Posted on 10/06/2006 2:50:29 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
From high atop a horse named Cruiser, it’s easy to see what ails so much of America’s West. Above and below an equestrian path in the Gallatin National Forest, pine trees and Douglas firs crowd together like rush-hour subway commuters. Many are shorter and thinner than normal, due to intense competition for water, nutrients, and sunlight. Among these upright evergreens, dead trunks, limbs, and branches litter the arid ground. They are parched white, like the bones of a carcass bleached beneath the searing sunshine.
“This hasn’t burned since the 1940s,” says Ryan Neel, a wrangler from the nearby Lone Mountain Ranch. One well-placed lightning bolt could turn this overgrown hillside into a furnace.
Compare this neglected patch of the federal property portfolio to the practically groomed habitat at media mogul Ted Turner’s 175-square-mile Flying D Ranch, about 50 miles away. Young and old members of assorted arboreal species stand comfortably apart from each other, minimizing fire risk. On this private land, foresters carefully pick trees to sell, and then carefully remove them by helicopter. Despite such costly techniques, Turner Enterprises turns a profit.
“Fire safety is an ancillary benefit of thinning for pest and disease control,” says general manager Russ Miller. “Spacing out the trees makes it more difficult for insects to spread from tree to tree.”
This contrast between public mismanagement and private stewardship recurs across the West. The enormous fires that routinely engulf millions of acres from the Rockies to the Pacific tend to devour federal lands. Washington, D.C. owns, for instance, 29.9 percent of Montana, 45.3 percent of California, and 84.5 percent of Nevada. Excluding Alaska and Hawaii, 54.1 percent of America’s West is federal property.
Actively maintained, private forests usually enjoy health and fire resistance, thanks to deadwood clearance, controlled burns, and selective harvesting.
(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...
Western forests and fires ping.
Not something that makes a lot of news, but very important, nonetheless.
I hate to say it, but they are not made in Washington DC. They are made at Greenpeace, Friends of the River, and Sierra Club.
Clearly, Bush's Fault!
It's interesting to compare photos of Western forests around the first years of European settlement versus what they look like after a century of federal management. Todays forests are much more dense, much more prone to fire, disease and pests.
They are also part of the problem.
If you fly over the West at low enough altitudes, it is very easy to distinguish federally (mis)managaged land from privately held land.
Most generally, the federally (mis)managed lands are disease-ridden tinderboxes, while the private land is as described in this article.
I hate the idea of giving Ted Turner any credit for anything, but at least he has employees who know their business. Proof that even a leftwing idiot owning the land beats it being in the hands of Congress, the enviro-whacks, and a bunch of power-mad federal judges.
Before we beat the feds up too bad... private land is a different situation.
I have 50 acres of thick pine woodland. When I bought the land, it was thick with pine, manzanita, and brush.
Using a FED program called EQUIP, I was able to get some of my hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes paid back.
They paid 66% of the cost of "mastication" which involved running equipment through the forest chewing and spewing all of the small trees (<12" base) and brush.
As a result, my property (which we cleared branches to 10' and thinned a bit more with chainsaw) is fire-safe and better yet, gonna produce a crop of pine lumber in about 10 more years that will pay for the work about 50X over.
The problem lies on PUBLIC land where the feds can't do diddly squat because the environMENTALists stop them through the liberal courts... http://www.calforests.org/the_news_room.html?ID=488
I just don't like the fact that the government owns most of the West. They're poor stewards, and if we're going to grow and prosper as a country, those lands are needed by the real owners: the citizens of the United States.
>>Between January 1 and October 4, 2003, the National Fire Information Center calculates, 3,159,062 acres of wild land burned. That number has grown steadily. During 2006’s equivalent period, 9,102,776 acres were consumed. Fires also soared from 49,957, during that span of 1993, to 84,214 in 2006’s comparable interval.<<
Knowing your interest in our forests. I pinged you.
It's the Granola's and Environmentalists that are guilty of causing this problem. It's not the fault of the federal government, sawmills or private landowners. So the title is correct in saying "Washington, D.C.". The environmentalist movement is the biggest lobbying force in Washington, D.C.
They all have OFFICES in D.C.
The Sierra Club was one of my first thoughts, too.
Couldn't the Federal government gradually give portions of it to the states? If I remember, there was a movement called The Sagebrush Rebellion designed to remedy that.
Yeah. And we just lost its patron saint this past week.
I read about that and was saddened. I also learned that she wasn't wearing a seat belt. Too bad, as we all lost out.
Can't help but mention that we also lost another hero of the Sagebrush Rebellion in recent months. Wayne Hage, Helen Chenoweth-Hage's husband, only recently passsed on. The Feds couldn't beat him, but cancer did.
God be with their family.
Yeah. Real kick in the guts, ain't it....
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