Who’s to Blame for the Southwest’s Wildfires?
The ironies of “be careful what you ask for” have never been clearer — despite the smoky haze in Albuquerque and throughout New Mexico and Arizona. So far, some 700,000 acres have burned in just two fires, as a direct result of the federal government’s inability to manage forests in the Southwest. At the same time, the radical environmental groups who are responsible for these catastrophic fires are also involved in hearings in New Mexico on air quality — and demanding expensive “pollution” controls on the suppliers of the state’s electricity.
The connection between the radical environmental groups and these life-threatening fires is easy to make. Radical groups like WildEarth Guardians (WEG) (formerly Forest Guardians) and the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) oppose all management and uses of national forests, including timber production (thinning) and livestock grazing. When national forests are not managed, they burn with intensive fury, killing wildlife, their habitats, jobs, communities, and part of our national heritage. The CBD and WEG claim they are trying to take America back to the way it looked prior to European settlement; but Native Americans also managed the landscape, so the attempt to eliminate human existence is not realistic, nor is it healthy for our national forests.
Now, as a result of the inability to manage national forests, the damage that has been done to air quality in New Mexico because of these and other fires will take months, if not years, to repair. Pet owners are now being asked to use caution in exercising their pets. For those with respiratory problems, air quality in Albuquerque and other areas is literally life-threatening.
For nearly two decades the US Forest Service (USFS) has spent much of its time and our taxpayer dollars fighting so-called environmental groups in litigation rather than pursuing common-sense forestry and land management practices that have been mandated in federal law. Rather than managing our region’s forests for health and multiple uses, the USFS has been forced to nearly eliminate economic use and put at risk the wildlife populations that are supposed to be so near and dear to groups like the WEG and CBD.
These groups who have filed hundreds of lawsuits in New Mexico and Arizona and collected millions of taxpayer dollars to stop the USFS from managing for healthy forests claim to be doing good in the name of species like the Mexican spotted owl, the Mexican wolf, the spikedace, and the loach minnow. The list is almost endless. In every case, the answer the WEG and the CBD have called for, and often gotten, is the removal of management and economic activity such as logging, mining, and ranching.
Little seems to have been learned from the Rodeo-Chediski Fire in Arizona in 2002 — when most of the area’s habitat for the Mexican spotted owl was charred beyond recognition. Rather than understanding the horrors of their actions in removing logging and grazing that naturally keep the fuels that feed the past decade’s catastrophic fires, these groups have filed more lawsuits, which keep the fire-ravaged areas from being rehabilitated. Natural resources that could be salvaged go unused.
The Mexican wolf, a species that has cost the American taxpayer millions of dollars and is on the verge of collapse, is further threatened by these ongoing catastrophic wildfires. According to the federal government, the Wallow Fire has already consumed the wolf habitat in Arizona. The habitat in New Mexico is now in the line of fire. How many wolves have survived the fire to this point? There is no answer to that question and there is unlikely to be one for time to come. However, it is not unreasonable to expect that wolves that have received millions of dollars in federal and state funding have been lost.
Even the availability of electric generation across many western states is at risk as the Wallow and Horseshoe fires indiscriminately race across landscapes that house power lines feeding homes and businesses from Texas to California. Despite the WEG’s hearing and press releases about potential pollution for electricity generation, the air quality that New Mexico and Arizona are suffering today can be laid directly at the feet of the WEG.
So that there is no misunderstanding, natural fire is not always bad. But when the fuel load is not controlled — and it has not been for decades — it becomes violent and dangerous to animal and man alike. In the mid 1990s, one Arizona forestry specialist noted that even at that point, the fuel load was comparable to setting a match to thirty oil tankers per acre. Over the past fifteen years, that number has probably increased tenfold. And it is one thing when fires are “natural” — but in this case, the fires are believed to be intentionally set by drug backpackers trying to evade US Border Patrol.
Whether the issue is air quality, forest management, or productive natural resource use, it is time for the citizens of this nation to stand up and take control of our forests back from radical environmental groups. It is time to stop paying these groups to destroy our treasured forests and their wildlife — not to mention the people who live, work, and play there.
Caren, everything you say here is true. And, according to some old time forest service hands I know, the forest service itself is shot through with “earth firsters”. The general population, who is footing the bill for these follies, needs to know that these people want to eliminate the human population from large areas of the American West and the Great Plains. It is a matter of religious faith with them.
