Posted on 10/26/2002 11:56:48 AM PDT by madfly
Katherine Van Tuyl worked for the US Forest Service from 1974 to 1981. For several of those years she was a wildland firefighter assigned to an engine crew. In those years, forest service policy as outlined in the agency's fire plan, was to suppress every fire before 10:00 am the day following ignition, or before it reached 10 acres in size. In 1977 the ten-acre 10:00 am Policy - both went out the window and fires began to be managed by prescription. Fire Suppression became fire management. In 1988 when lightning started the fires in Yellowsone the fires were allowed to "run their natural course" and the last fire burned until the snow fell. By that time 793,880 acres or 36% of the National Park had gone up in smoke. Public reaction was intense and park staff went into overdrive to explain the positive benefits of fire. In 1994, 34 human lives were lost to devastating fires.
Using politically correct green double-speak the Park Service states "fire was part of a larger problem, one of several symptoms of Natural ecosystems becoming increasingly unstable due to altered ecological regimes," at which time it began to focus on "landscape-level resource management," and the need to involve "all affected landowners and stakeholders." All this green-speak jargon means, "let-her-burn."
The year 2000 was a record year for burning our nation's natural resources and 9,499,511 acres of valuable timber went up in flame. Not only did we lose millions of dollars worth of lumber but the government also spent $1.4 billion in fire "suppression."
Four different government agencies are now involved in fire management: the US Fire Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Regardless of how much taxpayer money goes into these agencies, don't expect them to come running to put out a fire that may be heading towards your home. You must first understand "wildland urban interface." This is the area where human development meets or intermingles with the wildlands. Each agency has developed plans that detail large areas where suppression efforts will NOT be made. If your home is in the mountains, your set of corrals or your community church is in one of these areas, the feds are going to italix let it burn. (end of italix) Federal policy states; (underline) structure protection is the responsibility of local, county and state fire organizations. end underlining Policy also states that fire will be used as the "change agent" and federal agencies will not suppress fire within the wildland urban interface.
Our own government is squandering our nation's wealth and at the same time trying to rid the land of as many stakeholders (landowners) as possible. It's part of Agenda 21 of the Biodiversity Treaty developed ten years ago at the Rio Convention on Sustainable Development sponsored by the United Nations. If we are not about to become willing sellers or signers of conservation easement, then the government can burn us out. After all - we must be moved into sustainable communities and fire is another way of getting us off the land.
© 2002 Derry Brownfield, All Rights Reserved
Two primary reasons are unbelievable paperwork costs and adding to much unneccessary work (PC based) to timber sales. Like a Charlie Brown christmas tree, federal bureaucrats simply add too many things to the timber sale contract (like chip sealing the roads, seasonal restrictions to protect endangered species etc) that the timber sales become losing propositions.
Here in Northern California on the Klamath National Forest, the annual growth is around 400 million board feet a year, each and every year, yet the Forest struggles to get 2 million board feet a year through the environmental permit process. USFS Chief Dale Bosworth testified last month that 40% of the USFS budget is spent defending timber sales from lawsuits filed by environmentalists. The USFS is hopelessly broken and should be eliminated....why spend 12 million dollars a year when all you need to impliment their agenda is ten bucks worth of kitchen matches?
Restrictions on harvesting due to the spotted owl, and Clinton's Forest Plan have reduced federal harvest by almost 90% since 1990. Our County is the size of Conneticut. Thanks to the bureaucrats, we no longer have a pine sawmill, and virtually all of the family owned sawmills are gone. Workmans Comp rates for loggers are now 50-60%. The goverment has stopped selling public timber, and now on the verge of regulating private timber harvesting to the point that it is simply impossible to profitably log your own trees here in California.
Good to see you posting replies, Mr. Forester. I always miss your comments when you have to stay away.
Now, I don't mean to pick flaws with what you have said above, but you used two words in that last sentence that indicate to the entire enviral communutty that you deliberately haven't understood one thing they have tried to educate the public about for the last 30 years!
The words "profitably" and "own" where trees are concerned should be stricken from the lexicon as they are a shameful catering to greed and averice! And this article, they will tell you, is just an alarmist right-wing attempt to frighten people who have acquired living quarters in the urban/forest interface!
When will you ever learn... When will you everrrrrrr learn? Invasive species are to be abhorred and mankind is the most noxious, invasive and deadly species as it is HE that bring fire, weeds, roads, vehicles and pollution into the sanctity of nature's homeland... the people's forests.
There now, Mr. Forester, do you not better understand the wetlands dreams of the Dirt Worshippers?
Thank you for filling (me) in (on) wetlands. Swamps breed diseases like enVIRALmentalism dontcha know? Speaking of pestulance, our local enviro Fleaface has taken to opposing the imminant incursion into Iraq, instead of slamming the farmers over the fish kill....curious.
Good news in my world of salvage logging. After much begging on my part, our local sawmill is going to give us more money for the burnt ponderosa pine logs we've been sending them. Before the mill "adjusted" the price, it was costing more money to log and truck the logs to the mill then we were getting...not good. We started logging 90 days after the fire and we found that the trees had already begun to deteriorate. Approximately 50% of the trees have blue stain already. Smaller diameter trees have been colonized by numerous wood boring insects...to the point that when you stand in a blackened thicket, you can hear the bugs eating the trees and see the sawdust fall out of the canopy...unbelievable. I see articles in the papers that wood must be salvage in 18 months after a fire. This is incorrect. Trees must be harvested within 90 days of their death so that the wood can be milled before the bugs make swiss cheese out of it. As we know, 18 months is the amount of time it takes the USFS to get a timber sale through the EnviralMental permit process....what a waste!!!
Good, but are they going to get a higher price for their finished product? Are they going to have any environmentalcases as customers at these new prices? Or, are they just going to have to absorb it as a loss? How hard is it going to be to "pass it along?"
Haven't the prices at Home Depot and Lowes been reducing, lately?
I was gonna mention that, but wasn't sure if I'd get tagged as a "tin-foiler". What we now have in Northern Cal is regional monopolies...bought and paid for by the tax exempt foundations, established by the robber barons of the turn of the century...the only difference this time around is that they use the regulatory power of government to prevent/eliminate competition. The ugly truth is that there is too much wood in the world. The timber industry's biggest problem has always been over-production. The only way to limit production (besides forming a wooden OPEC) is to keep wood off the market via regulation.
That is the billion dollar question. I see that Weyerhauser stock dropped significantly last week, due (IMHO) to the recent 29% import tax on Canadian softwood lumber. So, on the one hand, Bush is not towing the industry line, because for the most part, industry has already moved of-shore. On the other hand, Bush has yet to reform the USFS, BLM, NMFS & USFWS...the agencies that now control the rate of domestic lumber production by the timber industry. I don't know what to think at this point....crz is right, timber production is now politically controlled by lobbyists and bureaucrats.
Hell, they're even makin baseball bats out of Canadian Maple now!!!
I sure hope America is still strong enough to pull through alla this crapola. It seems like we're canabalizing everything and resting on our laurels while the leftists rush us to deconstruction and economic suffocation.
After all... If we could send a man to the moon... We need to help our fellow man since we're the richest nation on Earth... Yada, yada, yada!!!
Not for long, at the rate we're goin.
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