Forest Service Chief Calls for Controlled Burns, while in Oregon

KGW TV/AP ^ | 09 August 2002 | Jeff Barnard

[dixiechick2000]

Yikes!
McCaffery---McCaffrey

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for all of your great reporting to us during these past days.

You have done a great job!

[holyscroller]

I had a friend who bought timber rights and made timber deals for Weyerhaeuser (corporate), and he spent much of his time abroad in Russia, Siberia, Brazil, South America. I always thought it ironic that we couldn't harvest our own timber, but it was OK to strip the Brazilian Rain Forest.

[Grampa Dave]

We can keep all the flies that we catch as long as we release the native fish.

I haven't seen the burn areas on the Trinity, but a friend said that it is terrible.

He feels that before the envirals are thrown out of power, our beautiful state and the beautiful state of Oregon will look like a war zone. Then people will wake up and start ripping the envirals up on 24/7 basis.

Notice how the media will show pictures of a clear cut for years and never shows these enviral burns on tv.

[Granof8]

Thank you too, dixiechick2000, for your contributions.

I have been a lurker for a few years and finally signed on.

Don't be overconfident that the enviros aren't present at the fires. Overheard in both Gold Beach and Brookings were comments about how thrilled they were to be working on the biggest fire with the longest fire lines, they are going for a record.

I think a crew of loggers with heavy equipment could have put this fire down early on.

[dixiechick2000]

"...comments about how thrilled they were to be working on the biggest fire with the longest fire lines, they are going for a record. "

Well, that's just sick! I hope they will be "outed" by those that stand to lose because of the fires. They may not be so thrilled then, if you get my drift. heheh

"I think a crew of loggers with heavy equipment could have put this fire down early on."

You betcha!

[farmfriend]

What do you want to bet me that once these fires are put out, the law suits will start to prevent any salvage logging? Wouldn't want those lumber companies to make a profit, even on stuff that is dead. That is what has happened with the Star fire.

[marsh2]

Spent yesterday in a truck going around the backroads of border California (Happy Camp) near the tip of the Sour Bisquit fire. About 40% of the forest (mostly pines) is visably dead and dying. There have been no harvests here (not even salvage) since 1997. Prior (healthy tree) harvest levels were basically cut off in by 1990 with the listing of the northern spotted owl, marbled murrelet, and coho salmon. You can just drive by and see the dead gray all up and down the mountains.

Fire season in this area actiually starts in very late August and early September when the lightning strikes come in. Fires will sometimes burn until winter storms put them out. Lightning will strike a dead tree and circle down the trunk exploding in flame. The fire will then be carried rapidly from dead tree top to tree top climbing up steep mountain walls. Then each tree burns down sending flames rolling down the hills to light everything else.

We are going to lose this massive old growth forest if small operators are not allowed to go in and cut out the dying and dead trees which cause the lightning rod effect. This deadwood is not small diameter trees. Because salvage has been prvented for so long, many of these dead trees do not have saleable wood. There is little market for biomass or chips. We are now at the point that either healthy trees have to be thrown in to allow the remaining small loggers to make a secure modest profit, or we will just have to pay them to whach and stack the deadwood. We are no begining to see one or two slavage operations offered around airport areas and no one is bidding on them as there is not enough secure profit to guarantee costs.

All of this salvage is in addition to thinning of the small diameter plantation trees that will be dying in acres soon because of density pressure on nutrients and water sources.

This needs to start yesterday. The process needs to be sheltered from analysis paralysis. Costs need to be streamlined by eliminating costly appeals and lawsuits intentionally used by extreme environmetal groups to delay and prevent management. It is not stewardship to have hundreds of thousands of acres of habitat sterilized in seering flame.

One of our local rangers has wisely given up on "prescribed burns" for prevention. The forest fuels are loaded at too dangerously high a level to burn. He is using a "masticator" that shreads the wood remaining after thinning and leaves it on the grown.