Free Republic

<p>WASHINGTON – Congress approved legislation Friday that lawmakers said would reduce the risk of wildfires in national forests by speeding removal of overgrown brush and diseased trees, especially near homes and towns.</p> <p>The Senate passed the bill by a voice vote less than an hour after the House approved it 286-140. The rapid-fire votes came after a three-year impasse on wildfire legislation.</p>

Burn, Baby, Burn? By Duane D. Freese Forest fires in California this year have burned more than 700,000 acres, destroyed more than 2,500 homes, caused $2 billion in costs and damages and killed 22 people. Last year's wild fires in the West burned about 7 million acres, destroyed 800 homes, cost $1.5 billion and killed 23 firefighters. Good thing that, according to many environmentalists. Well, definitely not the deaths. But forests? Sure. They were meant to burn periodically. A good fire can clean out the scrub brush, and the click beetles, and replenish the soil, and open up seeds of...

Agreement is near on a bill to speed logging and other tree-thinning projects that would reduce the fire danger in national forests, Sen. Tom Daschle said. The bill, introduced by President Bush and passed by the House last spring, remains one of a handful of bills being negotiated as lawmakers prepare to wrap up the year's business before Thanksgiving. "We're much closer to getting something passed than we were just last week," Daschle said. Senate Democrats were refusing to appoint members to a House-Senate conference committee, and House Republicans were chilly to Daschle's suggestion that interested parties meet informally....

<p>WASHINGTON -- As Congress limps toward adjournment, the rancor between Republicans and Democrats is palpable on Capitol Hill, and much of the people's business is languishing. A Medicare prescription-drug plan is stalled. An energy bill has been bottled up for weeks in a conference committee. And filibusters are everywhere.</p>

<p>"Our forests are detonating like napalm bombs. We need to remove dead and dying bug-killed timber," said Rep. Wally Herger, R-Chico.</p> <p>Is this Monday-morning quarterbacking spurred by the wildfires now raging in California? Hardly.</p> <p>The Northern California congressman uttered those words in August 1994 as part of his demand that Congress declare a state of emergency in federal forests to permit quick removal of dead trees, fallen branches and other debris that fuels wildfires - like those that burned 3 million Western acres and killed 14 firefighters that year.</p>

The single biggest factor rendering California vulnerable to the conflagration currently burning up the state was the obstinance of the environmental lobby, which refused to let forestry experts deal with the time bomb-like threat posed by thousands of tons of dead wood littering the forests. While that claim sounds like it could have issued by the likes of conservative talkers Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, it came instead from none other than Fox News Channel's leading liberal field reporter, Geraldo Rivera. "I hate to choose ideological sides," Rivera told "Hannity & Colmes" Thursday night. "But I tell you, the big...

HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT THE ECOFREAKS HAVE BEEN DOING. UNTIL WE FIND A WAY TO STOP THEM, WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SAVE OUR FORESTS. ================================================== BEND - A federal judge has halted a salvage logging project near Crane Prairie Reservoir, ruling that the Forest Service did not adequately survey for ecological damage before beginning the harvest. The project would have logged about 2.8 million board feet as part of a salvage sale of burned timber. Much of that timber burned during the 720-acre Crane Prairie complex fire last year. District Court Judge Ancer Haggerty's decision Wednesday...

Now They Have Burned Los Alamos The “Let Our Forests Burn Policy” and So-Called “Controlled Burns” During Summertime are Criminal and Stupid. These Policies Must be Re-examined by the Scientists of This Nation October 12, 1999 (with edits on November 7, 2001) by Dr. Bill Wattenburg A portion of the article below was published in Science Magazine as a letter to the editor (‘The Burning of Yellowstone—Another Perspective,’ Science, 6 Nov 99, p1051). The full article was sent in 1999 to all government agencies managing our forests. They paid no attention. Unfortunately, we can now replace Yellowstone with Los Alamos....

I lived in the California Sierra foothills almost at the edge of the El Dorado National Forest from 1976 to 1999 and had a front row seat in the Great Debate over sustainable development, the Sierra Club´s environmental propaganda and the death of the economy in my county as its economic base, logging and related businesses, were slowly strangled to death during the eight years of the Clinton Administration. As I watched the massive fires now raging in Southern California, that have so far killed 20 people, burned about a half-million acres and hundreds of homes, I thought about articles...

<p>"Our forests are detonating like napalm bombs. We need to remove dead and dying bug-killed timber," said Rep. Wally Herger, R-Calif.</p> <p>Is this Monday-morning quarterbacking spurred by the wildfires now raging in California? Hardly.</p> <p>Rep. Herger uttered those words in August 1994 as part of his demand that Congress declare a state of emergency in federal forests to permit quick removal of dead trees, fallen branches and other debris that fuel wildfires -- like those that burned 3 million Western acres and killed 14 firefighters that year.</p>

Washington fiddles while California burns Posted: October 30, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com A couple of bills are languishing in Congress that could have limited the effects of the wildfires that have devastated much of Southern California and saved countless homes and lives. For more than a week, two giant C-130J aircraft, outfitted with state-of-the-art Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems, sat on ground in California while the fires multiplied and began to burn out of control. In addition, there were two of these planes in Colorado, two in Wyoming and two in North Carolina that could have been called into service....

