Posted on 07/06/2002 11:57:00 AM PDT by madfly
By Mitch Tobin , ARIZONA DAILY STAR
With pressure from the University of Arizona, the U.S. Forest Service has quietly begun pruning and cleaning the forest around the telescopes atop Mount Graham.
The work, within critical habitat for an endangered squirrel, comes as UA officials worry about a catastrophic wildfire roaring through a $120 million telescope complex that environmentalists and some American Indians have fought for more than a decade.
In 1996, flames from a 6,716-acre wildfire came within 200 yards of the telescopes. As the monsoon arrives, the top of the Pinaleno Mountains, 75 miles northeast of Tucson, is regularly pelted with lightning.
The pruning operation, which also involves removing "down and dead wood" from the floor of the spruce-fir forest, began Tuesday and was expected to be completed by today, said Gail Aschenbrenner, a Forest Service spokeswoman.
"It's not a huge project," she said, "but I think it will do a lot to reduce the risk without doing any thinning or tree cutting."
The endangered Mount Graham red squirrel had been seen in the past in the area being pruned and cleaned. But the animal is not known to live there now, probably because the forest has been decimated by an insect infestation, according to a Forest Service memo authorizing the work.
The memo, signed Tuesday by Coronado National Forest Supervisor John McGee, said branches will be pruned from both living and dead trees up to 10 feet off the ground within a 200-foot perimeter of UA's Large Binocular Telescope and up to 150 feet from two smaller telescopes. Crews also will remove deadwood less than 6 inches wide that is already on the forest floor. Flammable material within 10 feet of diesel storage tanks will be raked down to mineral soil.
No trees are being cut, and no vehicles are allowed off existing roads, according to the memo.
Longtime opponents of the telescope construction gave mixed reviews of the Forest Service's decision.
David Hodges, executive director of the Sky Island Alliance, was wary about the UA "coming up with new reasons why they want to expand beyond their footprint." But he said, "If this is all they're doing, we think it's acceptable."
Hodges, however, worries about the UA's desire to take the fireproofing further by cutting down trees that surround the telescopes, which lie within Southern Arizona's only old-growth spruce-fir forest.
Dr. Robin Silver of the Center for Biological Diversity
said the pruning and cleaning were "just another example of the university wasting money," since it was leaving behind the "duff" layer of debris on the forest floor that helps fire spread.
UA and Forest Service officials, however, say this week's operation is based on expert advice from Jack Cohen, a structure protection specialist at the Forest Service's fire lab in Missoula, Mont. Cohen visited Mount Graham last week.
The pruning and cleaning are "a good first step," said Buddy Powell, associate director of UA's Steward Observatory.
* Contact reporter Mitch Tobin at 573-4185 or mtobin@azstarnet.com.
It has been pulled from the AZ Daily Star's site. The story appears on Yahoo for the moment. Maybe the author knows something about it.
Contact reporter Mitch Tobin at 573-4185 or mtobin@azstarnet.com.
Also, link on Phxnews.com today for same story is dead.
Cut them down and build a work camp for the environazis and officials that are responsible for these idiotic policies. ;-)
Notice how the FS is so scared of these enviro-Nazis that they specifically say that no trees of any size will be cut. And even clearing the deadwood is abhorrent to these nutcases.
BTW, the Az Daily Star/Yahoo link is active as of the time and date of the post.
EPA or somebody put up a stink in the area when farmers/home owners were clearing inflammable scrub.
Seems some "species" of mouse (I pretty sure it was mouse) made its home in the tinderbox.
Well the immigrant did the clearing/paid the fine. After the inevitable fire season hit, his property was still
mostly intact. Not so the rest of the people, whose environment the EPA so draconianly protects in their
interest.
Stop the attacks by the wacko, extreme left-wing, enviro-nazis terrorist's on our Freedoms !!
Freedom Is Worth Fighting For !!
Molon Labe !!
How the hell do they know that a tree squirrel has a low enough population to be endangered? I don't believe a word of it because squirrels live frickin' everywhere!
Good question, and if I remeber correctly, here is the answer. The environmentalists were losing the battle to stop the telescope from being built, until suddenly and conveniently they discovered a new subspecies of squirrel on the mountain, the "Mount Graham red squirrel". The most interesting feature of the Mount Graham red squirrel is that it is genetically indistinguishable from the common squirrel in the rest of the forest. Not even the environmentalists, when confronted at a meeting with different captured squirrels, could tell which was common and which was this new subspecies. The squirrel has nothing to do with scientific classification, it was created on paper to stop the telescope from being built.
Insanity. This description, I'm sure is on page 599 of a lengthy junk-science report to the EPA.
Thanks, Sierra Clubbers.
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