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I seldom log on to FR, I lurk every day...but I so sick of reading about the “big, bad tree huggers” and how its their fault that the forest is burning I will make an exception today.

WAKE UP! GET A GRIP ON REALITY!

The Forest Service has “managed” the Forest in Northern Arizona for 100 years for lumber. All the big trees were cut down and fires were suppressed. What we call a forest now is a mass of dog hair trees, mostly 10-16”, 30-40'tall. One hundred years ago, when my great grandpappy arrived here, you could “ride a horse at full gallop through the trees” or “drive a wagon” through the forest. It is estimated that there was 60 trees per acre. Now we have 300-600 trees per acre. I know of a few places around here that you can walk under tress that are 3-4’ in diameter and 100' tall, but only for a few hundred yards at a stretch.

Over the last 10 years or so the Forest Service proposed plans to thin the forest around Flagstaff, to protect the town for a big fire. Their time estimate? 20 years!

Sure the tree huggers have stopped a thinning project here and there, blocked some roads and saved a few owls. But they are not responsible for the fires.

If the Forest Service had worked at full capacity, unhindered by stupid lawsuits, over the last decade, this fire would still have happened. And the next one, just as big or bigger will happen, lawsuits or not. The forest is in deep s***! thanks to the manner in which it has been managed – for lumber.

Go to mapquest and look for Forest Lakes, AZ. Zoom out and find Ashfork along I-40. From Ashfork to the Grand Canyon and Flagstaff, the forest stretches, unbroken. Form AshFork go south to Prescott, the east through Camp Verde, Strawberry on to Heber, Show Low, all the way to New Mexico. This is a big chunk of land and its all just like what is on fire today - ready to burn.

If what you say is true then OK, so be it. I would like to think so.

Funny, but I used to live in Flagstaff, house backed up to wilderness. We spent lots of time in the woods, hiking up the Mtn. to small lakes. Or drive through the Aspen Forest to Sedona, visiting the stream that flows down the mtn.

I have a problem with logging being responsible for these fires becoming the monsters that they are, though. Logging should have thinned the Forest.

If you want to see what logging without restraint looks like there's a road into the mountain to the south just below Lake Tahoe off I80 that takes you to a devistated patch of overlogged forest, just above where the old single gauge RR ran between Truckee and Tahoe. It was in the 1030's that it was logged so brutally, so that nothing has grown back.

I don't know that anyone is to blame, except the person who started the fires.

I also lived just above the timberline in N CA off I80 and we cleared the growth in the edge of the woods and up to the house yearly (3 acres), except where the horses kept it grazed. There was only one road in and out.

Sorry to have upset you and I am sure the Forest Service would be happy to hear of your support, as well as the Sierra Club and Earth Firsters.

Of course the fires would have happened. No one is saying they wouldn't. We have had drought before...Humans and weather conditions start fires. Some fires are needed to naturally clear the forset..But, if you think this fire got to this garganuan size by the forest service your wrong. It's red tape in Washington from lawsuits the spotted brain, enviro-wackos have wrought in years past and with that was provided the fuel to keep this enormous fire going the way it is today.