Posted on 10/18/2024 2:30:26 PM PDT by george76
A devastating Wyoming wildfire season got its start more than 20 years ago with a disastrous Bill Clinton roadless rule, Harriet Hageman said Wednesday. Those in the path of the fires can thank the feds and their “bad policies.”.
Wyoming’s lone member of Congress said she’s heartbroken over the devastating wildfires that have burned more than 600,000 acres across the Cowboy State this fire season.
That includes her family’s Hartville homestead that burned in the 29,000-acre Pleasant Valley Fire.
Now with the volatile and obstinate Elk and Pack Trail fires that are making national headlines, having burned about 180,000 combined, Harriet Hageman said her sympathy for residents and landowners who have been wiped out is matched by another emotion.
She’s mad.
“It’s been a rough year for Wyoming and everyone knows that,” she told Cowboy State Daily in a Wednesday phone interview. “My own family has been affected by that at our home in Hartville. It has been devastating to watch this play out.”
That’s because the wildfires that are now threatening a number of rural Wyoming towns, ranches and subdivisions could’ve been stopped more than 20 years ago, Hageman said.
For those asking why the U.S. Forest Service or other agencies aren’t out clearing the huge volume of dense undergrowth that’s now exploding across Wyoming and the West, the answer is they can’t, Hageman said.
Roadless Rule..
A 23-year-old rule pushed by former President Bill Clinton is the culprit, she said.
The 2021 Roadless Rule that Clinton championed declared 58 million acres of federal public forestland basically inaccessible to motor vehicles and proper management, Hageman said.
“This is lack of forest management and the bad policies coming out of Washington, D.C.,” she said. “That’s what’s creating this environment” for the wildfires.
“The scope, the intensity and the outcome and the impact of these fires is absolutely caused by the failure of the U.S. Forest Service to properly manage these resources,” she said.
That’s because their hands are tied by the federal rules, Hageman added.
“I am not implying the people in Wyoming are the ones causing these problems,” Hageman said. “I’ve been up there on the ranch, and those hotshots that came in and fought that fire were absolutely brilliant. Thank God we had them.”
After the rule was enacted, Hageman, an attorney, said she was hired by the state of Wyoming to fight the federal law, which gives her a unique insight into its scope and impact. What’s worse, the feds knew things like this summer’s fire season would happen because of the rule.
“At the time, they admitted it would cause an ‘ecological disaster,’” Hageman said. “They knew this was going to happen.”
Then people wonder why there’s so much mistrust of the federal government, which Hageman said is the real push behind recent conspiracy theories about the Wyoming wildfires.
The impacts of the rule are evident all across the West this summer, with huge wildfires in most Western states, she said.
“I wish more people understood the history with all this,” Hageman said. “The whole West — state after state after state have had their forests burned down.”
Lies And Evil Things..
Hageman said she doesn’t believe the wild claims people are throwing around about the fires, like the Forest Service started the Elk Fire on purpose to get access to rare earth minerals.
“I see no evidence of that,” she said about the online rumors.
What she does understand is that claims like those are the result of a dishonest federal government that “lies to the people” repeatedly, and “that our government has lost an enormous amount of trust.”
“This is what happens when you have a government that lies to you,” Hageman added. “This administration has been hell-bent on making sure they can control every aspect of our lives. Do I think these fires were started by the Forest Service? No, I do not.
“Our Forest Service personnel here in Wyoming are working diligently.”
What Hageman does think is that what's happening now is a result of the overall mistrust of government, along with a roadless rule she said has been perverting the true mission of the U.S. Forest Service, which is to manage the nation’s wood and water resources for use.
“What’s creating this environment is when you have a government that’s become so hostile to its people and things like forest management and range management and water management,” she said. “To me, it’s very understandable why people would believe our government would do evil things — because our government does do evil things.”
The solution is to “get some common sense on this” and reverse policies like the roadless rule, Hageman said.
“I believe we can fix this so that 20 years for now, we’re not having this same conversation,” she said.
We saw this at Ft Huachuca on the mexico border. The post had roads for fire control every half mile, and kept them clean. As soon as you left the post to the national parks beside it, the roads disappeared. Every few years, Arizona would be ravaged by fires, which for some strange and mystifying reason, stopped at the post.
Not maintaining fire breaks and fire roads.
Not clearing fire-prone undergrowth.
