Last Thursday, the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals ruled that the rules adopted in 2003 by the USFS (initiated by the Bush Administration) to accelerate the logging of woodlands damaged by fires or infestations illegally cut off the public's opportunity to comment. The rule had allowed local USFS managers to administratively approve salvage logging of parcels of 250 acres or less and fuel thinning, and selective logging, on tracts of up to 1,000 acres as long as certain parameters were met.
Most of those fires mentioned by tubebender are in my district. The majority are in the Wilderness. Some, like the Titus, are slow ground burning fires that are doing beneficial cleanup work. However, a pick up in temperature and wind could rapidly change all that. The air quality, however in really bad in places. We had opened up the community center in Forks, which has air conditioning, in order to give folks who could not leave a place where they could breath better air indoors.
As you drive down most of the forested roads in this area that are bordered by USFS lands, you will see dead tree spires marching up the sides of the hills. Of course, no one can cut them because of Wild and Scenic Rivers, spotted and other owls, marbled murrelets, pine martens, salmon, salamanders, and other critters.....of course, burned out spires and stumps and tons of sediment coursing down the streams is ok.
The Healthy Forest Act was passed by Congress and signed by Bush a long while ago.
The clever Sierra Club lawyers have found ways to block the forests from having a chance of becoming healthy.
This has been unhealthy for decades and it seems like we are going to have many more decades of blocked forestry management thanks to weak, emotional judges.