Posted on 06/21/2002 2:09:36 AM PDT by The Raven
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:46:40 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
In December 1995, a storm hit the Six Rivers National Forest in northern California, tossing dead trees across 35,000 acres and creating dangerous fire conditions. For three years local U.S. Forest Service officials labored to clean it up, but they were blocked by environmental groups and federal policy. In 1999 the time bomb blew: A fire roared over the untreated land and 90,000 more acres.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Once again, we [the nation] yield to new ideas and we get the opposite result.
The article didn't mention air pollution, but there's been a lot of it. as well as destruction of life forms.
Before clear-cut logging, the Western ponderosa pine forest consisted of a few widely spaced large trees, with grass and low brush in between. Ground fires swept through all the time, burning off the underbrush and most young pine trees. The few that survived became the large "mother" trees of the next generation. These large mature trees were practically impervious to brush fires.
Around the turn of the century, most of these healthy forests were clear-cut, and the trees regrew in unhealthy clusters of "jack pines." These spindly, overcrowded thickets of immature pines grew under a policy of 100% fire suppression by the Forest Service until very recently.
The mature trees we see today are packed much closer together than they should be, and are susceptible to "crowning", when the fire jumps from ground to treetops. This should not happen in a normal pine forest.
A policy of non-suppression requires that the overcrowded forest be thinned out dramatically, to just a few large trees per acre. But the environmentalist wackos prevented the Forest Service from doing this, thinking it would save such huggable animals as the Mexican spotted owl. The terrible fires in recent years are the fruit of their ignorance and obstinacy. Millions of acres of habitat are now moonscape.
-ccm
FReeper Carry_Okie said it better in his book, Natural Process:
In many of these areas, after nearly 100 years since their initial logging, these sprouted trees have yet to be thinned. Competition for light has caused many to be thin and unbalanced. The branches of a 100' tree can be an average of two to three feet long, layered down the trunk like shingles. They sway in the winds, bash into adjacent clones, and drop massive amounts of dead groth that can pile four feet high in the middle of the stump cluster. Numerous, dead, or stunted sprouts shoot out of the outside of the base of the cluster at severe angles, dropping branches to the duff, providing a fire ladder inton the canopy. Lower branches die for lack of light, hanging like a tangled web of matches bare of bark. Some of the smaller trees eventually die and remain standing for years, leaning on their competitors. To the trained eye, it looks much like a funeral pyre. You look, and then you look away, It hurts.
I have a neighbor with 7 acres of under developed fir. You know the kind, 4 of five trees to a 10 x 10 area. Thin, unstable and bearing the "ladder" of dead branches from the ground to just before top. Weaker trees have died and rest in peace leaning against the sick but alive. Dead fallen branches litter the floor creating a layer of kindling. Trees regularly fall, roots and all due to the lack of spacing. This is an unhealthy, fire prone mess. The wildlife can't even get around, save the millions of rabbits. The deer much prefer my land as I have managed it to maximize tree growth as well as the "undergrowth".
Does my neighbor not care? No, he would love to get in there and clear out some trees and build a home. You know, on his land, the American dream and all. He would love to create a healthy "ecosystem" that he is apart of. But, alas he has a low spot on his property, about a 30 x 20 area that holds water 4 months a year at about 1/2" to 1" deep (this is Washington!). It is a wetlands, so no action can be taken on this property, though he must keep his taxes paid. We would not want to disturb the.....frogs I guess.
Yea it is a regular natural beauty, not! I can only hope that when this Natural Forest (read tinder box) goes up the winds are blowing in the other direction and my kids are not at home.
The reason Colorado - and now, half of Arizona!!! - are a lethal inferno, is because we have nothing to put the fires out with, except for dated, World War 2 planes that break apart in the sky.
As a result,every tiny little man-made fire (woman-made, in these instances!) becomes a 100,000 acre monster that destroys everything.
Shame on our government for purposely ignoring the needs of the American People, while spending all their hard-earned tax-dollars on foreign nations that not only don't need our help, but actually hate us for giving it!
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