Posted on 09/12/2020 8:40:17 AM PDT by Hojczyk
“The U.S. Forest Service used to be a profitable federal agency,” McClintock told Grimes.
Up until the mid-1970s, we managed our national forests according to well-established and time-tested forest management practices.
But 40 years ago, we replaced these sound management practices with what can only be described as a doctrine of benign neglect. Ponderous, Byzantine laws and regulations administered by a growing cadre of ideological zealots in our land management agencies promised to save the environment.
The advocates of this doctrine have dominated our law, our policies, our courts and our federal agencies ever since. But these zealots have not protected the forests. They have destroyed them. The consequences are far-reaching.
Many thanks to Sierra Club and other environmental groups. You shut down logging/brush removal and had a ‘don’t touch’ approach to our forests. You shut down access roads and let them get overgrown, so now they can’t be used for fire suppression and emergency equipment.
You fought ranchers for grazing, which helped keep the forest floors clean. You made fun of Trump when he said we need to rake the forest. Trust me these forest rakes and logging would have prevented the devastating fires we see now.”
The economics of responsible forest management, given the immensity of America’s western forests, requires profitable timber harvesting to play a role. But California has no commercial timber operations on state-owned land.
And since 1990, when the environmentalist assault on California’s timber industry began in earnest, its timber industry has shrunk to half its former size. Reviving California’s timber industry, so the collective rate of harvest equals the collective rate of growth, would go a long way towards solving the problem of catastrophic fires.
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
Would LOVE to see this happen across the country: start referring to Progressives as “REGRESSives”, and environmentalists as “enviroTERRORists”!
The Spotted Owl shutdown was a total fabrication.....
110 N California sawmills were shut down.
Forest Service ignored the Back Beetle infestations, also.
BARK BEETLE
Also, they would immediately go on disability for a sore back or some other BS.
Environmentalists save a tree and let the whole forest burn,the logic of the utopia tribe.
Weyerhaeuser is the largest private land owner in the US. They own, outright, 7 million acres.
Throughout the Northwest their lands are surrounded by National forest and State forest.
And their lands do not burn.
To Weyerhaeuser, every tree is precious. In some stands, every tree is tagged and tracked.
Their lands are a honey comb of roads.
The Forest Service should issue them forest management contracts for the remaining 120 million acres, with the mandate to maintain the normal biodiversity, rather than commercial monoculture.
It would change everything.
The Kalifornia Conservation Corps had Fire Camps up and down Kalifornia, some of them deep in the forest, clearing brush, creating and maintaining fire breaks. There were, at one point, hundreds of such Fire Camps. Now, there are less than 50. President Billy Jeff Clinton started banning and destroying fire roads, so humans could not easily reach burning forest (make the forest more ‘natural’ you know). I don’t know about you, but I have never seen a squirrel pick up a hose and put out a fire.
Most of the forest land should be sold or given to private investors..
The head foresters for the Nation Forest are like dictators...over there land..
Most loved the idea of no logging and no everything..they got big pay for doing less work
“Most of the forest land should be sold or given to private investors..”
In 50 years we would have nothing but Douglas Fir in our forests.
Contract them to manage these lands with a biodiversity mandate. They would likely do it for no charge to government if they could take the usable wood.
Of course nothing will stop the greenies from second guessing every aspect. And every fire.
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