Forest Service says appeals stalled half of fire prevention projects

Associated Press ^ | 7-10-02 | ROBERT GEHRKE

[Oldeconomybuyer]

WASHINGTON (AP) --

[Movemout]

It is good to see the watermelons playing defense for a change. Jerk offs! They have put so many people through hell to satisfy there whimsical musings to no good end.

[Movemout]

there = their

[r9etb]

Kieren Suckling

Wow.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

...noticed that name too :-)

[Oldeconomybuyer]

    

Kieran Suckling (left) and Carolyn Campbell are strong advocates of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, a sweeping blueprint for growth management.

[r9etb]

Ms. Campbell has that always-constipated look that seems to be a defining trait of late-40s liberal, politically active females. I know probably 5-10 such ladies, and they all have the same hairstyle, and the same constipated smile.

[BallandPowder]

Powder..Patch..Ball FIRE!

Now we just need to see a list of the groups that had the highest number of appeals and work on them...

[Carry_Okie]

This, "Oh, they kept us from doing our jobs," story is, quite simply, crap. The USFS spends 40% of its budget on lawyers. They want to keep working. They get their work from the environmental NGOs. If they are good, they get to go to work for the NGOs. It's incestuous.

The more lawsuits, the more problems, the bigger the budget.

Here is an excerpt from a letter to Rep. Jeff Flake:

Dear Rep. Flake,

I want to congratulate you on your outrage over the combusted fate of the nation’s forests and your accurate assignment of the cause: radical environmentalists. As a citizen of Arizona I have watched this disaster approach with heartbreaking certainty. Given the experience, one must ask if it is possible for government agencies to do any better, even if we could quell the blizzard of lawsuits? There are several reasons for my skepticism:

First, agencies have no motive to produce a healthy forest, in fact, the worse conditions get, the more Congress will appropriate. Their personnel share economic interests with radical environmentalists because appropriations to manage settlements of lawsuits are non-discretionary. Neither the Forest Service nor the BLM will ever fix the problems because it is not in their interest to do so.

Second, competing political interests for control of forests are both philosophically and economically too contrary for just resolution. A political decision-making system cannot deliver an optimal balance among all the competing claims on the use of a public asset.

Third, forests are too complex for equitable “one size fits all” rules to be possible. It is beyond the technical ability of any managing entity, much less a political process.

Fourth, the power to legislate, administer, and enforce rules is not only an affront to the Constitution, it is too much temptation to corruption for any agency. Timber corporations don’t want the production from National Forests reducing their prices.

Finally, the Constitution does not empower the Federal Government to own land, much less authorize a monopoly in the nature business. The effect is to destroy the economic value of private recreational land use and leads to overuse of our most precious natural assets. Even with public ownership, why should the agencies monopolize operations?

The point is: Where DO we go from here? Can this really be fixed with more laws, rules, study committees, court battles, and appropriations? Isn’t it obvious that the problem is systemic?

There is a better way.

[bandleader]

It's About Time That The Enviro-Wackos'"Chickens Came Home To Roost"!!

[.38sw]

You can start with the Forest Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity. These two groups not only appeal Forest Service proposals, but bring court actions when the appeals decisions go against them. And furthermore, your tax dollars fund these groups. When they bring court actions, the agencies usually settle, and pay the plaintiff a large chunk of change.

[American in Israel]

>>Suckling said his group supports legitimate forest thinning, but draws the line when the Forest Service wants to conduct timber sales, removing large-diameter trees to appease the timber industry. He said those logging projects actually increase the fire danger.

Suckling is a fitting name for an enviro-weenie. Tell me, how does thinning forests increase the fire danger? Roads must be repaired, fire breaks made, enviromental impact statements created long before it ever reaches the level that the Sucklings go in to sue the forrest plan to death. In most cases just as the court proceeding finaly hit the docket they simply withdraw the protest, and the delay forces forestry to remark all the trees, and draw up a new enviro plan. For the cost of a few filings, they can delay a timber cut many times and cause forestry to spend and respend millions in worthless enviromental reports.

I call them worthless because if the enviro-weenies would read them they would see that there is no enviromental danger or it would not get past the planning stage. The true purpose of enviro reports is to hog tie the forestry service.

Leftists are all little tinpot dictator wannabees.

For a good example the laws in the Sierra Nevada's were ammended to require that standing dead trees were left to remain standing until they fell from rot. That was to provide 3 or 4 trees per acre for wood peckers. When the drought caused an outbreak of the dreaded pine beetle, Forestry marked the area for a cut to destroy the bugs. But the Sierra Club fought it in court arguing that the dead trees were still green, so were not dead, then fought it on the woodpecker rule. They lost both cases, first because by the time it got to court, the trees were no longer green, and frankly there are not enough wood peckers to populate an acre of dead trees alone, and they bore holes in real dead trees not sappy bug infested ones.

