It’s time... past time! ... to GET MAD!!!

From the July 2002 issue of Resource Roundup... by Angie Many

From my home in Cedaredge, Colorado, the nearest major forest fire is about 150 miles away, in Durango. The Rodeo fire, in Arizona, is even farther away. Yet for two weeks, we have lived with hazy and sometimes downright smoky air from those two fires. And while the red sun in early morning and late afternoon is unusually pretty, I know that the color is caused by the amount of smoke between me and the sun. If it’s this bad here, what must it be like in Show Low and Durango? And why are the clean-air fanatics always completely silent about the effects of forest fire smoke in the air?

In Los Alamos, the rebuilding is still going on... two years after the fire. What must it be like to have everything you own destroyed, and two years later you’re still living in apartments, motels, or with friends or relatives? The Rodeo complex fire in Arizona has burned almost 400 homes. In Durango, about 60 homes burned. In Denver, 133 houses burned. In Glenwood Springs, 24 houses burned. Over 600 homes burned-- from just four fires!

Somewhere over 50,000 people have had to be evacuated. For days -- or longer -- they have no idea if their homes or businesses have been destroyed or their livestock incinerated. Some lost time from work. Many had motel and restaurant bills and other extemporaneous expenses. Many, no doubt, have suffered from various degrees of smoke inhalation. Firefighters have died. How many people are we going to make suffer before we decide to stop the madness?

“Wildfires... leave an ugly landscape which appears to be the ‘legacy’ of the so-called environmental movement.” Don Amador

A Reuters article explained the impact of the Rodeo complex fire on the Apache reservation. The fire “...has already devastated their economy, incinerating the forests they log for timber and shutting down tourism. “There goes our food. There go our car payments. There go our truck payments. How to rebound from it I do not know,” Andrew Kinney, a tribal spokesman, said Thursday.”

Radicals, of course, told us that we shouldn’t worry about losing our loggers and our ranchers. Tourism would take up the slack, and be more ‘environmentally friendly’ to boot. But when our forests burn, we’re stuck with the dead trees, massive erosion, and the insidious black soot. Tourists -- and environmentalists -- just find another place -- a green place -- to vacation in.

That old ‘increased tourism’ dog won’t hunt anymore. Tourist don’t travel to smoke-filled areas. ‘Public lands’ are being closed because of the danger of fire in overthick areas, or the danger of dead trees falling in burned areas. In other places, campfires (a main reason for camping!) are forbidden. The Blue Ribbon Coalition (BRC), which works to protect recreation access, notes that the 2001 Trough Fire in northern California destroyed seven campgrounds used to access Recreation Area and Wilderness trails. The area remained closed for months because of resource and safety issues. “What often gets lost in the debate... is that the general public often loses a valued treasure when campgrounds and trees go up in smoke,” said Don Amador, BRC. “When extremist groups sue to stop forest management programs, they do great harm to families that depend on a healthy forest for recreational activities. Wildfires create closures and leave an ugly landscape which appears to be the ‘legacy’ of the so-called environmental movement.” “...we simply cannot delay in moving aggressively to return health to our forests.”

Letter to Chief Bosworth from five Western governors

So far this year, 2.7 million acres have burned: almost three times the average for this time of year. And it’s just now becoming ‘fire season’! Lightning storms are just around the corner. Our forests are too thick. With the ongoing drought, they are too dry. Under these conditions, many of them are going to burn in virtually unstoppable conflagrations. We have given nutty federal workers and airhead hikers and lightning and the hot underbodies of vehicles the power to destroy millions of acres, fry wildlife uncountable, ruin wildlife habitat, and disrupt the lives of tens of thousands of people -- because we have allowed radical environmentalists to push their warped desire for massive tracts of unroaded, unpeopled, unmanaged ‘wilderness’ into the forefront of land management policies.

As the Wall Street Journal (www.opinionjournal.com) recently noted, “The Sierra Club says that “the only real environmental damage associated with forest fires comes from human attempts to extinguish and prevent them.” The Center for Biological Diversity and the National Forest Protection Alliance inform us, counter-intuitively to say the least, that logging is responsible for the fires. And the National Wildlife Federation says that “In fact, many animals and plants not only survive, but thrive, after fire.” They don’t manage to explain how thinning “destroys habitat,” while burning it down in its entirety makes animals “thrive.””

Extreme environmentalists have swamped the Forest Service with appeals and lawsuits, grinding even forest protection projects to a virtual standstill. They have convinced federal agencies to manage for ‘biodiversity’ through ‘ecosystem management,’ even though there is no mandate requiring this. There is a mandate -- over 100 years old -- that the Forest Service provide timber from its lands and protect its land. Letting them become tinder does not qualify as ‘protection’! Waste, Misery, Costs

“As we are witnessing in Colorado and Arizona this year, and as we have witnessed in Montana the past two years, the consequences to doing nothing are unacceptable,” a recent letter to Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth states. The letter was signed by the governors of Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Utah and continues: “For the sake of our local communities and the health of our environment, we simply cannot delay in moving aggressively to return health to our forests.”

As someone who loves forests, I am outraged that they are needlessly burning. As an American, I am appalled at the misery we are causing thousands of our citizens. As the wife of a logger, I am angry that the trees that were ‘too precious’ for us to harvest are now burned to a crisp, while loggers stand in food bank lines. As a consumer, I am livid that lumber prices rise while we refuse to harvest trees -- so that they can burn. As a mother, I abhor this massive waste of resources in an era when every penny seems to count. As a taxpayer, I am furious that not only have I lost the revenues that timber harvest formerly returned to the federal treasury, I now have to pay billions for fire fighting, rebuilding homes, and the rehabilitation of forests.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m mad! I’m mad, and I’m not gonna take it anymore! Don’t you feel the same way? If so, if we all work together, we can start to turn this around. A lot of people -- and not just rural Westerners -- are finally starting to see the devastating effects that non-management is having on our forests. They’re ready to listen, if we’re finally fired up enough to speak out. They’re ready to act if we’re ready to apply the pressure.

Are you mad yet? If not, take a drive to Arizona or Denver or Durango or Show Low. Or the Black Hills, where a 10,000-acre fire was raging on July 3. Will you act now, or will you wait until a few hundred more homes burn? Will it take your own house burning to get you motivated?

Get mad! Get angry! Demand that our land management agencies, our Administration, and our Congress stop offering their sympathies and start managing forests. Today!

(Posted By: Angie Many | 12th July 2002 | 09:59:20 PM. )