild-lands, and secondarily, abandoned agricultural lands.
As with other so-called wildfire ‘tools’, RxFire is not a scaleable solution onto the hundreds of millions of acres of grass and brush covered wild lands that require a solution, and fast.
According to William J. Ripple – PhD forestry professor at Oregon State University, in his published study, the Collapse of the world’s largest Herbivores, he offers one of many examples; Australia never suffered from catastrophic grass and brush wildfires until they wiped-out most of their primary native herbivores, the kangaroo.
Excerpt from Dr. Ripple’s Study: “The removal of plant biomass by browsing also reduces fire fuel loads and decreases fire susceptibility. Thus, there is scant evidence of fire in much of Australia until the megafauna disappeared after humans arrived (5).”
Haupt said, “livestock grazing by itself is “not going to do much.”
Based on real data, not unsupported opinion, grazing can do twice as much as forestry-related methods to reduce the deadliest and most destructive and costly wildfires, which are ‘grass and brush fueled wildfires’.
Your statement undermines American ranchers, many of whom depend upon grazing for their livelihoods, as well as the critically important and essential native species grazers in appropriate vacant wild land areas.
Lets Learn the Unbiased Truth
Your posits just don’t wash with well-published, scientific studies and hard wildfire statistical data by CALFIRE, the CA Insurance Commissioner, and many other well-known credible sources.
William E. Simpson II speaking to investigative film maker, Micah Robin from Colorado College, during primary filming for the documentary ‘Fuel, Fire & Wild Horses‘ in May 2018, 2-months before the deadly, 38,000-acre grass and brush fueled Klamathon Fire. In the background are the horses managing wildfire fuels, which created several large fire-breaks (including a 3,000 acre fire break at Agate Flat that protected the old-growth forest just 2-miles to the north), which ultimately benefited CALFIRE’s suppression efforts in July 2018, two months later. The wind-driven blaze was stopped before it incinerated the college town of Ashland, OR. William Simpson was on the Camp Creek fire-line for 9-days serving as a technical advisor to CALFIRE.
As far as polling goes in the comments of the Epoch Times article related to our grazing Plan: analysis of the 165 comments on the article as published at Epoch Times (not the Siskiyou News free-read version) shows ~80% in-favor of our proven herbivory model, and only about 20% being contrarians. Our proven plan, includes using the correct herbivore, in the correct landscape application…. I.E. goats in urban communities and industrial areas… livestock where there are adequate roads (access) and low predator populations, and horses in the remote vacant wilderness lands.
I can demonstrate in front of a team of accountants how Our Plan immediately saves American taxpayers $200-million annually, and additionally, how each horse appropriately deployed provides taxpayers with $72,000.00 worth of value in continuous wildfire fuels management services over the course of its average 20-year life span in the wilds.
And that’s before financial calculations showing the financially beneficial impacts of reduced toxic wildfire smoke, which is putting our fellow citizens into early graves, based on a 10-year Study by UCLA, which shows the economic impacts of wildfire smoke in CA alone during their 10-yr study was $435-Billion in economic loses.
One might wish to believe that with your cited credentials (Epoch quote below), you should know that over 66% of all, truly “Horrendous Wildfires” are occurring on landscapes loaded with Grass and Brush…. NOT Forests
And wild horses do consume litter off managed forest floors, and that too has been filmed and documented.
Your expressed opinion as to what landscapes suffer “horrendous fires” is simply inconsistent with honest hard data.Please tell me, what is not “horrendous” about the wildfires listed below where grass and brush were the KEY fuels, not forests.. and where hundreds of people died and homes and businesses were lost.
*Palisades Fire – LA Fires (10,000 structures incinerated and counting)
*McKinney Fire – The McKinney Fire in Northern California and Southern Oregon in 2022 destroyed at least 118 homes and 185 structures in total. The fire also destroyed the Klamath River Community Hall and a building that housed Karuk tribe archives.
*Lahaina Fire (102 dead, 2,200 structures burned)
*Mill Fire (118 homes destroyed)
*Marshall Fire (1,084 homes burned)
*Camp Fire (85 People died, deadliest in CA History with 18,000 structures burned)
*Sonoma Fires – On the night of October 8, 2017, a historic wind event led to one of the worst firestorms in Sonoma County history, followed by almost three weeks of fire. In total, the Nuns, Tubbs, and Pocket Fires (together comprising the Sonoma Complex Fire) burned over 110,700 acres in Sonoma and Napa counties. 24 lives were lost as a result of the fires. 6,997 structures were destroyed, resulting in direct losses exceeding $7.8 billion (CA Insurance Commissioner).
*Alameda Fire – The Almeda Fire in Oregon destroyed at least 2,357 structures, including over 600 homes, on September 8, 2020. The fire also damaged over 2,500 homes and 600 businesses.
In fact Ray, just the named forgoing exampled grass and brush fueled wildfires represent the most deadly and damaging wildfires ever in CA (except Maui and Jackson Co. OR) and none were in areas of “high tree densities”.
So, I for one am glad that cows and horses don’t eat trees, because as the hard data shows, we need more attention to addressing grass and brush fuels using herbivory, over trees. And that’s not in any way to suggest I don’t want more logging, I do, for the reasons that makes sense.
So luckily, cows and horses eat grass and brush, and a lot of it!
In closing, I have to wonder if your prioritization of forest fuel management over the bigger issue of grass and brush wildfire fuels is driven by the fact you are the owner of a forest and natural resources consulting business, as you stated to the Epoch Times?
And therefore, suggests a bias that can negatively impact citizens and taxpayers, a conflict of interest?
Excerpt from Epoch Times:
“Siskiyou County Supervisor Ray Haupt told The Epoch Times that many historic grazing allotments on public lands aren’t being used, mainly because of state regulations for sediment in streams.
As the owner of a forest and natural resources consulting business and member of the California Professional Foresters Association, with a degree in natural resources management and forestry, Haupt said he supports “anything that reduces fuel” to help suppress the rapid spread of wildfires.
But, he said, the ecological systems involved in grazing are complex, with no “one size fits all” solution. [So let’s do nothing?]
Grazing is effective in dry areas with grasses underneath the tree layer, but not in heavily forested areas with high tree density where “horrendous fires” are occurring, he said.
“Horses and cows don’t eat trees,” he said.
Looking at the big picture of forest fire prevention, Haupt said, livestock grazing by itself is “not going to do much.” —
Ray, I believe you stand corrected. I look forward to your reply.
FULL free-read article courtesy of Epoch Times and award-winning journalist Brad Jones here:
Respectfully Submitted,
// William E. Simpson II //
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