Landowners in the Santa Cruz Mountains and other forested areas of California who want to cut timber on their property will have to submit new information to the state showing the impacts of other nearby logging projects under a bill signed Sunday by Gov. Gray Davis. The bill, by Assemblyman Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, was championed by environmental groups and opposed by some in the timber industry. Under it, the State Board of Forestry will require by Jan. 1, 2005, anyone submitting a timber harvest plan to the state to include maps showing ``the location and boundaries of past, present,...

<p>Thick as a phone book, a new state report on the environment cites a little-recognized danger to global forests: California.</p> <p>By consuming "vast amounts of ... wood products" while increasingly protecting our own forests from logging, Californians are sharpening the pace of cutting elsewhere, including Canada, says a draft of the report "The Changing California, Forest and Range 2003 Assessment," obtained by The Bee.</p>

RANGERS AT WORK: Paul Ehrhardt (left) and fellow volunteer ranger Eric (last name withheld) repair a Forest Service cabin in Oregon's Willamette National Forest. Some object to rangers carrying weapons. ROBERT HARBISON - STAFF JUNCTION CITY, ORE. - The gray Jeep Cherokee with the large gold star on the door is just about ready to roll. Two men check the gear stowed in the back: tools, medical equipment, radios, GPS device, rappelling ropes, camera, gas mask, body armor, canisters of CS gas and pepper spray, thermos of coffee, and sandwiches. They're both wearing badges, and they both have semiautomatic...

A proposal would increase money to prevent wildfires and create a research center in Prineville WASHINGTON -- Timber-state senators filed a written version of their forest-health compromise Wednesday, setting the stage for a showdown with House Republicans who favor stronger language and sparking debate about new protections for old-growth stands. Among other things, the senators, including Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, agreed to spend $760 million a year on fuel-reduction projects, up from $420 million. The bill also would create a research center in Prineville, Ore. The goal of the legislation is ambitious. The senators want to reverse...

When fires turn eastern Washington and Oregon forests into wastelands, valuable wildlife habitat is lost and it costs between $1,300 and $2,100 per acre in fire-fighting costs, lost buildings, economic suffering by nearby communities and degraded waterways, say University of Washington researchers in a recently published report. The report attempts for the first time to tally the cost per acre of letting the worst wildfires - the crown fires - burn. It's a needed perspective when considering thinning overly dense stands - work that could cost nearly $600 an acre in some places. So say UW researchers who are offering...

We Must Fight Fire With Fire—-Literally Our overcrowded forests have become powder kegs, primed to explode. We need to take action Scorched-earth strategy: Samuel Sheridan says controlled burns are the best way to prevent forest fires By Samuel Sheridan NEWSWEEK Sept. 29 issue — This summer marked my second season as a wildland firefighter, and my first as a Hotshot, a member of a 20-person crew flown in to fight especially difficult fires anywhere in the United States. So I’m a relatively inexperienced grunt, not a scientist. But as this year’s fire season—which usually begins in April in the Southwest...

A federal appeals court has dismissed an ethics complaint filed against a judge whose ruling opened up nearly a third of national forests to timber cutting and other development. Two watchdog groups had complained that U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer of Wyoming owns stock or royalty interests in 15 oil and gas companies that could be affected by a July 14 decision invalidating the so-called roadless rule. The rule, issued in the final days of the Clinton administration, limits timber harvesting and other development on 58 million acres of remote forest land controlled by the Forest Service. Brimmer's decision would...

A friend of mine from Montana said to me recently, "the State's on fire again", referring to the catastrophic loss of vast areas of its forests this year. The same can be said of New Mexico, Colorado, and other States for whom these forest fires have become an annual event. Everyone knows that our national parks and forests are not being managed correctly. Because of "environmental" policies and restrictions, they are tinderboxes waiting to explode from a lightning strike or a careless camper. Why then do we give a tax exemption to one of the most active pressure groups opposing...

SALEM - Grant Wheeler wants to add a second shift to his Reedsport hardwood sawmill, his Westwood Lumber Co. remanufacturing plant in Junction City and his planing mill in Saginaw. But a shortage of the alder sawlogs that Wheeler converts into Fender guitar bodies, Purdy paintbrush blanks and parts for kitchen cabinets will keep employment at the three facilities hovering at 135 workers. At least in the short term. "If I had more logs, I would add more employees," Wheeler said. "The market is there." To get those logs, Wheeler and other independent sawmill operators are taking the unusual route...