Thanks for bringing this to the public’s attention.
the way i see this, illegals who live in america, the one’s on s.s. and work and send money back home said, the land is theirs, we stole it and they also said they will take it back?
WHO is funding all of the Eco-Marxists who work day in and day out to cripple our economy and force us back into caves? It seems that in addition to the groups mentioned in the article, other groups like the NRDC, WWF, Greenpeace, and cow tless other environmental radicals have unli it’s dollars to stop all progress. WHERE does the money come from? Is the EPA or some other bureaucracy giving them taxpayer dollars with which to fight against taxpayers? Can we sue these groups for the harm they cause the economy? HOW do we stop theses people?
Environmentalism is a return to that “Old Time Religion.”–Baal. In worshoping Moloch children were “passed through the fire” in a rite of retroactive abortion. The Hebrew word for Hell is Gehena where the Cannanites burned babies.”High Priest Algore want so know why the current regieme has been so slow to act.–Think of the Volcanos into which Virgins have not yet been tossed.
Happily Americans like fast cars too much. Jezabel (who tried to reestablish BAAl worhip, was tossed under the wheels of Jehu’s chariot. a fit end to environmentalism environmentalists and the “Nanny State.”
True, dat! Which in turn are all variations of satan worship. Best lie the devil perpetuated on mankind was that he doesn’t exist.
I blame the American Tollybon.
We have the same problem here in Australia. The radical greenies have obstructed the abilities of the forestry departments to have controlled burns to limit the growth of fuel loadings within the state forrests. This results in massive fires that can not be controlled. The greenies then try to blame something else such as “Global Warming”. How they continue to get away with this is a mystery to me. Hopefully some common sense will applied to this problem soon.
Ms. Cowan is absolutely correct in her assertions. It’s a long story, but the essential difference between the mega fires and the natural renewal fires is that these are top burn fires. Top burn fires are twice as hot as smaller fires that consume the accumulated litter in a forest. Normal fires are contained to a large extent by oxygen starvation. In a top burn it is just like using a bellows in a fireplace.
I lived in Show Low, Arizona at the time of the Rodeo/Chedeski fire, at that time the largest in Arizona history. There were extensive preparations for evacuation of the area for 20,000 people. My ex wife has a small spread just outside of Show Low. She has opened it for friends and neighbors and now has ten horses and some burros there. Feed for the animals is becoming a problem because of shortages.
Who is funding the environmentalists? A very small group of well meaning concerned citizens. If 100,000 people contribute $100 a year that’s ten million dollars. The bulk of that money is used to file court actions to block all efforts to sensibly manage the forests. They drove the logging industry out of Arizona over 20 years ago. They successfully managed to greatly restrict free range livestock which munched the litter from the forest floors. Smoket the Bear is the culprit.
Add to that, crown fires often scorch the top layer of forest soil to the degree it forms an unwettable layer. What is left is bare mineral soil, which is useless for forest regeneration, and creates the conditions for severe soil erosion in the future.
What a shame for the most diverse, old-growth forest in Arizona: Ponderosa pine, lodgepole pine, western white pine, grand fir, noble fir, subalpine fir, Douglass-fir, western hemlock, Colorado blue spruce, Engelmann spruce, golden chinkapin, alligator juniper, Arizona cypress… the list is long, and those are just the evergreen trees. Hate to think of the wildlife populations and their habitat all lost.
The environmentalists are not limiting their activities to the forestry service. They have also infiltrated the bodies governing the operation of dams, turning them 180 degrees away from their former purposes. They are causing immense levels of property damage and risk to human life in the name of restoring America to its condition prior to the arrival of Europeans. This article in American Thinker explains what they’ve done and how they’ve done it: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/the_purposeful_flooding_of_americas_heartland.html
Be sure to read the comments below the article as well; you’ll find several first-hand accounts of the consequences of these plans to remake America.
The essence of the strategy has been to put their own zealots into positions of influence over the bodies that direct the operation of the dams. Once in place, these zealots change the purpose of the organization from one of preventing flooding to encouraging flooding so that major rivers like the Missouri can once again be diverted back to the path it had prior to the coming of Europeans. They apparently see the engineering of the white man as an offence against nature and seek to return everything to its original state. They hope – but can’t prove – that this will have the added benefit of helping populations of native plants and animals that they consider endangered. Any negative consequences for humans are not thought worthy of consideration. If billions of dollars of property damage occur and hundreds or thousands of human lives are lost in the flooding, that’s just natural justice punishing people for their transgressions against nature.
thanks for link– been looking for this article
I grew up on a farm/ranch in Nebraska. Every day I worked, walked, rode, played, and got to know nature rather well.
