Wildfire
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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…
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The House Subcommittee on Natural Resources chaired by Tom McClintock (R) of California is advocating more active management of our national forests based on the presumption that logging/thinning will reduce large wildfires. A clear indication of McClintock’s perspective is found in the title of a recent hearing he chaired called “Oversight Hearing on Burdensome Litigation…
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National Forests across the West are facing dire threats from politicians, the timber industry and the Forest Service. The public is currently being misled into thinking that our forests are “unhealthy”, and that they need to be “restored” due to “beetle infestations” and “insect and disease.” All of this is euphemism to drastically ramp up…
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“Rather than alarming, a lack of conifer regeneration allows other vegetation its “moment in the sun” so to speak, and provides for a much more diverse forest ecosystem” . . . . George Wuerthner – – – – – – Recently researchers at UC Davis and the US Forest Service presented a new scientific study that suggested…
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The recent blazes that have consumed more than a thousand structures in Gatlinburg, Tennessee offers yet another lesson about wildfire. The inferno that roared across Gatlinburg was driven by extreme drought and 80 mile-an-hour winds which blew embers miles beyond the fire front. There several important lessons. First, rural sprawl contributed to the massive fires…