Posted on 03/06/2008 4:37:07 PM PST by NormsRevenge
California and other states that want to ban road-building in large swaths of national forests should have to pay for the resulting increased costs of fighting wildfires on those federal lands, U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey said Thursday.
Rey, the undersecretary for natural resources and the environment in charge of the U.S. Forest Service, said the Bush administration has encouraged states and local governments to offer input in the management of federal lands.
But he told a Wildland Urban Interface conference that one of the unintended consequences is that state-imposed moratoriums on development in roadless areas boost the cost of fighting fires because of reduced access to housing subdivisions that sprout up on the edge of those forests.
"In a number of cases, most recently in the state of California, the states have weighed in with a profound desire not to see any roadless area incurred as a broad matter of environmental priorities. And I frankly don't have any quarrel with that as a statement of environmental policy," Rey said.
"However, if we are going to keep those areas completely undeveloped and not even maintain the option for access for administrative and suppression purposes, we're going to increase the cost and complexity of suppression to protect those new subdivisions. That's a given with which their is almost no dispute," he said in a speech to the conference in Reno sponsored by the International Association of Fire Chiefs.
"I for one am completely willing to defer to a state's views in this area as long as the state is willing to pick up the additional costs associated with those views being converted into federal land policy," he said.
The state of California filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service last month for adopting a management plan that would allow for the construction of roads and oil drilling in California's largest national forests.
The lawsuit filed in federal court claims the plan ignores a state moratorium on road construction in pristine areas of national forests and asks for an injunction.
The Forest Service plan would open up more than 500,000 acres in the Angeles, Los Padres, Cleveland and San Bernardino national forests to road construction. It would also allow for oil drilling on more than 52,000 acres in or around Los Padres National Forest.
California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. said in filing the lawsuit on Feb. 28 that the federal plan was unacceptable at a time when these forests were already under threat by development and pollution, and are some of the last natural lands available to millions of Californians. The forests are in or near Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Diego and San Bernardino counties and are the most urban-impacted forests in the National Forest system.
"As California gets millions more people and more pollutants impact these forests ... to compound the damage that already exists with roads and more vehicles and more industrial activity is just wrong," Brown said.
Outstanding position to hold eco-nazis financially responsible for their policies!
Traditions are important, and for over thirty years now we’ve been able to wake up in the morning and ask ourselves, “I wonder what Moonbeam will do to embarrass us today”. So far, he’s never disappointed me.
I think not only the state should pay the costs, but the environmentalist groups that pushed through the laws which created the conditions should be paying for suppression. It’s that old ‘actions have consequences’ thing...
“..some of the last natural lands available to millions of Californians. “
What a pile of hogwash. I lived in these “last natural lands” and Californians as a rule had no desire or compunction to visit these “last natural lands.” If I saw even one person a month in the backcountry, that was unusual, and most were stupid, lost hippies who freaked out seeing me carrying a 12 gage and a pistol strapped on my hip.
And I had to carry because stupid morons from the city would dump their mutt they no longer wanted, and then little “Fluffy” would pack up with other mutts dumped by other stupid Sierra Club cityfolk who thought “Fluffy” would get along great in the bush with no food. Then it was up to me to manage the pack with my shotgun whenever they decided to raid the property for a quick lunch.
Californian “environmentalists” were some of the most ignorant, brainless, stupid morons I ever met in my life. I don’t know what’s taking nature so long to cull them out of the herd.
It’s going to be difficult to get them to pay for something they do not desire...
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