I’ve come to a conclusion. Many of these earth first activists and mainly their supporters grew up in cities and are generally clueless as to the balance of nature and how it works and how we have historically interacted with it.
Note: The American Indians were not the great land stewards that the leftist environmentalists or the modern Indians think they were. They mostly didn’t do anymore damage than they did simply because there numbers weren’t that great.
In any event I have come up with this thought to explain the incoherence of the earth first folks:
“The further you are removed from nature, the less you understand it.” That is who these people are.
P.S. The forest first folks are part of the same group that advocated and won the fight to let the wild horse herds run rough shod over their precious earth. Even some of these enviro’s are beginning to see what a bad idea that was i.e., but the intentions were good and that is all that matters.
It’s important to clarify that “management” (of the forests) in the forestry profession means to actively influence the condition of the forest, for purposes such as timber productivity, health of the trees, replanting, and (this article’s subject) control of density of juvenile trees and build-up of fallen woody material on the forest floor to limit severity of wild fire so that forest-killing, “crown” or “top” fire does not sweep through.
“Management” in this article’s context thus means much more than office-based administration, it’s hands-on intervention in the way tending a garden is.
Thanks Caren for your comments, the other half is the USFS can’t or won’t put the fire out, millions of tax dollars to “watch it burn”
Thank you Caren Cowan for your timely commentary on the raging fires in Arizona, now threatening rural New Mexico. The elitist and detached attitude of the numerous groups like earth and animal guardians, that ALL land and resources have one and only one use, which only they can define—the return to Eden—-is wrecking havoc on the land, water, and wildlife we all so deeply appreciate.
These small groups of zealots, with tireless marketing of their misanthropic vision, have inserted themselves into all levels of local, state, and national policymaking. Thank you for pointing out how much DAMAGE such groups are actually doing.
We have all got to come to know and understand that the extreme enviromental have another agenda and it is not about the environment. In a recent email I received from NM Congressman Steve Pearce, his letter began like this:
“Why The Fight Over Fish and Lizards Matters To You”
“Dear Friend”,
“You’ve probably noticed that I have been in the news lately talking about the sagebrush lizard and the prairie chicken. The political fight over them may be loud but it is serious.
A few extreme environmentalists and other special interests use the law designed to protect endangered animals and plants to advance their own agenda.
But their agenda is more than “protecting the environment” it really is about controlling our economy and society.
I know that sounds like a lot, but it is true.
In the name of lizards, fish, wolves and other “species” these people want to control an awful lot including:
·
What kind of jobs are available
· What companies can succeed
· Where people can live
· Where food can be grown
· What kind of energy our nation will use
You add those up and it matters a lot. It is a struggle between those who support liberty in our country versus those extremists who want to run our lives”.
I am an elected Supervisor on the Dona Ana Soil and Water Conservation District in southern New Mexico. Every square foot of the federal land in the western United States is incorporated into a Soil & Water Conservation District and one of our mandates requires us to watch over the watersheds in our respective districts to apply appropriate measures to insure the watersheds are healthy and the natural resources are properly managed. Just because the land may be managed by a federal agency does not alter our mandate and when we see federal actions that are not in the best interest of a healthy watershed, we should stand up and hold the federal agency accountable. This is our responsibility.
I challenge Soil and Water Conservation Districts throughout the west to take action to protect their watersheds against the non-management of the federal agencies and even our national congressional delegates who believe that all federal land in the west be designated by Congrss as Wilderness in support of the extreme environmental groups who fund their campaigns.
Caren is so right on and Joe you give us a clue how to fight this madness.State and local government involvement is the only way to stop the mismanagment of our federal lands!! We also need to expose the Wildlands Project and the minions that support this agenda. Do a google search on the Wildlands Project and see what the real agenda is behind these fires and endangered species.
These enviro groups obtain funding by suing government agencies over management plans, obtaining cash every time they destroy jobs by opposing timber sales & such.
The opposition to logging has resulted in a lack of logging roads in usable condition, fire fighters have no access to back country except by helicopter & parachute. Fires are harder to fight, as well as encouraged by lack of thinning & clearcuts.
