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Bob Zybach who works for the forest industry published highly inaccurate guest commentary in the Eugene Register Guard. You can find Bob’s commentary here: http://registerguard.com/rg/opinion/36070698-78/help-california-rebuild-by-managing-our-forests.html.csp Bob Zybach’s October 31st Register-Guard guest editorial on wildfire was full of misinformation and incorrect assumptions. He suffers from the Industrial Forestry Paradigm that sees forests as either “fuels”…
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Recently a bunch of older foresters wrote a letter that has been published in a number of Montana papers advocating more logging and other fuel treatments of our forests to reduce wildfires. These foresters all seem to be influenced by the Southwest ponderosa pine model which has infiltrated so much of the thinking of foresters…
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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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According to the FS and many others with a financial interest in logging and firefighting, prior to the settlement of the West, wildfires were more frequent than today. These frequent fires kept fuels low, and therefore, reduced fire severity of wildfires. Since its inception, the Forest Service has had a policy of putting out…
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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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I regularly hear or read arguments from agencies compromising our natural heritage that such and such studies support their management decisions. However, often the agencies overlook or ignore contrary science that does not support the policy or management decision. To give them a break, the average district ranger or even specialists like wildlife biologists,…
Author
George Wuerthner is an ecologist and writer who has published 38 books on various topics related to environmental and natural history. He has visited over 400 designated wilderness areas and over 200 national park units.