3/9/17

Socialized agriculture driving Spring wildfire season



The Anthropocene has tripped a trophic cascade even as Oklahoma's Scott Pruitt, newly minted Earth hating administrator of an environmental protection agency at risk to the Trumpocalypse, watches his state go up in flames because of a warming planet.

Just a hundred and fifty years ago bison would be clearing the grasses driving the 2017 wildfire season.
Kansas rancher Greg Gardiner got into some of his scorched pastures for the first time Wednesday and surveyed what he likened to a battle zone: carcasses of dead cattle everywhere. Most of the burned land is in Kansas, where more than 1,000 square miles has been consumed in a series of blazes, including one believed to be the largest in the state's recorded history. Ranch hands were among those who have been killed in the fires. In the Texas Panhandle, three ranch hands died trying to save cattle from fires that have burned nearly 750 square miles. [Rapid City Journal]
Desertification driven by overgrazing has turned parts of the high plains into scorched earth.

John Thune (earth hater-SD) has rolled out his farm bill template for moral hazard and socialized agriculture while South Dakota's lone US House member and her fellow earth haters support it.

Moral hazard is the flip side of self-reliance and the livestock industry knows emergency declarations will provide bailouts for those who chose risk instead of burning off dry grasses minimizing losses.

Domestic livestock have contributed to catastrophic wildfire conditions and Republican welfare ranchers are the real ecoterrorists who hate subsidies unless they benefit from them.

Not talking about fuel treatments during a wildfire is the same thing as not talking about firearms management during a mass shooting.

The Wolf fire in southwest South Dakota was the largest blaze to occur during the month of March since the year 2000.

Had Sen. Tim Johnson been successful in passing S. 3310 as a part of the doomed Omnibus Wilderness Bill the land burned by the Cottonwood and Wolf fires would have been placed within the stewardship of Badlands National Park and much, if not all, of the federal land scorched by the Cottonwood Fire would have been burned off prescriptively in increments instead of being managed by some careless rancher or passing motorist.

Tribal representatives attending a recent drought conference have water quality/quantity projects funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency, some solely through EPA. Most of them are concerned the Trump regime has abandoned Indian Country.

If human activity has released countless tons of mercury, would it not follow that we have also released proportional amounts of carbon?

Rewild the West.



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