Posted on 08/20/2002 4:25:42 AM PDT by kattracks
LOS ANGELES, Aug 19, 2002 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- With President Bush expected this week to call for a scaling back of overgrown forests that have turned into fire hazards, the Wilderness Society said Monday that the environmental movement should not be blamed for wildfires that have burned through nearly 6 million acres this year.
The organization issued a statement denying charges from some western lawmakers that environmentalists have used legal challenges to derail efforts to clear out forest areas thick with tinder-dry brush and small trees and, instead, argued that the U.S. Forest Service was too focused on the commercial aspects of the task.
"Severe drought has caused an above average number of forest fires," the Wilderness Society said. "As the blame game continues, the U.S. Forest Service clearly must improve its performance if it is to achieve the goal of the National Fire Plan -- prioritizing our limited resources to protect lives and homes."
Forest areas that have grown thick with brush and saplings have become a major area of concern for firefighters who view the underbrush as a "ladder fuel" that allow flames to leap into the vulnerable tops of older, larger trees and trigger the devastating canopy fires that are extremely difficult to contain and can kill entire stands of timber.
The National Fire Plan endorses the notion of clearing out areas that have become overgrown so that fires, which are a natural component of the ecology of western mountain forests, do not pose such a dire threat. The president, who is scheduled to speak on the subject of wildfires Thursday in rural Oregon, is expected to call for an acceleration of fuels reduction efforts in the West.
Western senators and governors have made their presence known at appearances just behind the fire lines in Oregon, Arizona and Colorado. Those visits have often included demands that the Forest Service begin "treating" more acres to remove the fire threat, and sometimes there have been calls for changes in environmental regulations to make more it difficult to block a fuel-thinning project.
It is not known if Bush will announce any such regulatory changes, but the Wilderness Society repeated earlier statements from environmental groups that most treatment projects sail through the approval process unchallenged while those that were challenged were not necessarily contested by the green community.
Citing a General Accounting Office report on fuel reduction in 2001, the Wilderness Society found that only 1 percent of 1,671 proposed projects were "appealed by any interested party, including recreation groups, conservationists, industry interests or individuals."
The same report, the group said, was critical of the Forest Service for tending to focus its fuels-reduction plans in areas where commercially valuable timber was located rather than on areas that had the highest fire hazards.
The Forest Service, however, contends that it needs to include some larger trees in their treatment plans as financial incentive to attract private companies to perform the labor-intensive work since there is little, if any, commercial value in saplings and dead brush.
The Los Angeles Times said Monday that in California, the lion's share of funding for treatment projects was spent in the remote Plumas and Lassen National Forests of Northern California while the Angeles National Forest outside Los Angeles was at the bottom of the funding list even though it is near many more homes and other structures that could be threatened by wildfire.
Forestry officials said Northern California received the primary focus due to its residents; environmentalists and loggers were all in agreement that the forest floor needed a good cleaning and basically agreed to support treatment projects that did not involve old-growth timber stands.
In Southern California, officials told the Times, the situation was more complicated because of funding limits and objections to large amounts of smoke and traffic from heavy logging equipment.
"Some of it is money and not having the funding to do a large number of acres," said Don Feser, forest fire chief for the Angeles. "But more restrictive is just the few days that we can burn."
Bush will be speaking Thursday in a state that has had to bear much of the brunt of the 2002 fire season. More than 895,000 acres in Oregon have been scorched by wildfire this year, second only to the more than 2 million acres in remote areas of Alaska where fires are often allowed to burn themselves out.
The largest active fire in the nation is in southwest Oregon. The Biscuit Fire that began July 13 was up to nearly 449,000 acres Monday and 40-percent contained.
Fires were burning in a total of 11 states, and the National Weather Service had fire weather watches and warnings posted late Monday in Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and South Dakota.
By HIL ANDERSON
Copyright 2002 by United Press International.
I'm expecting these good folks to listen closely to President Bush's speech, and then use legal challenges to derail efforts to clear out forest areas thick with tinder-dry brush.
You give them too much credit. IMO almost all of the Left's craziness comes down to this: If an idea feels good, then it is good.
The first idea is "leave the forest alone". Now, isn't that nice? The other idea is "protect the forest". That's a nice idea too, isn't it? But, taken together, this means: let fallen limbs and trees build up. Do not clear this tinder. A waist-deep layer of dry rotting wood is perfectly fine for a forest. Also, if a small fire starts, make sure to put it out. This saves the forest (today) but lets that layer of dry, dead wood get ever higher.
Then, when a fire gets out of control and cannot be stopped, it will become massively out of control and huge areas of the forest will be destroyed. All because the Leftists had two nice ideas, but didn't understand the big picture.
Well, there's a bit more than ferns and ivy on the forest floor. Think of all the young trees. Think of everything the forest creatures eat (they don't each up to eat evergreens 10 feet off the ground). But the most important fuel for the fire are the rotting logs you mention. Fallen limbs and dead trees left standing (or fallen over). These are very dry and in some areas are several feet deep. It turns the forest into one very large fireplace. Kindling on the bottom, large logs on the top. It's perfect if you want a massive fire.
Speaking as someone who used to do a lot of backpacking I know that thick underbrush and dense sapling growth is not a characteristic of a mature forest. It IS a characteristic of a young forest or a cleared area that gets a lot of sunlight. I am not saying a mature forest is fireproof,...yes it has logs and leaves..I am just puzzled over this particular point which doesn't jibe with my own direct observations.
Click in the key words, Rural Cleansing, in the key word section of this thread for an incredible one month of threads re these Green Rural Cleansing Fires across Oregon.
Here's an article by nunya bidness (Sean Finnegan) written for Sierra Times. He will be writing regular updates on the Sawgrass Rebellion for ST. This article includes a review of Carry_Okie's book.
Intended Consequences: Natural Process v. Environmental Arrogance By Sean Finnegan
In their mind, all Americans should be in the cities and the forests should be off limits. Burning down millions of acres inm order to take out a few hundred houses helps the cause, especially if the owners don't rebuild. The end justifies the means.
EBUCK
It's called "Rural Clensing." - Their objective is to implement U.N. Agenda 21, which calls for forcing people out of rural areas and into the teeming urban cesspools where they are more easily controlled.
The environmental angle is a ruse to cover up a deceitful, and depraved social agenda.
What you describe is what happens in isolated meadow lands when a forest is allowed to grow out of control. - When one of these areas burns, it is usually because a fire in the surrounding normal forest has crowned out, and the result is total and permanent destruction.
Trees should never be allowed to fill a meadow, as that will render the area useless as habitat for deer, moose, elk, and other grazing/foraging animals, as well as limiting the food sources of raptors, which require extensive grass and low brush areas to supply the rodents for their diet.
Pres. Bush will arrive at the Medford Airport Thursday on Air Force One at 9:55 a.m.(pacific) and then tour some of the fire damage. He will make his speech at the Compton Arena at the Jackson County Fairgrounds in Central Point at 12:45 p.m. The speech is by ticket only, so I do not know if there will be any other access for the public.
I will try to take pictures!!
We would not have west nile virus if not for these environwackos banning DDT and next will be a ban on farting...as they will say this gas is harmful as well. :-)
They are also desperate. The lies, distortions and half-truths are getting exposed daily, just like their mommy organization, the DNC.
We all know what a cornered and wounded wild animal is capable of doing, and I think we are starting to witness the viscious fight coming.
I read the WSJ article when it first came out. Talk about a stake in the heart. I love that paper.
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