Again, would the local Freepers in this area please post what you have heard or seen.
Sounds like other Senators want the same exemptions to manage the forests/wildlands in their states that Mullah Shorty Da$$hole wants: (If It's Good Enough for Da$$hole's Voters, It's good enough for the other states)
Thank heaven for Hotshots, and thank YOU for all the hard work in bringing us updated information, Grampa.
Adding all the links to your related posts is a GREAT idea, especially for those who haven't been following the situation out there as closely as some have.
"One complication was a chance of rain on Monday."
The weather is cooling down quite a bit. I hope the cool weather makes it all the way down there. We are supposed to have rain up here on Sunday, but I understand that the firefighters don't want rain as it would hinder their backfires and, possibly, may contain more lightening.
So, here's hoping that they get the cooler weather, and no rain.
I, also, saw on the news last night that they are considering changing from a 30 minute evacuation to a 24 hour evacuation. The firefighters seem to be cautiously optimistic.
Thanks for the ping, madfly!
Wildfires torch illegal marijuana gardens in southern Oregon
CAVE JUNCTION - A wildfire raging through southern Oregon has burned more than trees - illegal marijuana gardens are going up in expensive puffs of smoke, police say.
"We're getting reports from some of the firefighters out there of (marijuana) grows," said Lt. Lee Harman of the Josephine County sheriff's office. "But we're not gonna put our Marijuana Eradication Team (ahead) of the firefighters."
Some of the world's highest-grade marijuana is grown in the Siskiyou National Forest and the Kalmiopsis Wilderness, where the Florence and Sour Biscuit fires have consumed about 183,000 acres.
It's unclear how much marijuana is burning as the two fires move through the mountains.
Lt. Brian Anderson, who once headed the sheriff's Marijuana Eradication Team, said he couldn't begin to guess how the burning of marijuana plants on federal lands might affect the local economy.
But some people familiar with growing cannabis said wildfires this late in the summer could have a devastating impact on serious growers' gardens.
Marijuana has been a cash crop in the southwestern Oregon county since at least the mid-1960s. But by 1976, new methods of growing the plants caught hold in and around the verdant Illinois Valley, once hailed as the Italy of Oregon for its abundant agriculture.
(Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
All of this ties in. These green eco terrorists are liars, they plant evidence, they manipulate data to achieve their eco terrorist agendas.
It is time for America to put a choke chain on these Green Pit Bulls and choke them down to simpering little puppies.
Scientists chastise Forest Service chief 07/27/02
MICHAEL MILSTEIN
A group of top Northwest scientists has fired back at U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth, saying the agency has only itself to blame for years of inaction that have turned Western forests into tinderboxes.
In a scathing letter to a congressional committee that earlier heard from Bosworth, the six scientists said the forest chief misrepresented their work to Congress and falsely implied that the Forest Service is bogged down by unwieldy policies and questionable science.
"Why the chief did it, only he knows," said Robert Beschta, an Oregon State University forestry professor who signed the letter.
Since becoming chief last year, Bosworth has blamed "analysis paralysis" for slowing agency projects, from Northwest timber sales to bridge repairs. A new Forest Service report titled "The Process Predicament" says procedural tangles have held up projects to thin clogged, flammable forests left from decades of fire suppression.
But the scientists from the University of Washington, Oregon State, Idaho State University, Pacific Rivers Council and the Center for Biological Diversity said the Forest Service is mired in conflict because it pushes logging but neglects such pressing issues as decaying roads and the desperate need to thin forests ripe for fires.
"The agency often strives to ignore or deny the vast body of knowledge that has accumulated in recent decades, and instead favors antiquated policies," the scientists said in the letter to the House Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health.
Such direction "is not only a recipe for controversy, but also a recipe for the continued deterioration of forested landscapes," they said. "Humans, too, suffer when these resources are degraded, as will often happen if the forest practices advocated by the chief and 'The Process Predicament' report are continued."
The rebuke of Bosworth, a forester, contrasts with the broad support that former Chief Mike Dombeck, a fisheries biologist, claimed among many scientists. So far it has drawn no response from Bosworth or the subcommittee.
