Posted on 08/31/2002 10:30:01 AM PDT by forest
The federal government is great at bothering the American people with a never ending barrage of laws, rules and regulations. Yet, they cannot seem to take responsibility for anything, no matter how much they mess up.
This year alone, due to a mishmash of very stupid environmental laws and regulations, the federal government is responsible for allowing over 6.2-million acres (9,688 square miles) of good timber to burn. That's about double the annual average and this is still just August.
The federal government took possession, unconstitutionally, of 196 million acres (over 306,000 square miles, total -- for comparison, the State of Texas is 267,277 square miles) of forest land. Little of it is cared for properly. Environmentalists, and their backroom socialist controllers, seem to like it that way.
The greenies say they want to protect the habitat of every little critter, but it is quite obvious that must not be their goal. These green radicals demonstrate a very warped view of mans' relationship with nature by saying they want to protect the wild critters, then allowing them to be roasted to death.
Clearly, if the federal government owns some property, they have a duty to maintain it -- at least to a level where the neighbors will not be bothered if there is a fire on the federal land. To not do so falls in the willful negligence column.
Westerners understandably resent the federal government's "hands off" policy toward managing forests. President Bush shares their frustration. "We haven't had a strategy to clear the forest floor of built-up brush and densely-packed trees that we have seen first-hand, here and in other places around the country," Bush said.
"It is absolutely critical that, on a bipartisan basis, we move aggressively with a fuels reduction program to end this devastation," agreed Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon.
What helped to get things moving politically was a move by the Senate Majority leader, Tom Daschle (D-SD), to bypass federal regulations and allow a forest-thinning program in the fire-plagued Black Hills area of his state.
According to the Rapid City Journal: "Once one of the most productive timber states in the country, environmental appeals and the spotted owl controversy has reduced Oregon's federal timber harvests by almost 90 percent. According to Oregon Department of Forestry data, total state timber harvests in 1987 were 8 billion board feet, with 3.42 billion board feet from U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land. In 2001, timber harvests from federal lands were 400 million board feet, a drop of 88.3 percent."(1)
The Biscuit fire in southwestern Oregon passed the 500,000-acre mark last week as firefighters closed in on containment. About 17,000 people in the Illinois Valley were threatened. The fire has cost $108.8 million to fight so far. So far, about $300 million has been spent to fight wildfires in Oregon just this summer.
Because of stupid legal games by groups like the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, it's against the law to cut that wood. So, it burns. That's negligence personified.
President Bush visited Oregon recently to personally view the destruction.
While in Oregon, Bush seized the opportunity to call for a more aggressive logging policy. "It's not a Republican idea. It's not a Democratic idea. It's an American idea to preserve our forests," Bush said.
As President Bush spoke, Oregon's Biscuit fire had reached 490,000 acres -- an area two-thirds the size of Rhode Island. How many spotted owls were cooked alive? How many deer? How many jobs would those trees have provided? How many homes?
Commenting on the law Daschle hid in a bill he knew would pass, Bush said: "My attitude is, if it's good enough for South Dakota, it's good enough for Oregon."
Of course, the crazy environmentalists protested and complained. They would rather see the trees burn than be cut and provide jobs. "What he wants to do is finance this program by doing clear-cuts in old growth, and that is not what America wants," said Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA).
"What the critics need to do is come and see first-hand the effect of bad forest policy," responded the President. "While visiting the west coast this week, I saw the destructive effects of one of the worst wildfire seasons in history," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "As we work to put out the fires and bring relief to their victims, we also have a responsibility to prevent the devastation that can be caused by future fires," he added.
According to the Oct. 24 Wall Street Journal: "The East Coast environmental crowd lost no time denouncing these ideas, trotting out the same, weary charge that they are a Trojan Horse for logging. That's easy to do when you live in Bethesda and Manhattan. Noticeably silent, however, were Western Democrats. With six million acres already burned, 2,000 buildings in ashes, 20 firefighters dead and an election coming, not even card-carrying liberals want to tout the green policies that created the dry tinder for this fire season."
There should be some clear-cutting. That is obvious. We used to call those areas between the woodlands meadows. That's where the roads were built and that's where the forest fires would stop. Quite a concept, that meadow thing. Useful, too. Proper forest management should include many wide, treeless meadows.
1. http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/archives/index.inn?loc=detail&doc=/2002/August/24-1675-opin01.txt
These green radicals demonstrate a very warped view of mans' relationship with nature by saying they want to protect the wild critters, then allowing them to be roasted to death.
Clearly, if the federal government owns some property, they have a duty to maintain it -- at least to a level where the neighbors will not be bothered if there is a fire on the federal land. To not do so falls in the willful negligence column.
Commenting on the law Daschle hid in a bill he knew would pass, Bush said: "My attitude is, if it's good enough for South Dakota, it's good enough for Oregon."
There should be some clear-cutting. That is obvious. We used to call those areas between the woodlands meadows. That's where the roads were built and that's where the forest fires would stop.
This stupid liberal Club Sierra puppet is my congressman. He's going to hear from me....also, hopefully, from other WA freepers.
THANK YOU, Thank You, thank you!
It is people like you that make writing these articles worthwhile to me. Clearly, a stern response to all Congresscritters is needed.
More than likely (by not allowing controlled burning). Seems like PETA would be against eco-freaks since their position leads to the death of millions of poor, defenseless animals. ;o)
Everytime they open their mouth ...
I guess we need more protected forests from lumbering. Those loggers are a dangerous bunch.
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