[Bubba Ho-Tep]

We have 20 million acres of forest, and how often do you hear about our state having wildfires out of control? It's very very dry here except in August.

First off, Michigan has about three times the average rainfall the Los Angeles area sees. It rains (or snows) there pretty much any month of the year, while Los Angeles sees basically none outside the January to March period. Nor is there the zero humidity, 90 degree, 50 mph Santa Ana winds howling down through the canyons from the high desert. Second, the vegetation of Michigan is not the highly combustible chaparral sage and manzanita that makes up the area. Finally, the terrain is wildly different. There are no canyons or steep slopes in Michigan. In fact, in the Angeles National Forest you can quite easily find more elevation difference between two points a quarter mile apart than exists between the low point (571 feet) and high point (1979 feet) in the entire state of Michigan. So don't be thinking it's an apples to apples comparison.

[MarMema]

It's all managed by the forest service. The geography you describe makes it all the more imperative that the Sierra club pukes are not able to dictate how the management is done there.

There are management decision conflicts between conservationists and environmentalists, and natural resource extraction companies and lobbies (e.g. logging & mining), over the protection and/or use of National Forest lands. These conflicts center on endangered species protection, logging of old-growth forests, intensive clear cut logging, undervalued stumpage fees, mining operations and mining claim laws, and logging/mining access road-building within National Forests. Additional conflicts arise from concerns that the grasslands, shrublands, and forest understory are grazed by sheep, cattle, and, more recently, rising numbers of elk and mule deer due to loss of predators.

[MarMema]

As a Reason Foundation study noted, the U.S. Forest Service, which is tasked with managing public wildland, once had success in minimizing widespread fires in the early 20th century. But many of these successful methods were abandoned in large part because of efforts by environmental activists. The Forest Service became more costly and less effective as it increasingly “rewarded forest managers for losing money on environmentally questionable practices,” wrote Randal O’Toole, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute.

"Perhaps now, Americans will begin to re-evaluate forest management policies. In a May congressional hearing, Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., said, “Forty-five years ago, we began imposing laws that have made the management of our forests all but impossible.”

"In a recent House address, McClintock pinned the blame of poor forest management on bad 1970s laws, like the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act. He said these laws “have resulted in endlessly time-consuming and cost-prohibitive restrictions and requirements that have made the scientific management of our forests virtually impossible.” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has promoted a change to forest management policies, calling for a more aggressive approach to reduce the excess vegetation that has made the fires worse."

[MarMema]

In the 1999 article mentioned above, I cited a number of experts and studies that predicted that we would see a continuing escalation of incidence of unnatural supernova fires, unless we began to address the enormous buildup of brush and dead/dying timber that is choking our forests. We pointed to a detailed 1999 report issued by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) entitled Catastrophic Wildfire Threats, that said “39 million acres on national forests in the interior West are at high risk of catastrophic wildfire” due to unnatural and excessive tree density, massive buildup of undergrowth, disease and insect infestation.

In a 2003 article, “Fueling the Wildfires,” The New American reported that among the many federal policies that are putting our forests at grave risk are: • The banning of insecticides and fungicides has allowed disease and bark beetles to kill once-healthy trees, making them more susceptible to forest fires.... • Policies and bureaucratic red tape prevent the timely removal of blow-down timber and trees that are dead or dying from insects and disease.... • The Clinton-era cutbacks in the fire preparedness budget of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) dangerously weakened the agency's firefighting capacity.... • As our national forests were degenerating into firetraps, the Interior Department was setting aside nearly a dozen new national monuments, acquiring millions of additional federal acres in the process.... • The creation of roadless areas eliminates preexisting firebreaks and impedes getting fire trucks and other equipment to the fires.... • The irresponsible use of controlled burns by federal bureaucrats notorious for torching huge expanses of forestland is a prescription for more calamity. Used properly, controlled burning is a legitimate forestry management tool. But fedgov managers seem to be incapable of exercising common sense or heeding the warning of meteorologists when told the conditions are wrong for burning.

[MarMema]

For the third year in a row, the Obama administration has proposed slashing spending on hazardous fuels reduction, the federal buzzword for clearing away underbrush and smaller trees through controlled burning and cutting. The idea behind such work is to make future fires easier to put out by removing now the fuel they need to spread rapidly. Congress has cut the program in the past two years.