FIRE! Press Release Issued.

Fighting Irresponsible Radical Environmentalism (FIRE!) has installed a new billboard 1/2 mile north of exit 35, I-5, visible from the Northbound lanes, between Central Point and Gold Hill.

Thank You EnvironMENTALists for Making the 2002 Fire Season All It Could Be! ****Image Attached****

Eric Buckner and numerous members of the popular conservative Internet forum, FreeRepublic.com, funded the billboard. Their purpose was to express outrage at the severity of recent Oregon wildfires due to the irresponsible and ignorant behavior of environmental activists.

Buckner explains, "It's time we brought the burden of accountability to environmentalists and their parent groups for the failure of their policies. Environmentalists, and the apologist politicians they control, bear full responsibility for the severity of the West's wildfire situation. Anytime someone is not held accountable for the results of their actions, disaster is the result."

The group believes that fire may be a part of the natural order, but not after 80 years of fire suppression, and NOT in the presence of noxious weeds. Environmentalists, in their hatred of the timber industry, have destroyed the capability to prevent such disasters.

“Tens of thousands are out of work, millions of acres are scorched and who's to blame? Environmentalists and their insane "hands-off" policies. The West has been building up to this for decades. All this time, environmentalists have barred every attempt to avert disaster. They were warned and they didn’t believe it. They appealed every ruling that went against them. They protested every battle they lost until they got their way. Well, they got their way and look where it got us. Look at the 'former' Kalmiopsis Wilderness (otherwise known as the Biscuit Fire). Look at the death and suffering of wildlife. It was totally unnecessary.”

“We have hundreds of thousands of acres, denuded as effectively as any clear-cut. After the fire, weeds are the first to recover, and spread with minimal competition from native plants. Come winter, rivers and streams will be choked with eroded mud. If it burns again in a few years, the damage may be irreversible.

“The real irony is that in their insane and misguided attempts to protect the forests, waterways, and fauna, environmentalists have sealed the fate of those very same forests, waterways, and fauna by disallowing human intervention. This isn’t about whether we care about nature. This is about who is going to fix it, how will it be paid for, how to verify and assure accountability that the job will be done right.

“We believe that private industry can do that job better than politicians, lawyers, and urban activists without a clue. Private Property rights, recreational/commercial land usage and water rights are a big issue with us. We plan to continue on the same path in the future. Perhaps doing similar things in states like Arizona, New Mexico, California and South Dakota.”

Sorry it took so long to respond, we had a death in the family.

You're not the crackpot that said that the environmentalists wanted this fire so they could take away private land are you ?

Let's get back to reality.

Seeing as you still haven’t read what I wrote for what it says, and instead interpret it to validate your opinion, it appears to me that you have no connection to reality at all.

You see only what you want to see when even your own posts demonsrate otherwise.

Projecting again I see.

Yes the government is in control of land ( all land to one extent or another ) and yes the forest service is responsible for this mess , not the private environmentalists. You continue to agree with me while you are saying that I am wrong.

No, the Constitution says the national government does NOT own land, that it has illegally sequestered it is immaterial to the Constitutional issue. The only means it has to control that land is military. So if you think that is a legitimate state of affairs, I must conclude that you are comfortable with a police state.

I don’t think government land ownership is good for the land, just like I don’t think government business ownership is good for the economy. The cases I cited include events that predate the existence of National Forests or the Forest Service. So you see, I just see the Forest Service is simply a symptom of the same unconstitutional system. You chose to ignore that because you like government land ownership. You think you can control that despite over a hundred years of evidence to the contrary.

The only reason you still support government land preservation is that you perceive that you may have the democratic mandate to take control. Unfortunately, that democratic claim is totally controlled by the most radical elements of the environmental movement and they are paid off by those same economic interests as we discussed. So you see, what you think is logical forest management will never be manifested by politics. To believe it possible is totally unrealistic.

Making the national forests private is your answer ? Come down to Earth for a moment. That isn't going to happen in the next hundred years and probably forever.

I wouldn’t be so certain. The split estate has already been established in law; but then you don’t know or care what that means. It isn’t a difficult incremental road from there, legally speaking, but then, what do you know about that? Nothing. So, simply because you don’t know or understand the options, you assume they don’t exist. Go right on assuming like a good lemming.

