Environmental Activists Claim Wildfires Sparked by Global Warming

CNSNews.com ^ | July 04, 2002 | Michael L. Betsch

[Schatze]

(CNSNews.com) - Hundreds of thousands of acres of forests have gone up in smoke in America's western states, with developers blaming conservation policies they say produced thicker forests that are more vulnerable to fires and environmentalist activists blaming the phenomenon known as global warming.

Environmental activists say "agenda driven" politicians and the timber industry are unfairly blaming them for causing the massive wildfires that have already devastated 450,000 acres of forest in Colorado and Arizona.

According to Ray Fenner, executive director of the Minnesota-based environmental activist group Superior Action Wilderness Network (SWAN), "These guys are going to look like total idiots when the truth comes out about why these things are going on."

"Fires have been a natural occurrence throughout the history of the world, at least in the ecosystem," said Fenner, who advocates a hands-off approach to managing forests.

"I say to the Rush Limbaughs, nature for eons has seemed to manage her forests pretty darned well before we got here, and look what's happening now," Fenner said.

But there are a "couple of problems" with simply writing-off wildfires as natural occurrences, said Robert F. Legg, president and CEO of the Temperate Forest Foundation, a nonprofit group that promotes the "responsible consumption and production of natural resources."

Legg said the first problem is that "we stopped Mother Nature from doing what she did naturally." Smokey the Bear and other fire prevention campaigns, he said, have taught the public to "prevent fires at any cost."

"The other thing," Legg said, "is we don't live back in the Dark Ages anymore."

"We've got people living everywhere, so you don't have the luxury of just letting a catastrophic event happen," Legg said. "You can't just sit back and say, 'Okay, we'll let Mother Nature take its course. It's just natural.'"

Fenner denies that conservation policies, promoted by environmentalist activists, are to blame for the fires.

"Where's the talk about global warming that has caused Arizona and other areas to become so tinder-dry in the first place?" Fenner asked.

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), the ranking Democrat on the House Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health, echoed Fenner's concerns.

"We know now that global warming may result in more hot, dry Arizona weather. We know that Arizona has been experiencing an extreme drought this year. We know that such weather increases the frequency and intensity of wildfires, threatening both property and forests," Inslee said.

Legg said he wasn't surprised by the fact that both Fenner and Inslee made references to global warming.

"That's a favorite issue. They'd like to tie [the fires] to it," he said.

Legg explained that the cause of the wildfires can be explained in one "very simple correlation -- we fail to manage the forests."

"Part of the problem is [urban people] come to see the forest as something static," Legg said. "It could be 100-percent old-growth and kept that way forever under a glass bubble. That's their [environmental activists] perception."

With the forests being so overstocked and the fuel loads so high, it has become nearly impossible to do any prescribed burning, Legg said.

"You can't go in and use fire as a management tool until you mechanically clear some of that stuff out as a fire management tool."

But the majority of environmental activist groups do not support any manual clearing of forests, even in the name of preventing catastrophic wildfires, Legg said.

"A lot of the activist groups," Legg said, "don't want any machinery; they don't want any mechanized equipment in there cleaning these forests out."

Legg understands the concerns of those who wish to maintain pristine forests for Americans to appreciate and enjoy.

"We realize there's special places that have to be set aside. People want to walk out into old growth stands and do all these things, and that's okay. But outside of that, let's manage the rest and manage it very actively," he said.

"By preventing fire for so long, and now by not cutting trees to even mimic fire, we're creating some really bad conditions that will lead to catastrophic events," Legg said. "I think the forest fires in Colorado and Arizona are really a wakeup call."

[Vidalia]

A free clinic should be set up for these looneys to be checked for Borg-like organizational brain-tumors.

God knows there is enough room in each of their collectives craniums for one the size of a grapefruit before it would be noticed by the "owner".

Is "RETARDED" still politically incorrect?

[Drew68]

"Where's the talk about global warming that has caused Arizona and other areas to become so tinder-dry in the first place?" Fenner asked.

Yeah, Arizona, that lush tropical rainforest prior to industrialization and "global warming."

(Laughs out loud...)

[terilyn]

One of these idiots from "Club Sierra" came to my door last week looking for money and a signature on a petition.

