Posted on 08/28/2007 11:06:28 AM PDT by george76
Crews cutting trees in hopes stopping wildfire from jumping between neighborhoods and the forest.
As the color red has grown in the forest... The mountain pine beetle epidemic has hit ...hard.
Whether it’s a lightning strike or a barbecue sparking a blaze, Spaeh says she understands the risk of a destructive forest fire.
....town, county and the U.S. Forest Service are cooperating to create a layer of “defensible space” — a 200-to-300-foot barrier — that aims to stop the spread of a fire, either from the forest into the neighborhood or vice versa.
“This is a really good thing,” ...
Above Intermountain and Matterhorn in West Vail, crews will cut about 8,000 trees, starting in the next couple of weeks.
Experts talk about the dying trees as fuel that’s just waiting to burn.
“From the impact from the pine beetle, eventually there’s going to be a lot of fuel building up there,” said Phil Bowden of the Forest Service. “You want to have space between where that fuel will be building up and the homes so you can defend homes.”
The “defensible space” also creates a staging area where firefighters can set up when they have to fight a blaze...
While the pine-beetle epidemic is an environmental worry in Vail, some of the felled trees will go toward a “green” cause: biomass energy.
The county is selling the logs to Confluence Energy, which has built a wood-pellet mill in Kremmling. The pellets are used in special furnaces that heat homes while emitting relatively little pollution.
(Excerpt) Read more at vaildaily.com ...
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If only they could create a barrier against liberals. Then they could sell it to Aspen, Crested Butte, Durango, and Paonia.
Working on the box of matches.
Figures.
Pine Beetles means too many trees-—more trees per acre than the average precipitation can sustain, thus dryer trees which are much more vulnerable to the beetles. The Trees they are cutting down now could have been logged all along, preventing the whole problem.
I’ve said it many times because it bears repeating....Environmentalists are BAD for the environment.
“They want to live in the garden, but they don’t want to tend it.”
...unless it is close to their homes.
We had an article in our newspaper yesterday quoting them as saying that they've given up fighting them on the southern end of the San Isabel National Forest.
They also said that the only cutting going on is being done by private land owners adjacent to the forest. They got that part right!
It's so bad down here now that they'd have to clear cut the whole forest.
Yup :
Funny how liberal environmental wackos get some common sense when it is their houses on the line...
Here in Colorado the state line ends at Colorado Springs.
All the money for just about everything goes up north.
Perhaps what is needed is the right pesticide.
Wow!
A tip of the hat to “the powers that be” in Vail.
They’ve managed to manifest a level of sanity that is still in short
supply in Southern California.
(where a stange-bedfellows alliance of envirowackos and homeowners
leave the dead trees up for fuel during the next firestorm)
This is happening because Bush hates white people. /sarc
I usually call it firewood myself, but I guess this now helps me speak "Liberal"
Vail is learning liberal speak : biomass energy...versus just firewood.
Well said and so true! And their lib enviro wacko friends that live in the city will give them a pass on it.
The foresters in the forest service used to be able to use science in their decisions. Now the Sierra Club lawyers are often making the final decisions.
We have made some limited progress near towns ( Summit County, Grand County...) because the local politicans realize that it may be their necks at risk. South Lake Tahoe fires scared a few local politicans.
Private land owners generally make better decisions than these lawyers.
While building defensible zones around these towns is good, the forests generally are not healthy.
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