That solution is no solution any more than communism was a solution to environmental problems. They don't work in the real world because they are contrary to human nature. That is why we have an SEC. Or do you think that the SEC is a communist organization stifling free trade that needs to be eradicated ?

Your knowledge about economics is about as deep as your knowledge about forests, which isn’t.

If you think regulation is a way to assure honesty, consider that Joe Kennedy was the first chair of the SEC. So if you think that is a way to insure integrity in business, I have news for you. The conditions that led to the SEC were induced as a political move by an unconstitutional, government-allocated money monopoly: the Federal Reserve. They did it to bring you martial law, which exists to this day (that police state you are so fond of). Well, how’s that working?

As long as the power to control markets is political, that power will remain a magnet for corruption. Which is why we got Enron, because of special favors allotted by both Robert Rubin and Clinton’s SEC appointees. Chump.

Now lets consider the real solutions instead of fantasy ones.

"Real" being limited to your opinion? No thanks.

We must have thining of small trees and brush. Cutting down the largest trees is part of what caused this problem. The biggest cause of the broblem , as your more lucid posts seem to agree , was fire supression.

Well that’s strike one for your "reality." The US government can’t and won’t pay for that. So I guess it isn’t real. The projected cost of Bush’s Healthy Forests programme is estimated at $1,400 per acre. We are talking about 70 million acres currently at risk that totals to approximately $98 BILLION without adjusting for inflation or overhead. Unfortunately, it’s worse than that because they never catch up with the overstocking problem they have because they intend to thin at a rate that is exceeded by the rate of growth. For example, in California, Oregon, and Washington the plan is to thin approximately 1 billion board feet per year. California alone produces several times that much. So you see, the only thing that is unsustainable about the plan is that it can never reach equilibrium before the forests blow sky high but they’ll waste a bucket load of money trying.

So you see, your "plan" has nothing to do with reality because it hopelessly underestimates the scope of the problem. On your way to recovery, might I suggest that we go a little deeper into this fantasy of yours.

Strike two is that the money allocated for thinning will NEVER get there and there is a precedent to support that claim. If you remember (which I doubt), Bruce Babbit allocated $2 BILLION dollars in thinning money after combusting 7 MILLION ACRES in the 2000 fire season. Where did the money go? The US Forest Service allots 40% of its total budget to… legal costs. Legal costs to deal with those environmentalists you say aren’t a problem. So you see, there’s already a precedent under a socialist administration demonstrating that they don’t get thinning done either. What you propose thus has absolutely nothing to do with the reality of government land ownership, with which you have yet to come to grips.

No, you think you can wave your hand and people will start doing what is "obviously logical" (to you), assuming that those in power want healthy forests, including the power structure in the environmental move-mint. Sorry to bring you back to reality, but they don’t give a damn about that because the environmental move-mint is dominated by corporate interests. What they want is power, power derived and justified by continuing environmental problems.

That is also where the only good long term solution is. We can't let them all burn out completely particularely now that we ( not environmentalists ) have scewed up the forests so badly.

That is what WILL happen as long as government owns that land. Oh, and learn how to spell in English. Please? Then we can start on your grammar, and maybe we’ll get to your reading comprehension.

It's going to take a long time and a lot of money before this is fixed. As grandpa pointed out, smaller trees are much more profitable now because they can be used in more high tech materials that are even more desirable than a wood only product.

The harvest can’t even pay for the cost of removal. That’s reality. Strike three.

The thing that we absolutely must not do is turn the solution only over to those that caused the problem : The timber industry and the forest service that ( as your evidence states ) has been run by the timber industry. They are interested in shot term profit ; That is what caused this mess. We have to do somthing that will work for 100 years from now or 500.

If you knew anything about catastrophism then you would understand that 500 years is a stupid goal.

If industry can go in and thin and make a profit fine. Of couse they want to go in and make the maximum profit in the shortest period of time possible but that will only make the situation worse in the future so they must be managed.

Idiot. BY WHOM? We have already established that the Forest Service, environmental groups, and the timber industry are ALL untrustworthy.

That is why I devised a structural alternative to government land ownership.

This is my last communication to you, because I think you are incapable of learning. If you prove otherwise, perhaps in a year or two I may bother with you again.

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