Posted on 06/26/2007 9:50:48 AM PDT by BurbankKarl
The mood of the crowd jammed into the meeting room was angry.
Many had lost their homes to the forest fire that swept through the Sierra Nevada just south of Lake Tahoe.
They said they were angry at bureaucrats and environmentalists who made cutting of trees and clearing of land difficult. There was always too much red tape, they said, and now it was too late.
In all, a crowd of nearly 2,000 people descended on the South Tahoe Middle School auditorium Monday night, wanting to be heard in the face of their losses.
And if there was an object of scorn in the crowd, it was the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, a powerful bi-state environmental land use agency charged with managing the resources of the basin.
When a speaker mentioned the agency, the crowd responded with a chorus of boos. "What a joke!" yelled one man.
The wrangling began in earnest over the assignment of blame, including arguments over whether federal and state forest managers had made their tree clearing rules too strict in the face of pressure by environmentalists.
A common sentiment Monday was expressed by Jerry Martin, a bartender at the Horizon Casino Resort, whose house was still standing, although eight others around it had burned to the ground. He said U.S. Forest Service rules regulating the harvesting of dead trees were too stringent for those living next to government land.
"I hate to get political, but environmentalists wouldn't let us cut down the dead trees," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Oh, not so. If you don't hang them too far apart, their skulls clunk together when the wind blows. Kind of makes for a gory wind "chime", but one thing that's really cool is how the tones change as the carrion beasts do their work.
snip-
Review Findings
Overall, the people interviewed feel there is a serious fuels problem in the Basin. They support rapid fuels treatments to reduce the wildfire hazard. There is general agreement that everyone who lives/works in the Basin, and all agencies that have responsibilities in the Basin own a piece of the problem. Because the Forest Service is the largest land managing agency in the Basin, there is an expectation that the Forest Service will lead the way toward a solution to the fuels problem.
Snip -
yeppers to that, extortion was a key element to the building of the Ritz at Salt Creek.
Alabama: 73% forested and growing at the rate of one million acres a year.
I spent a lot of time in Tahoe in the late 60's, early 70's.
We always figured it was sorta like the District of Columbia, another Federal Colony and that residents shouldn't be allowed to vote in El Dorado County issues, but NOoooooooHo Ho Hooooooo they get bites a both apples everytime!!!
In other words, the Tahoe Basin is a Federal Colony that has assigned governing duties and land use control to the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, aka TRPA. Even though the area of the fire was totally in El Dorado County, the Sheriff was the only one there from the county with any authority whatsoever and that pertained only to law enforcement other than traffic!
The County's Master/General Plan maps have a big blank spot on the northeastern end that says... "other jurisdiction!" This is another fabrication of Democrats who feel that they redeemed this "Holy City" as the Mecca for the EnvironMental gods (read Sierra Flub members), safe from the rampant forces of the free markets in the 1970's!!!
Just to be sure all this worked out, the State of CA established the Tahoe CONservancy as a state agency to oversee the erosion controls, etc., to facilitate the "Keep Tahoe Blue" campaign. The state employees of this CONservancy enjoy all the benefits of state employment including a defined benefit pension that private sector employees can only dream of these days!!!
Done to the tune of "Pave over paradise and put in a parking lot, doot, doot, doot..."
They didn't vote for them. TARPA, like the Coastal Commission, was forced on local residents by people who mostly live elsewhere.
There is absolutely NO official designation or commission creating any such position of authority as an "EnvironMentalist!" As Dr. Wattenberg likes to say "They just rubberstamp themselves in the forehead and in the A$$ with the word "EnvironMentalist," and that's all there is to it!!!
We have no disagreement about the situation as it exists.
THEN there could be discussion of, say, controlled burns to revitalize oak trees, and other strategies for artifically replicating other necessary natural processes.
I've been restoring my land manually for seventeen years, including meadows right down to grasses and groundcovers. It's an enormous amount of labor. There was removing at least 100 cords of wood and 20,000 BF of timber. There have been massive drainage projects. Weed control is the hardest part; it's effectively a full time job. You can now see the difference between our place and its surroundings from 20,000 feet on Google-Earth. The principal reason I can't burn it now is because of my neighbors.
