Posted on 10/31/2003 6:37:12 AM PST by Brian S
I lived in the California Sierra foothills almost at the edge of the El Dorado National Forest from 1976 to 1999 and had a front row seat in the Great Debate over sustainable development, the Sierra Club´s environmental propaganda and the death of the economy in my county as its economic base, logging and related businesses, were slowly strangled to death during the eight years of the Clinton Administration.
As I watched the massive fires now raging in Southern California, that have so far killed 20 people, burned about a half-million acres and hundreds of homes, I thought about articles I have written in years gone by that warned this would happen.
Eight years ago, in the April 1995 issue of the Reagan Monitor newsletter, which I edited, I reported the warnings of a recently retired U.S. Forest Service Ranger who had lived and worked in the forests of Northern California for more than 60 years.
In that issue of the Reagan Monitor newsletter, I sounded the alarm about the nonsense the Sierra Club was spouting about the California Spotted Owl which, the club claims, can only "nest in trunk cavities, dead tree tops or broad snags (dead trees)" and could survive only "old-growth forests where trees are at least 200 years old."
According to the Sierra club, the logging in El Dorado County was killing the "old growth" forests and needed to be shut down to save the Spotted Owl. The Sierra Club website states, with great pride in its accomplishment, "In 1993, the U.S. Forest Service put into place the Northwest Forest Plan, the culmination of a series of lawsuits challenging the aggressive logging that was stripping the Pacific Northwest of its old-growth forests. The plan reduced the rate of logging on 13 national forests in the western parts of Washington, Oregon, and California by about 85 percent."
I reported in my article entitled "Owls, Mice and Bulldozers" that by 1994 the ten million acres of National Forests in the Sierras of California the 2.18 billion board feed of lumber logged in 1988 had dropped to only 360 million board feet. Since 1994 that has dropped to such an extent that, in effect, logging in El Dorado County, and its associated businesses have closed down, bringing economic disaster to hundreds of thousands of people connected with logging and construction in the area.
Yet, has been known for many years by those actually involved in the forests that the Sierra Club policies, which became public policy in the 1990s under Bill Clinton, would cause exactly the kinds of fires we are now experiencing in Southern California. As recently as last year I reminded readers in an article:
"Actually, the spotted owl was never endangered. The spotted owl boondoggle was the result of an owl counting venture in 1972 when Eric Forsman, a city-bred graduate student at the Cooperative Wildlife Research United at Oregon State university, reported, after only a year of study, that Spotted Owl pairs were found only in areas of old growth forests slated for timber harvest. Yet, Spotted Owls in California are all over the place and have been found nesting in a K-Mart sign. They increased in the El Dorado National Forest in the early 1990s after a severe fire that burned a huge segment of the forest.
"…However, a widely ignored July 23, 1990, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report warned: ‘Past fire protection practices in the forests have caused abnormal fuels conditions to develop´ and noted that the practice of ‘protecting snags, dead but standing trees which are favorite nesting spots for the Spotted Owl are obstacles to fire suppression´ and that ‘current practices are creating forest conditions that most likely will lead to large, high severity fires.´" This report was ignored.
In 1996 I attended a Congressional hearing held Stockton, California by Rep. John Doolittle of California and Rep. Helen Chenoweth of Idaho in which a representative from the U.S. Forest Service warned that, unless the "no logging" regulation was rescinded and an aggressive policy implemented of logging and clearing underbrush, it was not "if" the forests would burn with dangerous, high severity fires, but WHEN they will burn, because of the huge amount of fuel we have allowed to grow in them.
Two years earlier, in 1995, I quoted a man who had spent literally 65 years in forests and was very familiar with Spotted Owls,. He was born and grew up in Oregon, where his father was a logger and worked 40 years as a Ranger, most of it in El Dorado National Forest. Keith Butts had seen a lot of people and policies over the years that ran totally contrary to his daily experiences in the woods, which included the owls following his bulldozer to swoop down on small rodents he disturbed while working.
"Today," he told me, "everything in the woods can be used. Nothing needs to be burned. Portable chippers can be brought in to chip up the slash (i.e. branches and underbrush) for waferboard that is used for building. Keeping the underbrush under control would prevent the worst damage of wildfires and firestorms that destroy million of trees, millions of dollars worth of property and sometimes kill firefighters. We are now either burning on purpose or letting wildfires consume millions of acres of trees, yet the Black Forest in Germany has been preserved for hundreds of years by good management that picks up every fallen branch to prevent fires."
We have known for a long time how to preserve our forests. It´s now too late to preserve millions of acres of once healthy forests – because of political decisions made in Washington by people who don´t seem to know the difference between a pine forest and a petunia patch.
This is really not a complicated problem. Crowded trees, underbrush and water shortages cause trees to die and become diseased. Mother Nature´s method of solving the problem is a huge bonfire to clean up the mess and start all over with a clean slate. Human beings with a brain can use the wood in crowded stands of trees, now even the underbrush, and that keeps the remaining trees healthy and alive. Fire kills the trees, the animals, birds, and insects – including the Spotted Owls – and sometimes people.
What is happening in Southern California is the natural result of Sierra Club-Clinton policies and decisions by activist liberal judges that prevented proper care of the forests. The solution to the problem is in the voting booth.
One more thing I wanted to ask what do you think about making any recovery funds sent to California in the form of a loan and not a hand out? Would this help relieve everyone elses tax burden?
I am not sure what you mean. Recovery in general or specifically from the fire? If it is for the fire the FEMA money would be for loans. If it is for the budget crisis I wouldn't want the Feds to give us a cent of any kind. I do think the Feds owe California for having footed a disproportionate burden of caring for illegal aliens (along with many states in the Southwest, but we deal with FAR more).
Finally, I would remind you that California is still a LARGE net contributor to the Federal treasury. If you are looking for states that are continually subsidized, consider Montana, New Mexico, or Missippi. Incomes here are so high that we pay more than our share of taxes.
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