Posted on 03/01/2002 9:37:48 AM PST by farmfriend
Edited on 04/12/2004 5:33:32 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The proposed Sierra Nevada framework is regularly characterized as a dispute between pro- and anti-logging interests. However, because the plan would restrict human activity more than any previous forest plan, recreational interests, including cabin owners, would be adversely affected if this framework is upheld. Members of the National Forest Homeowners are deeply alarmed.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Historical forest management
Re "Sierra Nevada games," Your Views, Jan. 17: The Sierra Nevada Framework needed reviewing. There have been repeated calls by environmentalists to limit logging in the Sierra Nevada. They throw out rhetoric about the forest being overlogged and overgrazed, but the facts say otherwise.
Wildlife biologist George Gruell just published his book "Fire in Sierra Nevada Forests -- A photographic Interpretation of Ecological Change Since 1849" (Mountain Press). In it, he shows that contrary to environmentalists' claims of overlogging, the forests are extremely overgrown.
Native American tribes burned more than 1 million acres a year to keep forests thin and meadows large. Now forests throughout California are dying from overcrowding. In some areas there are more than 300 trees per acre that naturally supported fewer than 20.
Until people stop listening to the environmental fear mongers and start looking at what was and what is, we will continue to have superhot fires that kill the very forests we desire to protect.
- Maggie Bloom, Sacramento
Legislative Director
California State Grange
"Ephemeral stream" is any trickle of water located anywhere snow is melting and flowing downhill. The proposed language states that human activity is not allowed within 150 feet of an ephemeral stream. Cabins are a human activity, as are camping, hiking, fishing, mountain biking and so on. Almost every cabin in the Sierra is surrounded by melting snow in the spring.
No human activity could occur within 300 feet of a meadow, stream bank, lake or river
That no human activity could occur within 300 feet shows their complete hatred of the average American. As a fly fisher, who never litters, catches and releases and leaves an area cleaner than when I came in (I pack out litter). I could be prevented from going withing 300 feet of a stream bank, lake or river. That makes it impossible to fish!
BTW, I admire anyone people's ability to fly fish. I would move more towards making the flies.
Great English there. Sometimes I wonder. First I misspell people's names, then I write funky. What next?
How exactly does one do this?
-bc
What concerns me more about forest policy is the closing of roads, trails, or otherwise limiting access to areas the the public used to enjoy for hiking, camping, hunting, or whatever.
I never knew what a Vernal Pool was until that trip. I noticed barbed wire around these colored puddles. The barbed wire was to keep the rancher's cattle off of these pools.
My son explained to me what the Vernal Pools were and the cost to those ranchers.
Later in May we drove up those same roads to go fly fishing in a river up in that area. The fences were still there. No Vernal pools, just dust bowls where the colored puddles were.
Your tax dollars at work.
Have a nice day.
The proposed Sierra Nevada framework
There's a high probability that whoever wrote and proposed the Sierra Nevada framework is insane and should probably be hospitalized. I'm serious. But then again, I also think 99% of members of congress have violated their oath of office at least once and most of them have several times.
"We will engage homeowners associations, offroad vehicle groups, the ski industry, and others to assure that we have carefully considered their concerns."
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