[EBUCK]

Here we go.

In one fire alone, Arizona lost 460,000 acres of timber, Faeth said. Now 800,000 acres are infested with bark beetles. Napolitano has asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide emergency assistance funds. FEMA's reply: "Call us when something's on fire."

Ya know, I seem to remember a rare breed of person especially suited to the task of forest clean-up....they were called LOGGERS you friggin dolt!

[EBUCK]

Ping-a-ling

[My2Cents]

a rare breed of person especially suited to the task of forest clean-up....they were called LOGGERS you friggin dolt!

ROFL!!!...

But, seriously...When it comes to commercial timberland, I suppose loggers are the primary custodians of the forests. We just returned from a vacation to Yellowstone. There is still evidence of the massive fires that swept through about 2/3 of the park in 1988 -- fallen/burnt logs everywhere, but also the scarred land is littered with new pine trees, measuring any where from 6- to-10-feet high. What we were told there was that after the fire, biologists found that the diversity of plant and animal life in the burned-forest increases 3-fold. Fires add nutrients to the soil. It also clears out a forest and permits other kinds of trees to take root their (prior to the fire, Yellowstone was dominated by Lodgepoll Pines -- boring monotony of Lodgepoll Pines; now other trees have taken root). So the biologists are concluding that while man-made structures in the parks need to be protected from fire, the forest itself is benefitted by an occasional "cleansing" firestorm.

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for the find and the ping!

[tubebender]

Humboldt County had two wildland fires this weekend. CDF and the USFS handled them in good order but soon the "firebugs" will be active on the Hoopa Reservation. Over two hundred last year most small because they were set in previous areas but a couple got into unburned lands and went to several hundred acres.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

The Sierra Club's fear is that the Governors' Association summit will be used as a platform by the Bush administration to push a forest management agenda that goes too far, Bader said. "The administration's emphasis is on waiving environmental safeguards and ramping up what is really just logging - simple, old-fashioned logging."

One can only hope. As long as they replace the trees...

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

"Our field trip will clearly show that logging on the Bitterroot is systematically targeting the largest, most commercially valuable trees, while leaving the smallest trees and logging slash scattered on the forest floor," said the Native Forest Network's Matthew Koehler. "They are actually increasing the fire risk."

Uh-oh. That doesn't sound too good. Why can't they clear out the other stuff and sell it to paper manufacturers?

[GladesGuru]

That is not a "friggin dolt" ... it is a crawfishin', Greenie-Weenie.

Punctuated evolution is real! Watch for lots of new species of enviro-socialists, 'cruddy 'crats, and other assorted intellectual abortions to be stalking the airwaves and pages of media. All will be spinnin the fires like a top.

Since it looks like America will have lots of fire wood in the future, I wonder if we will have enough heart pine to make 'fat lighter' kindling to start all the wood fires in all those BBQ's and wood stoves?

To avoid the tragedy of a national shortage of kindling, I hereby offer "A Modest Proposal":

To avoid the coming shortage of 'fat lighter' wood for kindling, it is suggested that we split fat 'crats as a substitute. An EPA exemption for the resulting air pollution may be necessary.