How can they do that when they get sued nearly every time they try? Who brings those suits? Who sponsors those groups? EarthJustice ring a bell?
I see everyone taking pot-shots and posturing to hurt everyone else on this issue. In fact, we all own a little of the blame for how we have removed fire from it's rightful place in forest ecosystems, and when the retoric cools off some, maybe we can all put the blame-game aside, roll up our sleeves, and work to make and keep healthy the forest we all love - and fight over so much.
If you have read my work, you know that I have made exactly that commitment. This is no potshot. It is a body blow at an arrogant batch of urban lawyers who have never picked up a Pulaski in their lives.
No, it is time for these thugs in the Sierra Club to OWN the damage that they have done, and it isn't just fire. IMHO it is their aversion to herbicides abetting weeds excaping containment. In addition, it is the way they have driven production offshore, and impoverished landowners who would do that maintenance if they weren't putting EVERY AVAILABLE DIME into legal battles with idiot wack-jobs who don't know what they are talking about, and you DO know what I mean.
No, the shoe fits. These people have thrown every single hateful term in the book at landowners who didn't deserve it. The have witlessly abetted the investors who funded the very NGOs who fund EF! so that THEY could make bigger bucks on those offshore investments.
I hate to break it to you, but that is why those investors have poured BILLIONS into environmental NGOs every year. So now you know why Pew (SUNOCO) gave $100 million to the Tides Foundation alone.
Sierra Club Sweating AZ Fires! (my title)
We should all work together promote healthy forest management and encourage the Forest Service to invest in fire prevention through thinning the forests near communities, where these activities will do the most good. With scarce dollars and millions of acres of smaller dense trees, the top priority should be to focus on thinning forests closest to communities (within 1/2 mile of structures, according to the experts) and on homeowners clearing away brush and wood from next to their houses and freeing their roofs of twigs and needles.
Very few forest thinning projects have been appealed, let alone litigated. Nearly a year ago the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, looked at all 1,671 Forest Service fire prevention projects on the national forests and found that
only 20 had been challenged by industry, recreation, individual or environmental interests. WRONG
Only one was in Arizona near Flagstaff, and all the parties reached a compromise. The Forest Service is simply not being stalled on fire prevention by citizen groups; their controversies come from continuing to log the few remaining fire resistant, old growth trees for timber sales.Please take a moment to write and let your voice be heard. Don't forget to keep your letters brief (200 words or less is best) and be sure to include your name, address and a daytime phone number. Thank you!