Blue Planet: Smokey Bear s bad advice

UPI Environment News ^ | 6/21/2002 | By Dan Whipple

[kaktuskid]

THIN THE DAMN TREES!!!

[Bommer]

Exactly! Or section off vast amounts of forests into sectors, stripping trees for 150 yards between other trees in 1 square mile sections, thus creating fire breaks that will slow fires down as well as allow easier access into the areas on fire. Half the battle is just getting to the blaze.

[ZOOKER]

THIN THE DAMN TREES!!!

Yeah, leaving some roads for firefighter access might make sense, too.

[RightWhale]

If people were allowed in to pick up deadwood and branches were trimmed up to head height, fires wouldn't have so much fuel. Besides that, wildlife might go back into the woods, you would have habitat again. Once it's overgrown even birds won't go in there, not to mention moose.

[alaskanfan]

I thin out the alder and use it to smoke my fish. I cut down the sitka spruce and build a fire to keep me warm. I feel very lucky when I get some birch. Works good in both applications.

[SauronOfMordor]

If people were allowed in to pick up deadwood and branches were trimmed up to head height, fires wouldn't have so much fuel. Besides that, wildlife might go back into the woods, you would have habitat again. Once it's overgrown even birds won't go in there, not to mention moose.

The white settlers in the US have never seen a "natural" forest. The deer-rich forests the early settlers saw was the result of Indian forest-management thru the use of controlled burns

Periodic deliberately-set fires thinned out the forest, allowing more wildlife for hunting, as well as providing a better environment for berries, particularly huckleberry

[snopercod]

flagging for later... [I have already previewed or do not wish to preview this composition. I agree to hold Robinson-DeFehr Consulting, LLC blameless for all mis-spellings and/or stupid comments I might make, and also if I fall off my office chair due to intoxication or uncontrollable laughter, and also for any carpal tunnel syndrome or blood-pressure transients which I might contract while FReeping.]

[snopercod]

We use old tires down here in the woods of North Carolina.

[Carry_Okie]

ROTFLMAO!

[RightWhale]

You smoke your trout with tire smoke?

[The KG9 Kid]

It was once said that there are more trees in the wild in America now than there were during the Pilgrims' time.

Upon hearing that, environmentalists hissed.

This fire lends a lot of evidence to that. Man's so-called stewardship of the wilderness has created a tinderbox.

[Carry_Okie]

Yep. Have you seen Tom Bonnicksen's book?

Bonnicksen, Thomas M.; Department of Forest Science, Texas A&M University; AMERICA’S ANCIENT FORESTS, From the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2000.

[SauronOfMordor]

I might have seen a review of the book. The Indian-fire factoid stuck in my head, and when I saw this thread, I did a google search.

[Carry_Okie]

You smoke your trout with tire smoke?

I knew there was a reason I detested blackened fish.

[snopercod]

You smoke your trout with tire smoke?

Sure, when we run out of creosoted telephone pole stumps. ;-)

[alaskanfan]

I tried that once, but it gave the fish a funny taste.

[CyberCowboy777]

Bump

[Carry_Okie]

This thead is headed into a direction that is truly dangerous: The art of smoking fish in the backwoods of North Carolina. (I can hear the screaming of terrified realtors even as I type.)

[Carry_Okie]

From MY book (because it's better than all those others :)):

The current state of redwood forests is thus reflective of the successes of his-toric management policies as well as their unintended consequences. That history should serve as a cause for precaution: The policies of the last 150 years have much in common with current activist proposals:

• They presupposed democratic control of land.
• They were based upon the political value systems of the day.
• They mandated single methodologies over widely diverse conditions.
• They depressed the profitability of privately held forestland.
• They confiscated the use of the forest for the exclusive benefit of politically dominant urban populations.
• They were enacted through lawsuits.
• There were rapid changes with enormous economic consequences, under a crisis mentality and without accounting for side effects.

Someday, the ecologists of the future may well hold our generation in as much contempt as many now view those of the past; but perhaps not for the reasons many environmentalists might suspect.