Been watching this process for decades, here in the norhtwest. The landscape is increasingly scarred by burnt off hillsides, far worse than the old clearcuts (which were replanted by logging companies) – the burnt areas can be very slow to grow back to forest. We were assured by the enviro idiots that tourism would make up for the lack of good lumber jobs – but the tourists sure as hell don’t come during fire season (a.k.a. tourist season). The landscape looks worse than before, and the air is very bad most late summers.
Instead of lumber related jobs, fire fighting is a big thing (two months a year).
A recent addition: the forest service is paying to bulldoze roads back to original contours.
There’s a joke about the government being unable to manage a gold mine at a profit – their stewardship of the forests is the literal example.
I tend to disagree with the notion that the forest service employees are the cause – I’ve seen too many examples of management plans sabotaged by environuts and attorneys (many of whom live near forests and demand emergency clearcuts when the fires approach). A landowner could be sued for allowing his land to become a tinderbox, the way the government does – but that’s just more jobs for lawyers, the big profiteers of our forests nowdays.
Native Americans used fire as a tool for manipulating the forest for wildlife habitat, and for moving large herds of animals for hunting. First settlers in the Bitterroot Valley of Western Montana wrote that in summer, the sky was so smoky visibility was severely limited. Some of the fires were 100K acres or more, because they were uncontained (obviously).
The system needs to be changed. If I do you harm, I am liable for my actions and must pay restitution to you for the damaged I have done. Our laws need to be changed where we can regain the monetary harm done to us by the law suits that the envior groups. Make them be held responsible for their actions and not us paying with our tax dollars for their frivolous lawsuits. Their Judges need to be held accountable also.
The Track fire along the New Mexico and Colorado border has just been blamed on exhaust particles from an ATV, a near absurdity when you actually think about it. More likely, the BNSF Railroad, upon whose track the fire started, was the accidental cause of the fire. It isn’t just these ridiculous environmental lawsuits that are pushing all of our forests into fire disasters waiting to happen. Our forest service is too busy teaching the environut global warming theory to everyone, who will actually pay the sorry forest picnic table fees and to all the gullible children they can brainwash, instead of providing actual management to our forests. They think managing forests involves turning every federal acre into a wilderness area in order to keep the citizens from enjoying any type of recreation in the citizen’s forests. As with everything else in this country, management of our National Forests has just become another political football for the collectivist activists. We will end up with not just burned up forests, but with forests that are off limits to the vast majority of their owners. Environmentalism is a religion, folks. As such, just like Islam, it tends toward the creation of a caliphate. Watch to see what the eco-terrorists will do in the near future and see if that isn’t just as bad as anything the Islamic fundamentalists have come up with. These clowns have already tried to burn down several ski resorts in the Rockies. You people in the eastern part of the country should be concerned too. They are filing all of these frivolous lawsuits in your names as well as those of us who live in these states. You think you have no freedoms left? Try living in a state where the Federal government claims the majority of the land as their own.
I believe that when a forest fire burns thousands of acres and several homes because of the lack of management due to law suites, then i think the people who filed the law suite should be responsible for the cost, that is the only way we are going to get them to stop these stupid dangerous law suites.
Caren’s message is from the frontlines as opposed to the coffee shops of Liberaldom. The current Arizona crisis is land agency management drift that affects Americans in general. That “general” also includes the United States Border Patrol. The Arizona crisis stems from the environmental fiefdoms that have come from the land agencies … in the case of the Forest Service since 1922 when Aldo Leopold decided he liked to fight fires while spending the summer on the Gila and then officialized in 1924 when he and his peers pushed the Clark-McNary Act which started funding fire suppression. . . in the case of the Park Service and the USFWS when they pledged their support to the Rewilding Project and were granted actual landlord status on designated federal wilderness along the Mexican border. The national need is to evict the children’s program from along the border and return the management of lands to adults have investments at risk. The Border Patrol gets along very well when the latter are their contacts rather than answering services that remind them of the importance of Mother Earth and her sisters. Good for you, Caren . . .take a deep seat and get that far away look in your eye! . . . Steve Wilmeth
Too bad the author doesn’t give the entire truth. “….oppose all management of the forests, including timber production (thinning) and livestock grazing….”
Large portions of the Forest Service budget has been devoted to thinning in recent years (the Healthy Forests Act from around 2002). Historically, the bulk of timber sales in the ’80s and ’90s lost money for the taxpayer; as in, the roads built by the Forest Service to get out the cut cost more than the value of the timber.