I told her I'd be happy to sign her petition and write her a check if she would write a matching one to either the Republican National Committee or Norm Coleman for Senate. I even offered to deliver it for her.

You should have seen her jaw drop! LOL

Hopefully she won't be back!

[Schatze]

Yes, retarded is still politically incorrect. But I think deranged works just fine!

[Schatze]

Thanks for the laugh!

[edger]

I guess if you're determined to be a horse's patoot, one excuse is as good as another.

[Schatze]

I'd be happy to write her a check, too ... on condition that she use it to leave the country and never return.

[facedown]

"Fires have been a natural occurrence throughout the history of the world, at least in the ecosystem," said Fenner...

And where else would they be?

[terilyn]

LOL! You can always see them coming. Uncombed hair. Clothes from the 60's. Then once they're at your door, you can tell they haven't seen the inside of a shower for many days. Blech!

[LRS]

Oh horse hockey!!!!

Earlier this year, I got serious on Free Republic, as did several other posters, on the subject of our forests being turned into fire traps due to insane wacko policies.

In my own neck of the woods, it's not allowing old dead and dying pines from being removed in order to save the Red Cockaded Woodpecker, for this supposed endangered animal that the earth just can not live without, nests in those trees, and they were trying to reintroduce it into areas where it had vanished from, and were preventing logging and proper forest management, even after pine bark beetles infested the entire state, devastating the pines forests, and turning them into fire fuel. After wasting taxpayer money on this lunacy, they then had to go and relocate the birds because the forests caught on fire (DUH!)

Global warming? No. Wacko stupidity and perhaps a deliberate attempt to destroy an American industry and resource...

[alloysteel]

Yeah, right. God was holding a magnifying glass and concentrating the sun's rays on a bit of tinder in a forest somewhere. Bringing up some nonsense about global warming as the root cause of forest fires indictes a little bit of a disconnect, partly because a warmer atmosphere would hold more water, and more water vapor means more precipitation (rain, for those of you in Rio Linda), which would douse the fires before they got a good start. As forests burn, especially on the scale of the past few weeks, a lot of Carbon Dioxide gets put in the air, but - Surprise! - the total amount of CO2 remains virtually unchanged. Little secret, kids. The surviving plants that WEREN'T burned up in the blaze use the more abundant CO2 in the air to generate carbohydrate compounds and O2, so the balance is restored, probably within hours, to the equilibrium that was established eons ago, and has maintained pretty evenly, with only small spikes from time to time.

[backhoe]

We have just been handed three God-given opportunities to hammer the Left in this country until they ring like a cheap bell:

1- the "pledge issue." It went Nuclear-Hot so fast it was unbelievable, and while the Left is moving fast to defuse it, it has done a lot of damage.
2- the "wildfires issue." Every living thing fears wildfire, and it perfectly illustrates years of muddle-headed mismanagement. It also reveals the fanatical agenda behind the smiley-face of the ecology movement.
3- the "waste, fraud, and abuse issue." The Left is desperately trying to draw attention away by using the "WorldCom" and other corporate abuses and fraud, but the Government is the real heavy hitter in this department. They can't even account for their own ( our! ) money!

[SierraWasp]

Hey Ernest! I know you're busy, but would ya index or power-ping this one. It's starting to get humorous, now!

[concerned about politics]

Eco-wackos are control freaks. They'd rather see animals as well as humans get torched to death than allow someone to do whats right. To them, burning flesh is a sign of beauty. They feel powerful when they hear the cries of pain.

[Maelstrom]

You forgot to mention that both of the largest fires (Colorado, Arizona) were *started* by government paid freaks. Maybe Global Warming did cause those fires...the *theory* of Global Warming has caused a lot of these whackos to go over the edge.

[Free the USA]

Index Bump and fyi

[LRS]

*LOL* Those exact words came out of my wife's mouth when I told her about the article...

[#3Fan]

"These guys are going to look like total idiots when the truth comes out about why these things are going on."

Translation: Just because the truth is known now doesn't mean we can't revise it so just wait until the academia and media driven liberal propaganda machine gets going to hide the fact that environmentalist policies are what caused these fires.

[Vidalia]

Should have invited her in for tea, crumpets, and fried Baby-Bullfrog-Leg-on-Ritz hors d'oeuvres.