[farmfriend]

"A lot of these projects are nothing more than commercial timber sales, veiled in the language of fire protection," said Bird, who is based in Santa Fe, N.M.

Ooooo, can't have those commercial sales. No way. Someone might make a profit.

[farmfriend]

Pinging the usual suspects.

[jdontom]

Bryan Bird, a forest activist who sits on the boards of both groups, makes no apology for tracking and trying to block many thinning projects in the West.

This waco is an idiot, living in New Mexico and stopping fire protection in California. You thank you have heard it all until these guys fes up to what they are actually doing.

[joyce11111]

I hope that some of our Western politicians will see the validity of thinning, and, block the envioro whackos. Let the loggers back into the woods. The forest is a renewable resource.

[snopercod]

With the horrible results of "environmentalism" billowing out of our forests in a cloud of smoke shaped like a skeleton, there is no longer any excuse for a moral person to embrace the preservation ethic.

The horrible truth is that "environmentalists" (in the popular meaning of the word), want to destroy forests, animals, and most of all: people.

IOW, they are motivated by death.

[hedgetrimmer]

"There is no other federal forest issue that results in more public spending, more damage to forests, or more hardship for people,"

Congressman Scott McInnis (R-CO) on the importance of wildfire management.

Forest Fires in the US
Compiled by Milagros Alvarez

• Table of Contents

The Forest Service has stated that nearly 73 million acres of national forests (61 million in the West and 12 million in the East) are at high to moderate risk of catastrophic fire. Cost estimates of treating this problem are in the tens of billions of dollars. This acreage does not necessarily account for lands off national forests that also have significant problems. Congress and the Appropriations committee recognized the need for a long-term commitment to the fire problems we face.

Last summer's wildfires demonstrated that we are not adequately prepared to deal with wildfire. The National Fire Plan is an excellent first step in becoming better prepared, and now we must sustain funding for its implementation. It took us nearly 100 years to get into this situation; it is going to take more than one year to get out of it; we need a long-term commitment to truly address this management problem. Investments made today in reducing the risks of wildland fire will eventually reduce the need for large emergency appropriations.

PDF version of Evaluating the Effectiveness of Postfire Rehabilitation Treatments Report

For this plan to be successful we must make long-term commitments to funding, remove barriers that prevent success, use all the management tools available, treat fire as a land management problem, involve local decision-making, and strengthen our research efforts. Too often we have searched for short-term solutions. While the challenges may seem huge, there is no doubt that failure will result in major damage to communities, our nation's forests, and our wallets. During the last decade, spending on postfire emergency watershed rehabilitation has increased to over $48 million (Evaluating the Effectiveness of Postfire Rehabilitation Treatments).

Click here for the free Adobe Acrobat Reader

Last summers' fires raged in part because policy gridlock has prevented forest managers from doing what it takes to address the conditions that lead to catastrophic wildfires. A forest manager can take steps to alleviate these conditions by removing combustible material and mechanically removing dead and dying trees from at-risk forests, particularly in the wildland-urban interface, and sensibly reintroducing fire to a landscape that has been starved of it for years.

Fire exclusion has directly contributed to fuel buildup. In addition many forests are currently beyond the natural range of tree stocking, and endemic and exotic pests have reached epidemic proportions. This combination of excessive basal area and increased pests results in fuel loads considerably above what historically occurred. The greatest problems we are facing in regard to wildland fire are high forest density developed from nearly a century of fire protection, lack of active management that can encourage fire adapted species, and the introduction of exotic species. In the FY 2001 appropriations bill Congress provided $401 million for fuel reduction projects in the wildland-urban interface. The Forest Service plans to conduct fuel reduction projects on 1.8 million acres using $205.6 million.

In addition to the development of heavy fuel loads, the jobs of contemporary firefighters have been complicated by the growth of the wildland-urban interface. Developed properties, frequently people's homes, stand in the way of today's wildfires. From last year's fires in Montana, where homes and other property were destroyed in the Bitterroot Valley, to the 1999 Fire Siege in Florida, where firefighters spent a great deal of time "steering" fires around development, the interface complicates firefighting and increases the values that are at stake.

Our Nation's forests cover one-third of the land area of the country and are unequalled in their value to people and our economy. They are far too valuable not to be managed utilizing the best science and experience possible. Forest resource management decisions that we make today will be reflected in the forests of the 22nd century and beyond. We must do it right today if we are to maintain the integrity and productivity of these forests in perpetuity.

---

Table of Contents

• National Fire Plan

• Current Law

• Ten Year Comprehensive Strategy

• National Fire Plan Implementation

• Testimony

• Related Links

Last updated July 5th, 2001

Society of American Foresters 5400 Grosvenor Lane Bethesda, Maryland 20814	Phone: 301·897·8720 Fax: 301·897·3690 Email: safweb@safnet.org

[r9etb]

"A lot of these projects are nothing more than commercial timber sales, veiled in the language of fire protection," said Bird, who is based in Santa Fe, N.M.

The boy has apparently never set foot in some of the Northwest forests -- some of which have been heavily logged for decades, and are still healthy.

If he wants a good place to check it out, he should go to the Deschutes National Forest in Oregon, specifically the Black Butte area, and take a gander at how well the old-time forest management practices worked to protect the forests. (I tend to agree with the enviros that the more recent tendency to clear-cut is bad for the forests. But as the history of the Deschutes forest shows, one can profitably log without clear-cutting.

[supercat]

Ooooo, can't have those commercial sales. No way. Someone might make a profit.

Logging--even salvage logging--is evil not because it destroys trees (salvage logging often doesn't), but because people profit by it.

[CedarDave]

This was in the Sacramento Bee?? Boy, how must the long, hot summer and fire season scare those folks living amongst the pines in the foothills of the Sierras. A few more fires like those in AZ, CO and OR these past 90 days, and even more folks will come to view the enviro-nazis for what they are: Anti-people except for those in their small elitist groups.

[sauropod]

ping for later study

[brityank]

Ping. Maybe -- just maybe a little -- the sheeple are awakening.

[Looking for Diogenes]

Forest Service officials say it generally costs $800 to $1,000 to thin and set prescribed fires on a single acre of forest -

[the]"Sierra Nevada Framework" ... requires the Forest Service to aggressively thin fuels from 2.5 million acres of "urban interface zones." [$2.5 billion if done at Forest Service expense, just for the Sierra Nevada.]

Often, the thinning has taken place in remote wildlands instead of around at-risk communities.

To offset the costs, the timber industry has long lobbied the Forest Service to combine thinning with commercial logging. In California, the Forest Service would like to cut and sell some "medium-sized" trees -- up to 24 inches in diameter -- and use the revenues to pay for removing unmarketable brush, said Mathes.

the plan is under attack from timber interests, who want to log larger trees in more remote areas,

There are some contradictory statements here about what the logging companies want to do.

The questions I don't see answered: Are the logging companies interested in logging the areas that most need to be thinned and limit themselves to the smaller trees? And would the revenues from the timber sales actually be sufficient to pay for the brush clearing?

The logging companies never seem to get interviewed for articles like these, so their plans are not clear.