THE BEETLE BURN GREEN POLICIES INCREASE RISK OF COLORADO FOREST FIRES, EXPERTS SAY

“Logging as part of a program of rational forest management” could decrease the risk of fire by “thinning out mature trees that are the pine beetles’ major targets,” and creating “gaps between forests, to act as firebreaks and beetle-breaks,” he said.

If “you turn that wood into furniture, it doesn’t turn into CO2,” Zubrin said. Green activists “don’t care if a billion tons of wood turns into CO2,” so long as people are not responsible.

However, Joshua Ruschhaupt, director of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Sierra Club, told the Free Beacon that logging is not the answer.

“The beetles are doing the job foresters would like to do, taking out the least healthy trees,” he said.

Ruschhaupt noted that birds feed on the beetles, and that dead trees provide a habitat for insects.

“Snag-forest habitats are among the most biologically diverse,” he said. “They’re critically important.”

Ruschhaupt called irresponsible logging “a domino effect of ecological damage.” Logging opens a forest “so there’s more air flow, which helps a fire.” When you log, “you’re clearing out habitats, you’re increasing the amount of sun hitting the forest floor,” making it “less of a filtering system.” That could actually increase fire risk.

However, Joe Ceurvorst, Fire Chief and Wildland Coordinator of Coal Creek Canyon Fire Protection District, disagreed.

“The density of vegetation does impact fire behavior,” he said. “We call it fuel loading.”

While wind and topography also affect fires, the pine beetle infestation “definitely creates more fuel for the fires,” Ceurvorst said.

A 25-year veteran logger, Moore once worked in the Durango area. “Places that I logged twelve years ago, the Aspen trees are back. … Where I didn’t log, it’s fallen down, and you can’t even walk through there.”

When you do not thin trees, in wet weather they sprout up like weeds. When the weather turns dry the over abundance of small trees transpire most of the available water. This in turn causes all the trees to run dry, making their sap production lower. The sap flow is the trees defense against bark beetle. The bark beetle prefers nice thick bark to hide behind, the thin stuff does not protect it from wood peckers or the climate. So the bark beetles focus on wiping out the BIG trees and leaving the over crowded scub to fight it out. EXACTLY the OPPOSITE of what the Sierra club is harping on.

So, by not tending the forest, the old growth forests tend to convert to fire hazards to create the open land balance.

The Sierra club, when the drought in the Sierras started, blocked selective cutting of infestation areas in the courts. Forestry was not allowed to clean out the bug infestations by LAW. So the bugs spread through out the entire sierras and destroyed 40% of the high Sierra pines.

The Sierra club was the worst thing to ever happen to the Sierras, and is why “Sierra club Go Home” stickers are seen on cars in the Sierras foothills. (The Sierra Club is based in San Francisco, NOT in the Sierras.)

What is worse, the Sierra club is still harps on the wrong side of the issue, pimping for money from its foolish supporters, the hell with the trees.

Scum of the earth.

And, they don’t eat at Chick-Fillet.

Apparently Ruschhaupt doesn't remember a similar policy that lead to the firestorm in Yellowstone back in '88.

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