The letter was prompted by Bosworth's June testimony about the "procedural knot" that he says binds the Forest Service, driving up costs and delaying decisions. Bosworth said he could not think of a better example of the "costly, complex and time-consuming" demands than a 1995 report by eight Northwest scientists.
The Beschta Report, named for the Oregon State professor who was its lead author, recommended ways to avoid environmental damage while salvaging leftover wood from burned forests. Three of the authors were based at the time at Oregon State, with others from the University of Montana, University of Washington, Idaho State, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.
The report said fires play a vital ecological role in Western forests and advocated a "conservative approach" to logging or reseeding of burned terrain. It found little evidence that logging charred stands would slow future fires and said such cutting might do more damage than the fires.
"In this light, there is little reason to believe post-fire salvage logging has any ecological benefits," said the report, written at the behest of the Eugene-based Pacific Rivers Council, a conservation group.
Speaking to Congress, Bosworth called the report "an unpublished document of questionable science proposed for an advocacy group that has never been peer-reviewed."
Environmental groups have blocked salvage logging projects, including some in Oregon and Washington, by alleging in appeals and lawsuits that the Forest Service had not weighed the principles in the Beschta report.
It is, Bosworth said, a "powerful example of the incentive for land managers to fill, or overstuff, (decision) documents with excessive amounts of information -- even if the information is of questionable relevance and does not illuminate the reasons for the decision."
But scientists who wrote the report said Bosworth distorted their work and misled Congress, blaming them for the failings of the Forest Service's outdated thinking.
"The chief is in serious error to lay it back at the doorstep of scientists, who are saying, 'Pay attention to the ramifications of what you do,' " said David Perry, an emeritus professor of ecosystem studies at Oregon State who is a member of the National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry.
Bosworth's testimony "just flies in the face of the facts," said James Karr, a professor of aquatic sciences and zoology at the University of Washington.
"The problem is that the Forest Service used to make decisions based on limited understanding of the consequences, and nobody questioned that," he said. "When they continue to ignore the consequences, and what science tells them, they don't get to do what they want, and they blame it on 'analysis paralysis.' "
The Beschta Report was peer-reviewed by researchers at Oregon State and more than 50 others who endorsed it in a letter to the president, its authors said. Federal courts have upheld the findings, and the Forest Service itself directed field offices to consider the report when planning projects.
"It was peer-reviewed more than most peer-reviewed papers are," Karr said, "and far more than the Forest Service's own work is peer-reviewed."
Beschta, the lead author, said the Forest Service never introduced any studies to counter the report's conclusions. "If the chief thinks the science is questionable, they've had seven years to provide a response, but there's been none."
Deteriorating forest roads and overgrown, flammable stands pose the most immediate threats to forests, the scientists told Congress.
"Despite widespread recognition of these facts, the (Forest Service) diverts staff and money to extraordinarily costly salvage logging projects at the expense of reducing the . . . the road network or undertaking needed fine-fuels reductions in unburned forests," they said.
"There's this huge need to do fuel reduction, yet they seem to have this huge interest in doing salvage logging," Beschta said. "They could have been aggressively thinning forests over the last decade, and I don't know if they could have made a dent, but they certainly could have gotten further than they have." Reach Michael Milstein at 503-294-7689 or at michaelmilstein@news.oregonian.com.
Copyright 2002 Oregon Live. All Rights Reserved.'t hurt anything to post again.
DeFour wildland firefighters were killed in July when they were trapped by rapid-fire progress in a forest fire in Washington State.
Three firefighters were killed in the crash of a firefighting helicopter in Montana during August.
Two firefighters were killed when two firefighting aircraft collided in midair while fighting a wildfire in California during August.
A total of 14 firefighters died in association with wildfire incidents in Wildland fires 2001
Flames visible from Grants Pass the evening of 8-1-02
8/01/02 sunset in Grants Pass. The smoke made great colors.
Back burning between Selma & Kerby
Hummingbird sitting on a flower in Kerby with the burn in the background
I99 sign that says "get US out of the U.N." with fire in the background...
