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I very much support a classic liberal forest management plan that encourages private ownership by responsible parties with local government oversite that's easy for the local residents to understand and help enforce.

It's been tried. It broke down, and for entirely understandable historical reasons. The power to enforce or regulate the use of resources is too much temptation for those who would use that power to manipulate resource value for profit.

After having studied this problem for over five years now, I have come to the conclusion that the problems we face in environmental management are strcutural. There are simply too many competing uses of forest land for the system you envision to properly account for the relative benefit of each constituent or the competing risks in a particular use. Although we agree that insurers, firefighters, and contractors should have their inputs, landowners must make the ultimate decisions among competing interests because someone has to be accountable for the producing resources of the land itself. It's time to start experiments with a new paradigm, one based in absolute respect for private property rights.

You may want to explore my website on the topic.

You may want to explore my website on the topic.

YOU wrote Natural Process?

Sir, you have my respect and admiration. I've had a chance to read some of the book and was most impressed.

Just faxed you over an order for my copy.

Thank you for making this work available!

"It's been tried. It broke down, ..."

My neighbors and myself resent having to accept low standards or no standards at all imposed on us by outsiders. We've had policies from outsiders shoved down our throat for 40 years and we're sick of it. We're tired of choking on smoke and breathing the stench of dead carcasses floating in our streams. Where does the federal government get the power and authority to say that the people of Idaho County, Idaho, through our local elected government, can't regulate potential sources of wood smoke in Idaho County (something not even discussed by federal regulators) or can't require that the levels of temperature, oxygen, and silt in our streams are maintained at higher standards than the federal government's. Nothing offends people living in rural areas more than being told they're to stupid to govern themselves better than the federal government is doing.