Not cutting old growth timber to both reduce fire hazard and make way for younger trees.
On a side note this rule also hampers the US Border Patrol's access to border areas. Trump waived the rule for the BP but Biden reinstated it.
Arsonists love to watch their fires destroy family homes, family businesses.
The left loves open borders
The Hot dry Santa Annas are now blowing in Southern California. The start of a fire season. Lots of angry homeless and illegals to set fires—California is going to have a bad firee season—November-December.
So glad Hageman replaced Cheney! She’s a peach. She’s thwarting the stupid cattle/bison ear tag bill
That government! If you want less of it, government will make sure you get more of it. If you want more of it, government will make sure you get less of it….
I’ve seen this all over CO, closing off old roads and trails and leaving little access into the forests unless you have horses.
A pox on USFS
This is something a lot of people don't understand, the U.S. Forest Service is under the Dept. of Agriculture meaning maintaining public lands for use like logging, not preservation, that falls to the Dept. of the Interior under which the National Park Service is run. Big difference between National Forest land and National Park land.
California can thank Kamala for shutting down the timber industry which leads to unmanaged forests now burning
It all started with the Moonlight Fire
“The 2021 Roadless Rule that Clinton championed declared 58 million acres of federal public forestland basically inaccessible to motor vehicles and proper management, Hageman said.
On a side note this rule also hampers the US Border Patrol’s access to border areas. Trump waived the rule for the BP but Biden reinstated it.”
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The USFS policy of sending Smokey the Bear to every national forest fire began with the creation and mission of the USFS, as stated by President Teddy Roosevelt (R) at the time.
One of the biggest sources of pressure on the Forest Service has ALWAYS been commercial lumber interests, who see the fires only as a loss of potential product. That’s been the big driver of fires.
You don’t have to believe in AGW to recognize the world is getting hotter and drier in many places now. That drying provides ready fuel for wildfires across the West.
Wyoming has warmed nearly 3.0’F in the last century, and droughts have become more common. That’s the real problem we have to contend with.
We were warned in 1957 Public Service announcements that there were so many wildfires each year that if put together they would cover the entire state of Louisiana.
Have we got that many in decades?
Siskiyou Co. Ca once had something like 50 mills. Now there is a plywood peeler plant in Yreka. The industry used to provide revenue for schools. I could go on but it’ll just make me mad.
“Not clearing fire-prone undergrowth.”
There’s a lot of effort in that here in North Idaho. You go hiking in the wilderness and you see HUGE piles of cleared undergrowth. They burn it in late winter when it can’t turn into a forest fire. You’ll see smoke going up from the burn piles all the time.
We had a very clear summer in ‘24 with hardly any smoke. Only a day or two were bad and a few others just hazy.
"Hageman says People In Path Of Wildfires Can Thank Feds And Their “Bad Policies”"
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
After chasing links in circles, my tentative conclusion about the "Roadless Area Conservation Rule" is that it was made by non-popularly elected federal bureaucrats running the constitutionally undefined Forest Service during the Clinton Administration.
"The Forest Service did not usurp Congressional authority because the roadless rule did not establish de facto wilderness," the court said in a decision written by Judge Jerome A. Holmes, who was nominated to the court by President George W. Bush." —Roadless area conservation
The bottom line is that the states made it more difficult for themselves to fight the unconstitutional rules of federal bureaucrats when the states foolishly ratified the ill-conceived but repealable (hint) 17th Amendment (popular voting for federal senators).
Since Congress and renegade states have repeatedly proven that they are enemies of the people imo, it is now up to Democratic and Republican Trump supporters to effectively "impeach and remove" ALL (exceptions?) state and federal lawmakers and executives in November.
In fact, it's up to us Trump supporters to take the first MAJOR step in draining the swamp by supporting hopeful Trump 47 with a new, Constitution-respecting Congress, new state lawmakers too, not only so that he will not be a lame duck president from the first day of his second term, but will support him to quickly finish draining the swamp.
Finally, let's not allow the anti-Trump media try to fade our memories of what we witnessed on July 13.
Down the Memory Hole: Google Hides Autocomplete Suggestions Related to Trump Assassination Attempt (7.28.24)
If you’ve ever seen a sign in a wilderness area that says “No Human Presence Allowed” from such and such a date then you’ll get the gist of the “Agenda.”
I suggest we give them $750 with the fine print saying they will pay it back.
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