Posted on 08/12/2018 5:13:27 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is seizing on California’s wildfires to promote a policy long-supported by Republicans — that fires could be stopped if forests were logged.
The former Montana congressman is poised to push the benefits of what’s known as forest management at an event with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue in California on Monday next to the state's largest forest fire in history.
Yet it's not just the blaze that makes the trip important for Zinke and Perdue.
Galvanized by President Trump's recent tweets on the issue and a looming farm bill vote in the House that carries a number of amendments that could open up logging, the new push is also a golden political opportunity, one that environmentalists are calling foul on.
Interior representatives said Zinke’s recent tweets and planned visit to Redding, Calif., do not mark a new effort by the agency to preach forest management, saying it’s a message Zinke has been promoting for years.
“It's really not a ‘renewed’ push,” said Interior spokeswoman Heather Swift. “He is constantly thinking about wildfire and the next wildfire season and what we can do to prevent loss of life, property and resources.”
Zinke signed a secretarial order in September 2017 “to adopt more aggressive practices, using the full authority of the Department, to prevent and combat the spread of catastrophic wildfires through robust fuels reduction and pre-suppression techniques.”
More recently, in May, Zinke released a joint memorandum with Perdue, whose agency oversees the U.S. Forest Service, promoting increased collaboration between the two departments.
The message Zinke and Perdue are amplifying is the need for prescribed burns, mechanical thinning and targeted cuts of trees, a concept the Interior Department is calling “active forest management.”
In an op-ed Wednesday for USA Today, Zinke said the forest fires were reversible.
“There are years’ worth of dead logs, overgrown shrubs and snags, which many firefighters call ‘widow makers’ because they are so deadly,” he wrote. “The buildup of fuels is the condition we can and must reverse through active forest management like prescribed burns, mechanical thinning and timber harvests.”
Zinke also said “radical environmentalists” would “rather see forests and communities burn than see a logger in the woods.”
Environmentalists, however, say forest management is just a euphemism for logging, something they’ve been fighting against for years. And they see this year’s farm bill in the House as the latest legislative effort by congressional Republicans to make significant progress toward more logging.
“In the farm bill, there's a forestry title. The House version of the forestry title is replete with a revision that would cut out environmental review — to allow logging for just about any reason,” said Randi Spivak, Public Lands Program Director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “They are taking advantage of this moment and, I think, shamefully playing on the public’s legitimate fears of wildfires.”
The House version of the farm bill that passed June 21 includes provisions that would fast track new road construction and commercial logging in national forests. Additionally, the bill would exempt dozens of projects in national forests from full environmental review.
The Senate’s version of the legislation does not include those provisions, and the two measures will likely be hammered out in a conference committee in the fall.
Environmentalists say the House-passed provisions would significantly weaken protections for forest habitat, and that arguments in favor of logging to prevent forest fires are not wholly based in science, in addition to being economically driven by industry voices.
“They call it active management and thinning, but they are really talking about logging by waiving environmental laws and input,” Spivak said. “For lots of members of Congress, they have timber and mills in their district, so it's really self serving.”
However, Glen MacDonald, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, says that the argued benefits of logging are complicated and don’t always fall along party lines.
“This debate does not always come down easily to a simple model of conservation groups and scientists versus logging companies,” MacDonald said. “Some conservation groups, such as the venerable Save the Redwoods League, have launched logging plans for second-growth forest as part of their overall strategy for sustaining healthy redwood forests in the northwestern portions of the state.”
He said the debate isn’t likely to be settled anytime soon, and that fires will worsen due to climate change.
In California, though, state leaders are pushing back on the administration’s blame, calling the messaging from Washington a red herring as Trump moves to roll back a number of environmental and air regulations meant to fight global warming, which they say is the main contributor to the enormous fires.
“California has some of the strongest environmental laws in the country, but the impact of extreme drought conditions caused by climate change are intensifying wildfires,” Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Calif.) wrote in a op-ed for The Hill on Friday. “Contrary to his tweets, the Trump administration’s anti-environment policies, not California’s pro-environment reforms, will make matters worse and hurt our planet for generations to come.”
Real radical environmentalists would rather see loggers tied to trees in the woods as they burn!
“that fires could be stopped if forests were logged.”