As for grazing, this activity also is heavily subsidized by the taxpayer. Congress sets the fees for running stock on Forest Service and BLM land. It typically is about 1/4 or 1/5 of the going market rate for grazing stock on private and state-owned land. Visit this web site: http://www.publiclandsranching.org . With a trillion dollar deficit in D.C., can the country really afford to continue to subsidize these ranching operations?
“removal of management and economic activity such as logging, mining, ranching…..” Mining? Another activity heavily subsidized by the taxpayer. Under terms of the long obsolete 1872 Mining Act, hard rock mining companies can patent claims for just a few dollars per acre where the ore may end up being worth hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars. And unlike oil & gas companies, hard rock mining companies pay no royalties to the US Treasury; i.e., the taxpayers; or to often cash-strapped local governments.
Steve, it’s too bad you don’t give the entire truth. Using a website that has been proved to be biased and untruthful in presenting facts isn’t fair to those that are ignorant of the truth. Why don’t you do your own research and come up with some truthful facts about these industries instead of relying on skewed and biased information?
Judy: I’ve been tracking the extractive industries here in the West for almost 30 years. I stand by my statements. Here’s another reference for you, a book, by the now retired chair of the Department of Economics at the University of Montana:
“Post Cowboy Economics; Pay & Prosperity in the New American West.”
Instead of criticizing the web site I offered, exactly where do you stand on reducing the massive federal deficit? Is it OK to keep on subsidizing the ranching, mining, timber industries, while cutting back on Medicare & Medicaid?
Steve, I stand with you. The massive debt must be reduced but you can’t do it by removing your producers. Just because you read a book by some “professor” does not make it the truth… There are two sides of every issue. Try expanding your mind and take a look at the other side. A nation that can not produce food, products and energy for itself will eventually fall. Try thinking out of your box.
Judy: I have no issue at all with responsible mining, logging, grazing (altho I don’t eat much red meat now; as I get older, it’s too hard to digest). The issue for me is that these activities on the federal public lands here in the West don’t pay their own way.
Rather, the fees they pay, if any, are set artificially low. This provides an unfair, uncompetitive edge in favor of the subsidized producers vs. those who aren’t subsidized. This is not a fee market in action.
You ask who is financing these groups lawsuit’s? YOU ARE, due to federal law which says if they are suiting for the public [your] good the taxpayers will foot the bill, even if they LOSE.
Having just read the linked story on how the fires were started I cannot help but feel the caught drug smugglers should be tossed into the fires in order to help put them out.
I am in agreement with everything states except the “30 oil tankers per acre”. Here is why: An acre has 43,560 square feet, and a single oil tanker holds an average 2,000,000 gallons. That’s 45.9 gallons/square foot for a single tanker. Multiply that by 30 and it is 1,377 gallons/square foot. Keep in mind that wood has only about 1/3 the energy density of oil.
I’m inclined to think the numbers are flipped, and it is a tanker for every 30 acres. Still a lot, especially considering the thousands of acres burned.
Caren Cowen has written an excellent article. It serves as a documentation of specific current events which result as a result of environmentalist religious dogma. The best history of that foolishness is In a Dark Wood, by Alston Chase. I would strongly recommend the book for its unique philosophical treatment of the problems which result from the fanaticism of environmentalism. It’s also a great read.
http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2011/06/24/opinion/lack-of-logging-isnt-to-blame-in-massive-forest-fires.html
Lack of Logging Isn’t To Blame in Massive Forest Fires
By Bryan Bird / Wild Places Program Director, WildEarth Guardians on Fri, Jun 24, 2011
As the country floods and burns, climate change is upon us. Smoke from the Wallow Fire in Arizona still lingers, and the predictable but misplaced finger-pointing has begun.
As the grandstanding goes on, however, innovative, collaborative efforts are quietly reshaping the federal forest policies that got us here in the first place and charting a sustainable future for the National Forest System.
Contrary to public perception, there have been few lawsuits challenging sensible fuel reduction on the national forests in the last decade. The GAO concluded in 2010 that about 2 percent of all hazardous fuel reduction decisions by the Forest Service nationwide were litigated. The handful challenged were because of unwarranted impacts to water, wildlife and other valuable resources the national forests generate for Americans.
