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Just when you think California’s stupidity, piss-poor management, and unicorn politics can’t possibly get any more absurd, a story like this drops—and your eyes practically roll out of your head.

RELATED: LA’s new DA who beat Soros prosecutor is HAMMERING looters like you won’t believe…

As Los Angeles burns to the ground, the insurance industry crumbles, and water evaporates faster than you can say “H2O,” what’s the top priority in the land of fruits and nuts? Not the people losing their homes, of course—it’s a random herb called Braunton’s Milkvetch, a wild pea plant. Yes, you read that right. This plant is apparently so precious that an entire fire safety program was scrapped and reworked just to protect it from being crushed.

Meanwhile, more fires are breaking out in what’s left of LA:

Paul A. Szypula:

New brush fire, called the Auto Fire, broke out late on Monday in Ventura County.

Ventura is just northwest of Los Angeles.

The Auto Fire has already scorched 56 acres and has 0% containment.

When the new fire was first reported on last night, it was only 5 acres (video).

And sadly, there’s more…

But enough about that. More importantly, let’s check in on those herby peas, shall we?

Bad Hombre:

This is just how bad Democrat mismanagement is in California.

In 2019 Democrats HALTED a fire safety project in Pacific Palisades to replace wooden electric poles with steel ones, and the installation of wind and fire-resistant power lines.

Why? Because an “amateur botanist” complained that utility workers were trampling too many Braunton’s Milkvetch, a perennial herb in the pea family.

The plants the botanist was concerned about were destroyed by the recent wildfires anyway.

So yes, despite what the propagandists tell you, the extent of the damage was avoidable.

And if this sounds like something straight out of a wacky episode of Portlandia, think again. We actually dug up the LA Times article that covered this story—and yes, it’s very real. In fact, it’s even wackier than anything Portlandia could dream up.

LA Times:

Crews for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power recently bulldozed hundreds of federally endangered plants in Topanga State Park, and both state and city authorities have launched investigations into DWP’s actions, part of a wildfire prevention project aimed at replacing 200 aging wooden power poles with steel ones.

“In response to recent community concerns about protected plants in the construction area, the LADWP has halted construction and is working with biologists and other experts to conduct an investigation and assessment of the site,” Stephanie Spicer, a spokeswoman for the city water and power agency, said late Wednesday in response to inquiries from The Times.

In a separate incident this year, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works apparently encased federally threatened red-legged frogs in cement while making emergency repairs to a culvert in a portion of nearby Leo Carrillo State Park, which is vulnerable to heavy debris flows because of last year’s Woolsey fire.

Both events, not previously publicized by the agencies involved, have recharged debate over balancing wildfire safety and protecting fragile ecological resources following big blazes, including last year’s deadly Camp and Woolsey fires — and the Tubbs fire the year before that.

“We’re in the middle of an investigation into a lot of troubling questions,” said Andrew Willis, enforcement supervisor for the California Coastal Commission. “We’re contacting all appropriate state and federal wildlife agencies because they are going to want to look into them closely.”

Sometime in July, DWP crews used bulldozers to clear and widen a graded road as part of a wildfire prevention project stretching from Pacific Palisades to Lake Encino. The California Public Utilities Commission has identified this area — which includes some of Southern California’s most expensive coastal real estate — as having an “elevated fire risk.” By installing steel poles, DWP hopes to make the power lines more resistant to high winds and fire.

“This project will help ensure power reliability and safety, while helping reduce wildfire threats,” DWP said in a statement Thursday. “These wooden poles were installed between 1933 and 1955 and are now past their useful service life.”

But in doing the work, say state authorities, the crews potentially destroyed hundreds of Braunton’s milk vetch plants, an endangered species whose remaining numbers have dwindled to less than 3,000 in the wild.

The city utility had been alerted to the presence of the endangered plants on July 7 via an email sent by David Pluenneke, an amateur botanist and avid hiker. It thanked him for calling the issue to their attention, according to documents obtained by The Times.

Eight days later, Pluenneke visited the site and discovered that crews had removed all vegetation across several acres for a new dirt fire road, 24 feet wide. He was livid, and remains angry.

“It’s hard not to think that if there had been blue whales and panda bears up there, they would have bulldozed them, too,” Pluenneke said.

The amateur botanist complained in writing to Deborah Hong, a spokeswoman for the LADWP in Pacific Palisades. She replied that a staff biologist was preparing a report on the matter.

In the meantime, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the California Department of Parks and Recreation and the California Coastal Commission are trying to determine if any laws were broken. They are also trying to determine the extent of the damage to the overall plant population, which consists of just a dozen colonies, all in the mountains surrounding the Los Angeles Basin.

Efforts to determine the full extent of the damage in milk vetch and frog habitat have been muddled by a confusing overlap of county, state and federal jurisdictions, officials said. In addition, the federal Endangered Species Act has minimal authority when it comes to endangered plants on state lands.

“We can’t undo what happened,” Suzanne Goode, an environmental scientist with California State Parks, said. “But we are working on what the next steps will be. Obviously, there needs to be some sort of mitigation.”

The fire safety program was halted and altered because of this pea plant. You have to wonder—did anyone crying over spilled “milk peas” still have their home standing after all these deadly and destructive fires?

The LA Times piece goes on.

The work was halted after state officials contacted county public works with concerns about the potential for red-legged frogs inhabiting the site, said Kerjon Lee, a spokesman for the agency.

Later, the construction plan was revised and permits were obtained from State Parks “to continue the work under certain conditions, such as a biologist on site at all times,” Lee said.

As for the frogs, “we didn’t find any — alive or dead,” Goode said. “It’s possible they were entombed in the cement.”

During a recent visit to Topanga State Park, Nick Jensen, a conservation analyst for the nonprofit California Native Plant Society, suggested a bright side to the Topanga controversy.

“We’re not against replacing these old wooden poles,” he said. “But we are demanding a plan from the city, county and regulatory agencies on how we can go forward with urgent fire safety projects without these kinds of things happening again.”

Jensen picked up a handful of broken milk vetch stems laden with seedpods. “So, we may be looking at the milk vetch that roared,” he said.

The longer this wave of devastating fires rages on, the more stupidity and absurdity it exposes. Sometimes it takes a tragedy of this scale to wake people up to what’s really going on. Most of us already knew California was being wildly mismanaged and systematically destroyed from within by failed progressive policies. But think about it—how catastrophic do those destructive left-wing policies have to be for even liberals to flee the state in a mass exodus?

It really puts the failures into perspective when you think of it that way, right?

RELATED: Meet the left-wing billionaire family who controls a massive amount of Cali’s water…

As we pray for the fire victims in California, we’ll leave you with this very fitting meme.

Image

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