Nebraska wildfires leave ranchers scrambling for forage (farmprogress.com)

by walterbell 11 comments 22 points
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11 comments

[−] jedberg 55d ago
Some may want to come in here leaving snarky comments about how they shouldn't vote for an administration that doesn't believe in climate change. But I will give a concrete example:

This administration fired thousands of Forrest Service and BLM employees at the start of the administration last year. Those workers were the ones that were responsible for the maintenance of these lands and for the fire lookout programs.

Maybe they couldn't have prevented this fire, but it's pretty clear these fires are much worse today because of those firings last year.

[−] toomuchtodo 55d ago
This administration also impaired FEMA’s ability to provide disaster response to those impacted by this event.
[−] hallway_monitor 55d ago
I’m not sure if these fires are correlated with the staff reductions in BLM. In the interview with a resident she doesn’t mention anything about that, just that last year was very wet which provided a lot of fuel and this hot dry spring has turned it into a tinder box.
[−] mothballed 55d ago
I seriously doubt ranchers were politically against OPM being used for fire prevention funding. Agriculture industry is well known to be highly socialist politically when it comes to agriculture subsidies.
[−] trhway 55d ago
Looks like the ranchers will have to pay for the hay for their cattle instead of grazing it practically free on federal lands. Tragedy of commons becoming the tragedy of having to shoulder your own private costs in support of your own private profits.

In general externalization of costs prevents/hinders development of competing approaches to increase efficiency and related tech development, and as we see the cattle ranching and beef production is still done like 2000 years ago.