Wildfires spark calls for more grazing

Associated Press ^ | Aug 1 | JOHN MILLER

[george76]

Wildfires in several western states have stirred embers of the "Sagebrush Rebellion," as ranchers and politicians have criticized federal agencies, the courts and environmentalists over policies they say are contributing to the fires.

Nevada's Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons and U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., claimed environmental groups and federal bureaucracy have contributed to fires, including one at Lake Tahoe that burned more than 250 homes.

And this week, Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter, a rancher, and the state's two senators, Larry Craig and Mike Crapo, joined ranchers in blaming federal safety rules for crippling early efforts to douse a 1,000-square-mile wildfire near the town of Murphy Hot Springs.

The criticism hearkens back to the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s and '80s, when a coalition of mining and grazing interests pressured federal policymakers to cede greater control of federal lands to state and local authorities.

Fire seasons often result in a resurgence of such criticism among Westerners, many of whom have spent generations on the land and bristle at being told what to do by the courts or government.

Republicans Otter, Craig and Crapo laid out a litany of complaints: When a July 16 lightning storm rolled through Idaho and Nevada's remote border country, locals with bulldozers stood ready to help build fire lines — only to be told by Bureau of Land Management officials to stay put.

And they blame a 2005 federal court ruling in a lawsuit brought by the Idaho-based environmental group Western Watersheds Project for reducing cattle grazing and allowing fuel buildup, conditions they contend fed the flames that burned an area the size of Rhode Island and cost $9 million to fight.

"The current (federal) management practices helped contribute to this devastation," ...

[george76]

[george76]

” ( Idaho) where the federal government owns two-thirds of the land,”...

[george76]

The Meriwether fire burns near Holter Lake on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 near Craig, Mont. Residents in about 80 homes and summer cottages around the lake were ordered to evacuate on Tuesday...

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[Carry_Okie]

Awesome photograph; simply spectacular.

[marsh2]

The Elk Complex in our area of northern CA is at 13,656 acres, but has cost 1 life on active duty, 2 on off duty and $16,100,000 so far.

[JohnA]

As Bertrand Russell put it in Authority and the Individual:

"A bureaucrat is, at once, lazy and powerful. By saying 'no' to worthwhile projects, he exercises his penchant for both. And so, he becomes the enemy of those he is intended to serve."

Here's a clip from NBC on the airplane problem,. Nothing's been accomplished since this (long and) authoritative work was published in 2005. You can lay the entire thing at the feet of the US Forest Service.

[JohnA]

We all know how long it takes the European Union to get anything together. Yesterday, the EU’s environmental chief suggested it get its disaster response act together. This would mean the little fiefdoms of disaster response in Europe would be asked to co-operate. In the US, it appears that the Ca and the US fed cannot get their acts together on a single airplane, let alone disaster response in general (think Katrina.) What a Chinese Fire Drill disaster response has turned out to be pretty much all over the western world.

[george76]

The federal government has not been a good neighbor.

Often the forest managers know what to do and how to do it : A Healthy Forest. But they are prohibited from acting properly nor timely by Sierra Club lawyers and weak , emotional judges.

[JohnA]

It’s one thing to adopt policy for fire prevention and quite another to be able to cope (or not) when it comes to take your neighborhood and potentially your life away. The US Forest Service is simply not equipped ...as it once was ...with airplanes.