I think this page plays down the importance of fire to a healthy redwood ecosystem. The trees seem to depend on a fire running through every so often and burning out the scrub under the canopy.
Of course, this isn't how old-world forests work so when European-Americans started building cabins en masse up in SLV in the 1920's, they put them right next to large trees and we did everything we could to limit fire. While there are a limited number of structures in the park itself, almost 1500 structures were destroyed during the CZU fire in the adjacent communities. My old house was 10 miles away from the park and was across Big Basin Way and Boulder Creek from neighborhoods that were decimated. (TEN MILES from the park and they were still decimated.)
We can't have the same type of design, with houses right next to trees. Once you have people living up there, the likelihood you can convince people to do a "controlled" burn gets pretty low. Then the fuel builds up for another 100 years and it destroys EVERYTHING in its path.
And what do you do for families whose homes were destroyed? Of the nearly 1500 structures destroyed, only a handful of building permits have been issued to rebuild.
This is a great article about how the forest survives fire, but the policy and politics behind how we got to the CZU fire are complex and sometimes pretty subtle.
Of course, this isn't how old-world forests work so when European-Americans started building cabins en masse up in SLV in the 1920's, they put them right next to large trees and we did everything we could to limit fire. While there are a limited number of structures in the park itself, almost 1500 structures were destroyed during the CZU fire in the adjacent communities. My old house was 10 miles away from the park and was across Big Basin Way and Boulder Creek from neighborhoods that were decimated. (TEN MILES from the park and they were still decimated.)
We can't have the same type of design, with houses right next to trees. Once you have people living up there, the likelihood you can convince people to do a "controlled" burn gets pretty low. Then the fuel builds up for another 100 years and it destroys EVERYTHING in its path.
And what do you do for families whose homes were destroyed? Of the nearly 1500 structures destroyed, only a handful of building permits have been issued to rebuild.
This is a great article about how the forest survives fire, but the policy and politics behind how we got to the CZU fire are complex and sometimes pretty subtle.