Seems like Enron and WorldCom aren't the only organizations having trouble getting their numbers straight.
A recent General Accounting Office (GAO) report was cause for celebration in the environmental community when the report claimed that of all the hazardous fuels reductions projects for the Forest Service in 2001, fewer than one percent were appealed by environmental activists.
With wildfires burning up the West, the report took the heat off of these groups, who were being blamed for the flames by western governors.
The New York Times editorialized about misplaced blame. Too soon. The Wall Street Journal quickly editorialized back, this time with the real numbers. Seems someone in the GAO played a little loose with the accounting numbers. According to the Wall Street Journal, "It turns out nearly half (48%) of all the Service's plans for getting rid of the hazardous fuels were appealed by outside groups. In the Northern region...every single one of its projects for fiscal year 2001-2002--53 in total--was appealed...The Forest Service also names those that launch the most appeals. Surprise, surprise, they include the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Wildnerness Society and others--the very same folks who held up the (obviously) incorrect GAO report and claimed it was true."
Representatives of these were quick to write letters and crow about the false report in national and local newspapers. Here, in Oregon, Jeanette Russell of the National Forest Protection Alliance in Missoula, Montana published a letter in the Oregonian trying to deflect the blame aimed at environmental groups by elected officials.
Russell wrote in her June letter, "The facts tell different story: Last year, the General Accounting Office was asked by Idaho's pro-logging Sen. Larry Craig to investigate fuel-reduction projects.
"Sen. Craig and others crying 'analysis paralysis' were hoping the investigation could be used to support their efforts to weaken out nation's environmental laws. But the GAO reported that of the 1,671 fuel-reduction projects on national forest lands during FY 2001, not one had been litigated. Only 1 percent had been appealed.
"The environmental community supports a common-sense approach that will help protect homes from forest fires. A home's survival rate is increased 85-95 percent if the homeowner has installed a nonflammable roof and cleared flammable material within 30 feet of the home.
"If elected officials are serious about protecting communities from wildfires, they should stop using environmentalists as scapegoats and heed the advice of the Forest Service's own fire researchers: Wildfire protection begins at home, not with more logging and roadbuilding."
Russell should get her facts straight before spouting off about the whys and hows of wildfire protection. Wildfires have now consumed more that 3.5 million acres of land, including hundreds of homes, many with the very non-flammable roofs and cleared materials that Russell claims should have protected them. No doubt those whose homes and lands were saved from the fires are grateful for the manpower and equipment that saved them--and the roads that got them there.
Will there be a day of reckoning, a call for accountability for those who "Enroned" the facts about forest management and wildfire protection? Will environmental groups who have fudged the facts and made false claims about effective forest science be held responsible for their resulting damage? Or is it only publicly-held companies, not publicly-funded companies, that are responsible for accurate business practices?
This is from the current issue of BrainstormNW magazine. It's not on their website yet so I had to type it out myself. Any typos are mine. I just wanted you to see this before I leave on my trip. Gramps, can you ping a few folks to this post?