The short of the story was the loss of over 40% of the High Serria Pines because the year long delay allowed the pine beetles to spread throughout the entire forest. That is why you see bumper stickers in the Sierra's saying Sierra club go home. (They are in Frisco, known for its tall stands of forest and mountain lion population right?)

I think the green that the greenweenies are interested in is money green, not forrest green.

[flamefront]

Environmentalists are bad -- even for the environement.

[RicocheT]

I hope the news of how environmental activist lawsuits have set up the West for fire damage gets around in the communities recently hard hit by fire.

Many who live in the West love the land and are suseptible to the environmental message, but don't hear the downside arguments. Trees grow and die. Logging and harvesting timber is a rational way to manage forests. It also helps with fire suppression if properly done. Logging roads are usually the way firetrucks get to where the fire is starting.

Clear cutting has had a bad rap. An open lane of an acre or two actually will stop a bad fire and many browsing animals prosper in open areas.

[Barry Goldwater]

The eco wackos are self defeating. All those fires will put smoke in the air and result in cooling the earth.

[flamefront]

Was Clinton Right to Ban Fire Roads in Forests?

[Paulus Invictus]

You are right! It's the Forest Service that places signs all around fire sites where the forests are now burnt out hulks of once beautiful trees. The signs claim that such fires are "natural processes that periodically help clear out the undergrowth and dead trees." We saw these signs near last year's destructive fires that swept over huge areas around the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

The government agencies that "administer" the public lands in Western states, the USFS, BLM, the Park Service and Fish and Wildlife are all environmentalists themselves that are in league with the Sierra Club and all the other enviromental whaco organizations that endlessly resort to litigation and appeals while the forests burn. I know many people that work in these agencies and am appalled that they are so blind as to support the whacos first and the forests and true conservation last.

[Steve Eisenberg]

And furthermore, your tax dollars fund these groups. When they bring court actions, the agencies usually settle, and pay the plaintiff a large chunk of change.

Being from back east, the great issues of land mangement are rather new to me. I looked over the www.naturalprocess.net web site and, pardon me, but although it is suitably conservative, I found it to be poorly written, with the author in need of a ghost writer.

So many question arise. Why would the agencies settle by paying money when the lawsuit is over trees? Shouldn't any "settlement" be a compromise on numbers of trees to be cut? And why is the Bush administration, if .28sw is right, funding a bunch of leftist Democrats (or Naderists)?

I did read the article on the "Tragedy of the Commons" mentioned so often at www.naturalprocess.net. Mostly complete garbage. If the "Tragedy of the Commons" is true, then increasing human population would cause mass starvation, whereas actual people eat better as increasing numbers of people result in increasing numbers of agricultural scientists who discover new and more efficient way to produce food.

[american spirit]

If memory serves correctly, wasn't it this eco-idiocy that caused the deaths of some firefighters out west acouple years ago? Weren't they trapped in an area because helicopters were banned from obtaining water from a nearby lake due to ESA regulations?

[yoe]

STATEMENT by Dale Bosworth Chief, U.S Forest Service Regarding the Investigation of the Hayman Fire in Colorado
June 16, 2002

"We regret to learn that one of our employees has admitted to starting this fire. The agency is committed to battling fires across this Nation and this isolated case should in no way affect the public's trust and confidence in our fire prevention and firefighting efforts.

"I am extremely proud of the thousands of federal, state and local employees who regularly risk their lives to fight wildland fires. They have our full support and confidence in their commitment and ability to meet these challenges.

"We have cooperated fully with the USDA Office of Inspector General and the U.S. Attorney in this investigation, and will continue to cooperate in any way needed."

Well homeowners and others threatened by the Rodeo Fire in AZ, for once disregarded the thousands of federal and state rules and regulations by whipping out every available chainsaw and went to work doing what the US Forest Service should have done years ago regardless of the EPA and their law suits and the Wise Forestry Policy They felled dead trees, cleared the underbrush and reduced the over crowding of trees.

In the Colorado Hayman fire, incident commander Kim Martin refused the use of some extra-heavy equipment to belonging to a gold-mining company free of charge because the dozers might HARM plants and a creek bed. She was not fired, she was removed to another fire. Kim Martin is a federal employee; we pay her salary with our taxes. The federal Government can't fire her! She should be in jail!

The challenges these people meet are from lawyers and bought judges. Do the right thing...keep your forestland cleared of debris and dead wood...store your firewood in a concrete bunker no matter what the USFS rules and regulations tell you.