The saddest part of it is to find out that, according to the half-dozen professional botanists who've visited my property, there is NO ONE else on the entire Central Coast of California who has done what I've done. Think about it: with all the wailing and crying over "the environment" that there is out there, after the hundreds of billions taxpayers have spent, NOBODY gets on their hands and knees to do the frustrating, persistant, physically dangerous, and intellectually demanding work of thinning, weeding, and replanting at a rigorous level.
I have other reasons for what I'm doing as detailed in my book. I'm trying to bootstrap a market in habitat management and restoration, eventually to replace unconstitutional government environmental management where it can prove itself more effective.
It is criminal when you get a few yahoos, who do not understand responsible forest management, dictating their "feel good" emotions on other people. Their decisions and insidious dictates have destroyed a lot of other peoples lives, they should be forced to man the fire lines
Today's Sacramento BEE's giant headlines scream... "WORST NIGHTMARE."
The San Franpsycho Comical's says "150 YEARS OF FOREST ABUSE."
But that picture at the beginning of this thread is illustrative of the horriffic human cost of GovernMental EnvironMentalism brought to us by GANG-GREEN!!!
The Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors recently passed the following resolution on Forest conditions. The way National Forests are being managed is shameful.:
RESOLUTION DIRECTING ABATEMENT OF A PUBLIC NUISANCE
WHEREAS, approximately 63% of Siskiyou County’s 6,600 square mile land base is retained as federally managed lands; and
WHEREAS, on August 17, 2001, the Federal Register Vol. 66, number 160, listed the Siskiyou County communities of Big Springs, Callahan, Dorris, Dunsmuir, Etna, Fort Jones, Gazelle, Happy Camp, Hornbrook, Horse Creek, Klamath River, Macdoel, McCloud, Mt. Shasta, Quartz Valley, Sawyers Bar, Scott Bar, Seiad Valley, Somes Bar, Tennant, Weed and Yreka as “Urban Wildland Interface Communities Within the Vicinity of Federal Lands That Are at High Risk From Wildfire”; and
WHEREAS, the Klamath National Forest – a typical Forest located in Siskiyou County, has a standing inventory of 13.5 billion board feet of timber and grows an additional 654 million board feet (MMBF) of timber each year; and
WHEREAS, compared with the year 1989 where 320 MMBF of timber were harvested from the Klamath National Forest, the Northwest Forest Plan reduced the Allowable Sales Quantity on the Klamath to only 440 MMBF over a 10 year period - or approximately 44 MMBF a year; and
WHEREAS, only about 15 MMBF is currently being harvested netting 639 MMBF of additional biomass being added to the Forest each year creating unhealthy forest densities that stress trees, making them more susceptible to pests and disease and aggravating an already dangerously high fuel load; and
WHEREAS, large wildfires have resulted such as in 2006 when the Titus, Hancock, Uncles Complex and Rush fires burned 28,000 acres in Siskiyou County, threatening local communities and costing the federal government more than $12 million to try and contain them until the fall rains and snow could extinguish them; and
WHEREAS, in 2006 more than 16,000 acres burned in the Six Rivers National Forest on the Western edge of Siskiyou County and another 51,000 acres on the Shasta Trinity, south of Siskiyou County;
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors finds that the current situation of heavy fuel loading in the Klamath, Shasta-Trinity, Six Rivers, Rogue River-Siskiyou, and Modoc National Forests constitutes a dangerous public nuisance posing a genuine threat to the public safety of communities throughout Siskiyou County; and
THAT THE SISKIYOU COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVIORS DIRECTS the U.S. Department of Agriculture to commence immediate and accelerated efforts to abate this nuisance through comprehensive and widespread hazardous fuel reduction on National Forests throughout Siskiyou County.
Now THAT’s what I call a high grade County Board of Supervisors!!! Bravo!!! Encore!!!
But it was...was...was natural!
Just like lightning strikes.
And forest fires...
Do you look at this in the same ways if you contrast a populated area with hardly anyone knowledgeable about these things, compared to a more “wild” area that is not inhabited with humans everyday, compared yet again to a place of beauty, such as your land, that has been studiously groomed and cared for with all due regard for the “Natural Process?”
That picture of that woman holding her head and bawling in overwhelmed disbelieving grief almost reminds me of Lot’s wife, (no, I’m not talking about Trent!) who then turned into a pillar of salt! It’s truly a haunting picture!!!
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