Wildfire
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There is a huge difference between the Industrial Forestry worldview and an ecological perspective. Many people assume that foresters understand forest ecosystems, but what you learn in forestry school is how to produce wood fiber to sell to the wood products industry. I know because I attended a forestry school as an undergraduate in college.…
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The Idaho BLM is proposing to remove juniper from over 600,000 acres of land in the Owyhee River area of southern Idaho ostensibly to benefit nesting sage grouse. Sage grouse avoid treed areas, so the idea is to cut down juniper to increase sage grouse habitat quality. While there is no doubt from the literature…
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The Forest Service is currently seeking public comments regarding the development of alternatives for the Forest Plan Revision on the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests in North Central Idaho. The deadline is February 28. The new forest plan will guide management direction over the next 10 – 30 years. A Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for…
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Montana GOP Senator Daines recently published a simplistic and misleading guest commentary on a wildfire in the Washington Post. In that editorial, Daines, like many other misinformed logging proponents claims more logging would reduce large wildfires and he blames “environmental extremists” for delaying the forest reduction projects. Most of the wildfires burning under low to…
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NASA just reported the drought in eastern Montana is so severe it is a once in a century event. Not surprisingly, despite livestock grazing that some suggest could preclude large blazes, the drought in Eastern Montana has spawned some recent blazes including the 270,000-acre Lodgepole fire. The fire raced across grazed public and private pasture…
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During the 1992 election campaign, Bill Clinton famously coined the phrase: It’s the “economy, stupid” to admonish George H.W. Bush for his failure to understand the real problem facing voters. Today the timber industry and Forest Service continuously advocate logging to reduce fuels and assert that this will reduce large wildfires. But fuels don’t drive…
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Dr. Hessburg’s wildfire presentation has some good points that are worth reiterating, however, he also misrepresents some finer points of fire ecology. Basically, he promotes the notion that fuels are what drives large wildfires which he pejoratively calls “mega-fires”. The pejorative language is found throughout his presentation with terms like “destructive wildfires” “unhealthy” forests,…
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Recently I drove up the Lostine River corridor and hiked the trail in the Eaglecap Wilderness giving me a good opportunity to review a Forest Service proposal to log the river corridor. The agency is using a stealth method of approving the proposed logging called a “Categorical Exclusion”. The CE allows the FS to proceed…