As featured in prior newsletters, an opinion piece written by the chair of LPC’s Forest Protection Committee (FPC), Karen Maki, was published in the San Mateo Daily Journal this past month. Entitled “What ‘The Three Little Pigs’ teach us about wildfire preparedness”, the piece addresses the need to prioritize home hardening as the most vital strategy to protect people and their property during wildfires. A follow-up letter to the editor by committee member Jennifer Normoyle was published a week later.
Readers may wonder why a committee devoted to protecting forests should seek to highlight this issue. We want to change the “overgrown forests” narrative, driving the extensive funding for forest thinning in forestlands that are remote from people and property. Such thinning does not protect people or homes. It can, however, entail the use of practices like clearcutting that degrade forest ecosystems, impact clean water supplies, destroy habitat, increase wildfire risk, and contribute to climate instability.
Hardening our homes against natural disasters is critical in this new era of climate chaos. Still, it can be expensive, and the FPC Committee and its offshoot, StopClearcutting CA, feel that more funding should be directed towards helping people harden their homes and communities, not towards thinning.
What does it mean when we talk about home hardening? In the coming months, we will explore this issue. Stay tuned.