Posted on 02/19/2009 9:42:57 AM PST by george76
Forest supervisors for the Bridger-Teton, Shoshone and Caribou-Targhee national forests signed a letter to loggers noting that forest health is being threatened by insects and large wildfires.
The letter and an accompanying questionnaire asks loggers and wood industry officials for information about their operations in order to gauge their ability to remove dead and dying trees.
(Excerpt) Read more at kjct8.com ...
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Last I heard the Forest Service had some kind of regulation that prohibits clear cutting, even in places where fire is a substantial risk, and they fought congressional efforts to legalize it. What is this about?
George Wuerthner of the Foundation for Deep Ecology says
Foresters want to use science not politics in Healthy Forest decisions.
It would be the foresters and other scientists making the final decisions, not lawyers and judges with no training / experience.
Without a doubt this George Wuerthner is an enviro nazi. At least the forest managers are trying to do their job but it’s doubtful nutjobs like Wuerthner, enviro groups and federal judges will let them.
“What is this about?”
My guess is that an insect called the Mountain Pine Beattle has infested Lodgepole Pine trees starting in British Columbia and moving east and south into the US.
The beattle eats the cambium layer of the tree between the bark and wood. This is the living part of the tree that conducts nutrients betweeen the roots and the leaves.
The tree then dies. Therefore, you are left with potentially 1000’s of acres of DEAD STANDING TIMBER.
This standing timber is then much more likely to burn during the summer dry season from natural lightning stikes.
However, these so called environmental groups would rather have the resulting potentially catastrophic wildfires than cut the timber down and make it into lumber, paper, etc.
You see if it burns down because of a lightning strike then its natures way and thats ok. Also, if your Jackson Hole vacation home burns down too. Well to bad thats natures way too.
The pine beetle is the issue in Colorado, too. Whole mountains have turned brownish red, but still they can’t go in and clear cut, and a Bush Forest Service resisted the proposed legislation. I don’t understand why they are waiting around for a holocaust of a fire before going in and cutting these dead forests down. My question was more to determine if the reg has been changed, which it sounds like, or are they beginning the realize the potential disaster they have created and are trying to cover their rears.
Clear-cutting does a lot of damage with respect to erosion and watershed issues. The better method is thinning the trees (with emphasis on the dead and decaying, or dying trees) and removing the smaller, but abundant fuels (underbrush, branches, etc.). Obviously, some dead trees decaying on the ground are a good thing, as they provide food and shelter for animal life, and nutrients to the soil, but too much in one place is a problem.
I've seen this work in AZ on the Apache-Sitgraves. Healthier trees due to the thinning, and nice clear paths and meadows for grasses to grow for critters to eat.
Last Summer the Forest Service did approve the cutting of many acres of beetle-killed timber in and around Vail. The problem was that at the price they offered to pay, there were no takers.
Why ? The local sawmills have all been forced out of business by environmentalists, so the nearest sawmills were too far away to transport the logs to and still turn a profit.
Does a ‘crat play CYA? ? ?
Would an AgencyPerson take a position to lay a groundwork for a “plausable denialability” position?
Does the sun rise in the east?
;-)
Clear cutting works just fine and done properly actually serves as a firebreak.
Where I live in Idaho we have been hollering at the idiots in the USFS for 10-years that the forests are dying from beetle infestation. They refuse to do anything, and if they actually do come up with the rare timber sale, the record of decision is always appealed by some a**hole environmental organization from two states away.
The US forest service is responsible for the poor condition of the forests in the west, and now they are trying to get loggers to show interest in a few break-even puny timber sales to bale out decades of lousy management.
What a joke. I could go on.
I will concede that, done properly, it can work.
Problem is getting it done properly given currently rules and regulations.
I don’t know where your experience is from, but where I live there are so many rules and regulations it is impossible to do anything but very small-scale logging on the National Forests. The local FS finally approved an 80-acre post-and-pole sale and the decision was appealed by a nut-group from the neighboring state and logging has been delayed for at least one year.
25-years ago, there were 5 saw mills operating within 30-miles of my town...now there are none and the forests are all but dead. The enviro nuts are perfectly happy to see multi-hundred thousand acre fires, but scream everytime there is a timber sale.
So to say that clear-cutting has to be “done right” is a little disengenious...not cutting, properly or not, results in huge fires, lots of erosion, and lots of sediment accumulation in all the surface waters, not to mention stands of trees where 75% of the species are dead or dying.
So, it comes down to; do people want logging and smaller and less intense fires, or burned forests, with all the attendent costs including loss of life?
Trees are just like corn...they just take longer to grow.
DDT, DDT, DDT.............it don’t hurt a thing.
Believe me, I understand the problems. I’m from SW Idaho. I know the frustration with the greens, both outside the Forest Service and working within it.
Last time I talked with someone from Boise (formerly Boise-Cascade) was in 2005. They mentioned there hadn't been any green sales (live trees) offered recently and weren't any in the future.
They weren't looking at doing any business anywhere on the national forests in the area.
Great tagline!
I’m in Lemhi Co.
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