Funny, just talked to a friend that is a chief faller on a fire line crew on the Ferguson fire in CA. He said that he has never seen so many beetle killed trees in his life-some dead for over two years. Said he was cutting one yesterday that before it had even started to come off the stump, broke and a good twenty feet broke off and came down near him.
He was calling me from the top of a ridge overlooking Yosemite Park. From there, he could tell that the whole side hill was full of dead beetle killed trees.
“I understand that the two large fires in WA State last year contributed roughly 40% of the total carbon out put of the State last year.”
But the Left is going nuts over the relaxation of the automobile CAFE standards. I really wonder some times if this country can be salvaged by President Trump and people like Zinke and Perdue, because surely Jerry The Fairy Brown and his band of Commie Misfits here in California will be doing everything they can to blame “global warming.” I guess that this is one place where the Federal ownership of more than half of the land in California ( and most of the forestland) will make it easier to be fixed so long as we have Trump in the White House. I just hope that the Feds get on with these programs to clean out our forests before they are all burned to the ground.
A. f. var. fasciculatum - Leaves 5–10 mm, apex sharp; shoots hairless.
A. f. var. obtusifolium - Leaves 4–6 mm, apex blunt; shoots slightly hairy."
Please distinguish...
No forest, no forest fire.
.
I’ve found that I can easily stomp my way through both even while carrying a tripod, total station and data collector.
The key is that it doesn’t tangle, and limbs break off at the ground without much effort.
Been doing it for 50 years or so. (and weigh 295 Lbs)
.
In a properly maintained forest, the trees are thinned to 6-7 feet between trees.
Presently in most forests there is no space anywhere.
Obama science.
There are huge swaths of commercial tree growing operations in this country. They are well managed, of course. How many wildfires in commercial forests have you ever heard of? 50 years ago CA started telling people they couldn’t go into the forests and bring our firewood. The old timers said it was insanity and there would be massive wildfires. Guess what? They were right...and the idiots in CA blame global warming!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajPpP3vbD5c
These daze, I find that not following a contour and then traveling (down and then) up causes great cardiovascular stress.
YMMV.
.
I sort of subscribe to your theory these days, but I used to not care way back when.
XJ Cherokees can go just about anywhere anyway.
They don’t want to debate, damn, they just want what they want!
Hell, they wont even let us log out the burnt, dead trees.
300 years ago in California, the natives (indians) would deliberately set fires to clear out the understory.
Made traveling and hunting a lot easier.
These semi-controlled burns cleaned out the low brush and small trees, the larger, healthy trees were pretty much safe from any type of massive, crowning fire (no ladder effect).
In a lot of the older and really old trees you can see the cat faces left by these old, low intensity fires.
These burns cleared the forest floor of litter without getting hot enough to sterilize the soils.
This practice allowed grasses and edible forbes to grow and improve habitat for game animals, people, etc.
Greaswood (creosote) does burn pretty hot, but it is primarily a desert plant and the clumps have a tendency to grow rather far apart.
Not really what you could call Class 14 brush; which consists mostly of Manzanita, Scrub Oak, Poison Oak, Yucca and others.
Different plants in different bioms.
Agreed. Our forests here are healthy and well managed. Even our Pine Beetle infestation has nearly been eradicated through proper management. We do have some controlled burns. Proper thinning and removal of ladder fuels is essential. We own 40 acres of land, heavy with Ponderosa pine. Mr. RR is a retired forester and takes very good care our acreage here in the Black Hills.
Put the cattle back too!!
They won’t debate, discuss or be reasoned with.
They’re true believers to rival fresh converts to islam who join ISIS and think THEY aren’t radically muslim enough.
Try arguing with ANTIFA or BLM terrorists, or feminazis.
Ben Shapiro offered $15,000 to Planned Genocide for Alex Occasional-Cortex to debate him and she turned him down, saying some pretty vile and actionable things in response.
I’ll take your commentary as rhetorical, comical, satirical.
I have heard from reliable sources that the private forests are healthy and better taken care of than our national forests that in reality belong to all of the people.
“I have heard from reliable sources that the private forests are healthy and better taken care of than our national forests that in reality belong to all of the people.”
That’s because the private forests are maintained by businessmen who need them to make a profit, while the government, “managers” are simply “recipients”of a taxpayer-funded “jobs program.”
“Randi Spivak, Public Lands Program Director at the Center for Biological Diversity.”
All you need to know about Randi!
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