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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (494235)	7/5/2012 2:44:43 PM
From: ManyMoose	4 Recommendations Respond to of 793914

Sadly, that conclusion is right on. Before Europeans arrived on this continent, the indigenous peoples fostered and tolerated a regular fire cycle. That made for conditions that were open and favorable for wild game, their food source, and also for getting around. In 1910 there were huge fires in Idaho and Montana, so large that the smoke blacked out the sun in Missoula, and chickens went to roost and bats flew around. That fire stimulated Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot to start up the US Forest Service. The first mission of that agency was to develop a fire detection and suppression system. Unfortunately, the Forest Service was all too good at it. That resulted in the dense vegetation and conditions that are fostering these very severe fires that we're having now. We did learn from our mistakes. Some people that I'm very close to or who influenced my career were instrumental in developing a new ethic that permits fires to burn in wilderness areas unless they threaten life or structures. Some of the infrastructure that the early Forest Service built is still out there on mountain tops. These are the fire lookouts. They are not as vital now as they were before aircraft and infrared detection, but they are still important because they have a direct outlook on conditions on the ground. Some of these fire lookouts have morphed into a volunteer program, and the program is so popular that it is difficult to schedule people for short gigs on the mountain top. In August, I will return to Diablo Mountain, the lookout where I spent 52 days in 1962, and which launched my Forest Service career. I will spend about five days there. Later, I will return to Salmon Mountain and spend a few days up there. When we are on the fire lookout we take our job seriously, and try to make our volunteer effort as professional as possible. We look for smokes and report them. These two lookouts are in wilderness areas where the let-burn policy is in force. Several years ago when I was on Salmon I could see huge fires on about 250 degrees of the 360 degree azimuth circle on our alidade. I was glad that all the smokes were ten miles or more distant from my location. Because of human habitation and activity, letting fires burn unchecked outside the wilderness is a pretty bad idea because, obviously, people are hurt or killed, or have their houses burn down around them. Misguided environmental thinking has severely crippled the only logical solution to this problem: active forest management. Forest Management can reduce and isolate the fuel load out there, and also provides access for fire crews. Not to mention the fact that it provides lumber and other raw materials so we can build houses and businesses. The enemies of Active Forest Management must come to grips with the law of unintended consequences, just as the Forest Service came to grips with the knowledge that Smoky Bear's success was not a universal blessing. Over the next century, forest density went from 80 trees per acre to more than 1,000. 80 trees to 1000 trees per acre is a huge increase in biomass density. The problem: Now when fire comes the heat is so intense that fires no longer stay on the ground. They burn up into the trees and wipe them out.