Ignored in the national discourse: the U.S. Forest Service, loggers, the wood utilization industry and conservationists have been spending valuable time and resources in the woods finding a zone of agreement.
We need to go back more than a couple of decades to understand how the current wildfire situation arose.
During the last hundred years or so the lower elevation, dry pine forests of the west were severely logged over, leaving a nearly uniform mass of small trees. Domestic livestock grazing, which suppresses the grasses that normally carry low intensity fire fostered the proliferation of pine seedlings and aggravated conditions. On top of it all, humans became extremely effective at suppressing most wildfires, leaving the overgrowth unchecked.
Cutting itself out of business, the lumber industry is mostly gone and the market for lumber is at record low. Supposing we threw aside all environmental concerns and opened our public forestlands to logging on a historic scale, as some have suggested, there would be no use for the logs. In a free market system there has to be demand or no amount of deregulation is going to make a difference.
Throw in climate change and drought and you have all the ingredients for the Wallow Fire and others burning in the Southwest. The science is clear; big fire years track drought cycles, and climate change is exacerbating those conditions.
The fires are predictable, but can we do anything to mitigate their effect? Yes, we can.
Starting in 2001 with Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s Collaborative Forest Restoration Program in New Mexico, now expanded nationally, former adversaries began developing forest restoration projects that are environmentally sound and effective. In New Mexico alone, more than 30,000 acres have been treated and about 600 jobs created through the program.
More important, perhaps, are the program’s less quantifiable results, as an atmosphere of litigation and acrimony surrounding resources has given way to a spirit of cooperation.
Logging in the historic sense will leave the forests more vulnerable, not less. On federal, public forests, cost-effective fuel reduction is accomplished with other tools including: wildland fire use, prescribed fire, thinning and removal of livestock grazing pressure.
The Forest Service treated hazardous fuels on one and a half million acres with thinning or burning in 2010; many of these acres are strategically located around communities and proved critical in defending Arizona towns in the latest blaze.
Senators John Kyle of Arizona and Ron Wyden of Oregon told a senate committee recently that the Forest Service needs to pick up the pace of hazardous fuel treatments on the national forests. While that is true and the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program requires full funding, we live in time of shrinking budgets and the acute effects of climate change. Strategic use of resources will be critical.
In addition to forest fuel treatments, it is time to start taking personal responsibility, demanding appropriate county zoning and placing the enormous costs of fire fighting on the parties that encourage development in fire-prone forests.
That is the real work of preparing for wildfire in a climate-changed world.
You environmental crackpots have no better idea what is going on in your environment than do the politicians you control through your religious fervor. I am sick of listening to your faith based pseudo-scientific crap. Show some hard evidence that you know what your are talking about. Don’t just assert that man is causing climate change, you have no proof of it. To project a myriad of climate crises from an unproven theory can only be taken as a fervently religious leap of faith.
I don’t object to your religion, I just object to Congress making laws to establish it as the religion of our nation.
http://wyofile.com/2010/02/green-fees-cheyenne-lawyers-crusade-on-us-legal-payments/
An analysis by WyoFile indicates that Budd-Falen’s research contains no support for her assertion that these fee payments are anywhere near “billions”.
Seems to me you’re swallowing a camel and choking on a gnat. If you had read what Karen Budd-Fallen wrote, instead of taking this author’s word on it, you would have known she admitted no one knows for sure how much money has been spent paying the legal fees for the environmental lawsuits because the federal government no longer requires the agencies to report on these payouts. Do your own research, don’t depend on others to interpret the information for you. Think bbird, think.
Sylvia Allen knows of what she speaks. This was written for all those who have actually lived in and with the mismanagment of the federal forest lands.
Update – Senator Sylvia Allen
June 3, 2011
My heart goes out to those families in Alpine and Nutrioso, Arizona, who had to evacuate last night (June 2) because of the Wallow fire, which swept down from the ridge above Alpine. This is the community where my father was born and where some of my family still live. Sadly, there will be some who will have no home to go home to. I know what it is like to be forced to leave your home on a few hours notice. In 2002, we were forced to evacuate our home due to the Rodeo/Chediski Fires.
I once again must express my anger at the lack of forest management that, for the last 20 years, has turned our forests into a tinderbox of undergrowth, small trees, brush, and downed trees. In some areas of the forest around Alpine, the undergrowth was so thick that you could not even walk across the forest floor.
