Posted on 07/27/2002 9:38:58 AM PDT by commiefighter
The Senate’s leading Democrat quietly slipped into a spending bill language exempting his home state of South Dakota from environmental regulations that many blame for devastating fires in the West during the last few years, the Washington Times reported on July 24th. Senator Tom Daschle said that the language to expedite logging and clearing in overgrown forests prone to explode in fire, was essential to reduce unmanaged timber growth, according to the Times. The environmental regulations, which prohibit logging, trail improvement, or even removal of dead and infested fallen trees, should be waved “due to extraordinary circumstances,” Daschle’s exemption reads. “As we have seen in the last several weeks, the fire danger in the Black Hills is high and we need to get crews on the ground as soon as possible to reduce this risk and protect property and lives,” Daschle said in a statement after a late committee hearing that approved the legislation. He did not address how the situation in his home state is different from the threats to California’s redwoods, or forests in Colorado, Arizona or Oregon--which are also suffering from legislated neglect due to nonsensical “roadless” policies.
In 1976, a Democratic congress passed the National Forest Management Act which turned decision-making on its head, transferring authority from the professional Forest Service to “environmentalists.” Timber harvesting declined, and the Endangered Species Act created new obstacles to knowledgeable management. As a result, from 1985 to 1998 the average acreage burned exploded to 670,018 acres per year--a four-fold increase. In recent years, overgrown forests fed the devastating fires at Los Alamos and throughout the west, the cost was over $500 million. It is estimated that 2 million acres of timber were lost in the year 2000, an all time high. Clinton-Gore eco-nonsense contributed to this disaster, by slashing $100 million from fire fighting proposals to increase land acquisitions. Nine firefighters were killed in the year 2000. More than 50,000 fires have torched 3.7 million acres this summer, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
Daschle’s legislation was tucked inside the defense supplemental spending bill, which passed the House July 23rd. It exempts South Dakota from the National Forest Management (?) Act and the National Environmental Policy (?) Act, and makes his action not subject to judicial review by any US court, thus handcuffing the same environmental activists whom his party normally assists to insure that active forest management is thwarted. “More than 20 lawsuits, appeals or reviews are blocking timber projects to remove fuel from the Black Hills,” writes Audrey Hudson in the Times. Daschle’s move not only thwarts the environmentalists’ utopian “pristine” forest policies, but provides relief for both the woodlands and the state’s beleaguered forest products industry, whose workers have suffered layoffs and depression.
Interestingly, legislation remarkably similar to Daschle’s was included in the recently passed Farm Bill by Representative John Thune of South Dakota, who is challenging Tim Johnson for the junior senator’s seat in that state. Congressional aides say that Daschle and Johnson killed the provision introduced by Thune and were severely challenged for their actions by South Dakotans. This may have prompted their change of heart. Reportedly, the Sierra Club and National Wilderness Society signed off on the proposal as the “only way to expedite wildfire prevention.” Is this just another way of saying that their policies are ultimately destructive for the forests as well as bad for the economy? It’s time to take back our country--starting with the forests--by voting out hypocritical liberals. And tell your Congressman and Senators that Daschle’s policy reversal to ...”expedite wildfire prevention” is good for all 50 states.
commiefighter.
And may I ask, just what is an environmentalist conservative.
The pristine theory is fairly comparable to the California energy plan. Regulate the use but not the growth.
about a half degree.... as if a half degree could be the difference in a forest fire.
No.. the real reason for the out of control forest fires is Clinton-era environmental regulation that prevented the clearing of old growth debris, the construction of fire roads and the philosophy of "let it burn because burning is natural."
It's the other way around - global warming is increasing because of forest fires.
So there...
Really? And you know this because... ?
You know that we're in a period of solar max, don't you?
Whenever there is a very wet year, it increases the amount of undergrowth and when that dries later in the summer, it causes a higher fire danger because there is more fuel.
So, when we have very dry years we have a high fire danger and when we have very wet years we have a high fire danger. Goldilocks would be confused. However the Forest Service has a bear to clarify the whole thing for all of us.
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