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guys, guys, the only rural group I genuinely and profoundly wish blanket-level suffering on (upon general principle) are *ranchers*

Faine - as usual blanket statements are always wrong. My father was a life-long US Forest Service professional and the use of grazing on Forest Service land was done for the benefit of the land/forest as well as the ranchers; * control non-native plants * control undergrowth (wildfire prevention)

* fertilizing soil (yes, manure) * thinning overgrown vegetation w/o controlled burning. It's *rotational grazing* and is done for the benefit of the forest, the cattle (shade in hot summer months) & owners. As with any system, it has to be managed well. That is certainly a subject for debate.

Also, like, forests were just fine before we killed all the large predators, started suppressing all the wildfire, and brought cattle into the mix.

In my father's day, wildfires will only suppressed when they endangered human activity/structures. I don't know if that's still the case. If we want to go back to that, we have to keep people/homes/cabins out of the forests... ?

🤷🏻‍♂️ I mean, we basically put out every fire we could for decades and decades. There was a shift in the 70s, but by the 90s we were back to a suppression first mindset in the national forests. And yes, the spread of homes further into the forests made it harder to let many fires burn themselves out.