Thanks, I am an advocate of sane forest management, including logging. I don’t like eco idiots efforts to turn them all into wilderness areas, and locking out the public. I know logging and successional growth forests are the best thing for wildlife.
I posted that story just to bring attention to Rey’s situation.
I married into the logging business about ten years ago. Having the opportunity to actually cruise timber in the 3 states that we logged for house logs, I can share with you some observations.
Most of the existing forests are second or more growth timber. The original forests of Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona were clear cut in the mid to late 1800’s and what is here now is what grew in after that. The original forest was widely spaced large trees. Natural fire prevented the growth of the “hair” or ladder fuel that we now have.
An acre is an area of ground that is about 208 feet wide by 208 feet long. In healthy forests, there would be about 20 large trees on that parcel of ground, there being some grass and small shrubs in between which are periodically burned. In healthy forest, lightening strike fires can burn between and under the large trees without the huge fires that you see on TV every year.
Because of the tinkering of environmentalists, the large trees are mostly gone, and now replaced with stands of small closely spaced trees referred to as ladder fuel. I have cruised timber around Flagstaff, AZ that has tree counts of around 16,000 trees per acre.
As long as the “forest managers” continue to restrict logging and sane population management, the fires will continue, and the destruction of homes and personal property will persist. Fox News just mentioned this morning that 3500 homes were burned in 2007 California wildfires. Forest thinning and fire breaks would have prevented almost all of that.
As in anything, logic and moderation is the solution.