[Carry_Okie]

It is these groups that need to be exposed as the frauds that they are and marginalized in the debate.

What we are seeing in the nation's forests is inherent to public ownership of land. What we need is an alternative to civic control, a management system capable of gradually privatizing land use control in a responisble fashion.

So, I invented one.

[TroutStalker]

I agree with your method 100%. I was attempting to do the same thing with land I once owned in Pennsylvania.

[r9etb]

What we are seeing in the nation's forests is inherent to public ownership of land.

No, it's not. Even into the '60s and early '70s there used to be a lot of very good forest management out west. The undergrowth problem that's driving these fires is really only about 25 years old.

The problems are more properly blamed on the perversion of the legal system and the enviro-politicization of the USFS and like agencies -- and also on the polluters whose excesses gave the enviro-extremists their leverage.