Too often controlled burns get out of control due to poor management.
From what we've all seen of the fires last year the US Forest Service has been a dismal failure in trying to "manage" nature.
They didn't understand the unintended consequences of letting fire burn off the old growth, and now they're reacting to last years events by trying something "new".
"It just got kind of out of whack when it wasn't doing what nature was used to doing."
A comment like this from someone in the US Forest Service is scary. This guy seems to be clueless as to what nature will do as opposed to what "it was use to doing".
As unpredictable as nature is we can only hope that the US Forest Service doesn't screw things up too badly this time around.
It's about time they started letting the stuff burn. You wouldn't believe how thick the underbrush is and in many areas the floor of the forest isn't dirt but many inches of pine needles and ground up bits of plants. So it's no surprise that those forests burn very easily now.
Burn, baby, burn
I get SO tired of those professional, government paid LIARS who masquerade as "Forest Managers". In California, they OUTLAWED recreational vehicles (mainly motorcycles or quads) from about 99.9% of all BLM, National, and State Forest areas. Then, they hiked tag fees for OHV's, ostensively to raise funds to (a) maintain existing OHV dedicated grounds, and (b) purchase additional acreage. In fact, the OHV fees collected and were never spent, and eventually were transferred directly to the State's general funds. Meanwhile, a systematic program has been underway to study every OHV area to death, to justify closing down additional acreage every year. These studies were simply the vehicle of Democrat radical's to outlaw every OHV from all California lands, and it's been largely successful.
This is what's so OUTRAGEOUS about this government paid LIAR's claim that California OHV operators constitute "... people who think they ought to be able to drive their motorcycle wherever they want". Of course, this man (or woman, or transvestite… who knows, it's California) knows the lie of which he speaks. He knows that OHV'ers have been lied to and robbed; they've had their rights violated, to favor the left's darling environmental extremists.
All OHV'ers want is what they've been promised. We don't care if they find "snail darters" or "kangaroo rats" in every designated OHV area. Go ahead and shut them down, by all means, and protect the wildlife there. But it should be at least an acre for acre exchange, of the same type of land, in the same geographical region (i.e. not all in Death Valley). And if OHV'ers funds are taxed from them to support OHV areas, the government has an obligation to spend those funds to support the cause for which they were taxed, i.e. expanded OHV acreage. In fact, it'd be very healthy to rotate land out of and into preserves every half to a dozen years, so that OHV areas can recover, just as with farming.
There is still plenty of land for all purposes, i.e. recreation, preservation, commercialization, and expanding home and towns. Not every acre of undeveloped land needs to be restricted, or in the case of this article, "saved" from man's intrusions, such as brush cutting around homes, farms, ranches, and even recreational areas. We lost 10,000 TIMES more acreage (not to mention homes, and human lives) to avoidable fire losses due to idiotic land management policies mandated by politicians and their appointed princes in the USFS, than all the OHV'ers have ever degraded though recreational use.
SFS
This idiot should be fired, not because he believes what he's saying (he doesn't), but because he really believes everybody is dumb enough to let him get away with it.
please don't allow the pine in the forests to be used for commerce, don't let our national forests help pay for our national debt. let seniors in $400,000 RVs get cheap camp sites and let tax paying teenagers camp in the wilderness and grow pot on federal land, but don't let the forest be managed for the benefit of the rest of America!! /rant off till next time.