cjcj and FEW, you guys need to study the issues a bit more. Like Oak said, dont get your facts from the six o'clock news.
Environmentalists have not caused the big fires we've had lately.
Lets take a look at what happened after the bad fires years of 1910 and 1919. You know the whole smoky bear campaign, the 10 0'clock rule (FS policy that said all fires must be out by 10 am the day after detection), aggressive fire fighting for no less than 80 years, etc. You get the point.
What most dont understand is that there is price to pay for any land management decisions and policy. We're paying the price now for what was thought to be the proper way to deal with fire. We have forests plugged up with huge amounts of fuel, we have stand dynamics, species compositions in stands, etc. that are completely out of wack, all because of fire suppression, not because of environmentalists. I'd challenge that any good "Enviro greenie" would never have supported the fire suppression efforts, but would have embraced a "let it burn" policy...a policy that loggers themselves dont like.
So, blaming environmentalists, while convienant and easy to do, is ridiculous and unfounded BS. Any politician thats pushing that shit, is not only an idiot, but also not very aware of the problem and doesnt even grasp a small understanding of the problem. GW doesnt know shit about Forest Health, all he's doing is pushing an agenda and an end to a means....
Now that we know that fire suppression is the culprit, how do you fix it?
Thats another pretty contentious issue and there isnt an easy fix. It took nearly 100 years of mismanagement to get the woods in the condition we see today.
I'll tell you this the only, and I mean only way to fix this problem is to apply lots more fire to the landscape. That means we're going to burn up merchantable products at times, but thats the price we're going to pay, either by prescribed fire or wildfire.
I'd even argue the case for logging in some situations to reduce fuel loads and improve the health of the land. The problem I have with GW's plan, is that a good portion of the funding for reducing fuel loading has to come from timber reciepts. Any time that has to happen, I dont believe that the best management decisions will come from that. But, I'll wait to see what happens before I judge GW's plan, but from what I've seen so far, I aint impressed.
The problems also run deeper than just what the FS can do. Many private and state lands are in the same condition. We just dont have the authority to tell people what to do on such lands.
This is a very complex issue and there are no real clear answers. The one thing I know for sure is that logging, prescribed fire, and fuel reduction programs may help, but they wont turn the woods "fireproof" when we experience fire years like 1910, 1919, 1988, 2000, etc.
