Another Green ‘Victory’, The Burning Of CA’s Forests
By Alan Caruba (10/31/03)
On September 22 of this year, Jack Blackwell, a regional forester of the Pacific Southwest Region of the US Forest Service, testified before the Committee on Resources of the House subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health. Barely a month later, his warnings about the conditions of the forested areas of southern California came true, destroying countless homes and taking lives in its path.
He began by noting that the 672,000 acres of the San Bernadino National Forest had some 24 million people living within a two-hour drive and that it was going through “a significant cycle of drought-related, vegetation mortality” involving “severe tree loss.” The result was “a tremendous build-up of hazardous fuels” for a cataclysmic fire.
He noted, “Some community covenants have restricted landowners since the 1920s from tree removal activities on private land within the National Forest” and that the “Forest has not had an active timber harvest program for nearly ten years. There are no lumber mills in southern California and now the current removal of dead and dying trees is difficult and expensive.”
How much more expensive will be the replacement of the homes that have since been destroyed? Or the loss of revenue due to the restrictions on properly managing this forest areas that could have been gained by cutting and thinning its overgrown mass of trees? Since the Greens mounted their Spotted Owl hoax in the northwest more than a decade ago, countless sawmills have gone out of business and many small towns dependent on them have withered to a few families.
Blackwell told the committee “The President’s Healthy Forest Initiative would play a key role in helping us avoid situations such as we see on the San Bernadino National Forest today. The initiative is based on a common-sense approach to reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfires by restoring forest and rangeland health and ensuring the long-term safety and health of communities and natural resources in our care.”
He urged “a public and private partnership” as “critical in providing an integrated and coordinated approach to address the crisis forest-wide.” And he told the committee that the Forest Service had “redirected $3.2 million in State Fire Assistance and Community Protection/Community Assistance funding for wildfire prevention and hazardous fuels reduction…”
Blackwell warned that other forested areas have similar conditions. “Those ecological conditions, combined with the massive influx of people into California’s wildlands and the rapid growth of communities in and around those wildlands, particularly in the Sierra Nevada, have created the potential for truly disastrous wildfires.”
One can hardly wonder what Blackwell is thinking these days or the many forest managers and others who, for years now, have been warning against the now annual loss of huge forest areas to these fires. The plain fact is that the US Forest Service has known for decades that these problems exist and has been issuing these warnings, but the success of the environmental movement in deterring the proper management of forests has once again reaped the whirlwind.
There literally is no excuse for the loss of life and property we have witnessed on our television news and read about in our daily newspapers. The President has been under attack the Greens for his proposed solution to this problem and this is just one more example of the irresponsible and dangerous efforts of Greens to attack the timber industry in every way possible.
It is, of course, all part of the Green attack on the economy in general. It has succeeded, not only with the huge loss of forested areas, the homes of those in and adjacent to them, but also in driving up the cost of lumber in an economy in which new home sales plays a significant, if not the leading role.
There are 490 million acres called timberlands in the US. They can produce more than 20 cubic feet of wood per acre annually. They’re growing more trees today than they were fifty years ago. At the same time, 247 million acres (33.5%) are reserved from harvest by law or are slow-growing woodlands unsuitable for timber production. The bottom line is that the US has some 70% of the forestland that was here in 1600, fully 737 million acres, when the pilgrims first arrived.
The US National Park System represents 83 million acres and unlike national forests, national parks do not allow any timber harvesting. The National Forest System, some 191 million acres, was established “…to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States.” These National Forests contribute 25% of the gross receipts from timber sales directly to states for county roads and schools, amounting to millions of dollars each year. All that revenue has been lost because of these preventable catastrophic fires.
This situation has long been known to Congress and to Americans who have witnessed the annual losses. Civil servants like Jack Blackwell have been telling Congress what the problem is and how to solve it. The real question is when will Congress stop pandering to vocal Green organizations and their lobbying, and begin to protect our forests and our people? And when will Americans stop buying into all their lies?
(Printer friendly version) Email: Alan Caruba