In 1990, Arizona had a thriving forest industry with 15 sawmills bringing $550 million a year to the Arizona economy and employing thousands of rural Arizona citizens. Many rural ranching families ran cattle across the forest land, helping to keep keep the undergrowth down and cleaned out. Over the years, their allotment numbers have been cut to the point that many have gone out of business.
Living through the “timber wars” of the 1990s, I know that the Forest Service was knee deep in lawsuits brought by environmentalist groups pushing for efforts to list the Mexican Spotted Owl and the Goshawk. The timber companies hung on as long as they could, spending thousands of dollars defending their legal contracts in court. Eventually, one by one, they went out of business, and their infrastructure was sold at auction.
There was a time when the Forest Service operated in the black with a very healthy return on their investment. The natural resources that were developed on Forest Service lands created jobs and products benefitting the American people. They were the only federal agency that accomplished such things.
All that changed when misinformation, faulty science, lawsuits, and downright lies were used to shut down our forests by those environmental groups that built multi-million-dollar businesses putting families out of work. These flawed environmental philosophies have made their way into federal policies that have now resulted in an unhealthy forest environment.
The castastrophic fires of the last few years are an indication of the health and vitality of our forests. This overgrowth of trees has depleted our watersheds. If the current disastrous Wallow fire burns for the next 15 days, it will put as much pollution into our air as 700 million cars running 24 hours a day for a year.
We must return to common-sense forest management. The federal government held 12 western states hostage and only agreed to grant us statehood if we gave up control of 60% of our land, assuring the states that they (the states) would have use of the land and be able to use the resources within the boundaries of our respective states. The federal government has broken its word.
Sylvia Allen
Senator Sylvia Allen
President Pro Tempore
#26 “Sylvia Allen knows of what she speaks…….” Not so fast. Perhaps Senator Allen needs to do some research into the Healthy Forests Act of 2003. This Act has pumped millions of dollars into thinning and other forest health activities here in the West. My knowledge of Arizona isn’t as great as for states further north in the intermountain West. But I do recall some timbering operations resuming in AZ as a result of the Act.
“All that changed when misinformation, faulty science, lawsuits, and downright lies were used to shut down our forests………..” This is a good example of “sound bite journalism” where accusations are floated out that may sound good to some, but have no substantive proof behind them. As an example, what science is she referring to and how is it faulty? Who made the decision that it is “faulty.” What are the “downright lies” she references?
“This overgrowth of trees has depleted our watersheds…..” How so? What is her science background? Interesting that she makes no reference to the decade long drought that has plagued the Southwest.
There is also the matter of below cost timber sales. I found a Congressional Research Service article from 2004 that explains the concept. It is complex in nature and not readily given to the type of unsupported accusations suggested by State Senator Allen.
Why does anyone need to support an accusation that a theory is false. Nothing has shown that the theory is true. There has not been a decade long drought that has plagued the southwest. We have experienced both very wet and very dry conditions during the last decade. You claim to be from Colorado, you should know that. You spend your time trying to prevent exploration for oil and gas resources on BLM lands around the southwest, but you have never given a scientific reason for this bias against energy exploration.
What is in your science background that causes you to believe in uncontrolled growth in our forests? The Chinese allow their people to use dead fall from their national forests as home heating firewood. I am not saying that is a better idea, but it makes at least as much sense as keeping forests off limits to people.
Steve B – You’re right it is “complex in nature”… and we need to use the best science, not political science, to understand some of these issues. Unfortunately, much of the science you quote is based on political science. Your sources have a bias – they intensely dislike resource producers. I know I’ve talked with some of them. They think we can just get all the food, oil and precious minerals we need from other nations. I remember the OPEC embargo of the ’70s. Do we want to be at the mercies of another embargo from our “friendly” global neighbors? Or do we want to be an independent nation? It’s your call. I know Sylvia – she’s not crying wolf, she’s using the best available science in her release….
I think it’s time the rest of us – ordinary citizens – band together and bring a class-action lawsuit against every environmental group on the planet. Their behavior is restricting our freedom, costing us money, and limiting our quality of life for a bunch of trumped-up nature-worshiping half-truths and downright lies. I wonder what would happen if 50 million Americans joined together and sued WEG and the other groups, including the father of them all – Greenpeace – for every dime they have or would ever have. Not only sue the groups themselves, but sue the sh$$ out of every single member that belongs to them. If they’re a part of government, sue the government agency they work for. Make this hurt THEM, and watch them squirm.