Bad Forest Management?

Posted by Jim Spence on Friday, July 1, 2011
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Spotted Owl
New Mexico Watchdog - With firefighters battling mulitiple fires across New Mexico — including the Las Conchas Fire near Los Alamos that figures to be the largest wildfire in state history — some legislators are openly questioning whether management policies in the state’s forests may be contributing to the massive amounts of acreage getting burned up.“The public policy on thinning of forests is a huge regional issue,” Sen. Clint Harden (R-Clovis) said at a meeting of the Water and Natural Resources Committee on Thursday (June 30). Tony Delfin, the State Forester, told committee members “We have never seen any fire season like this before.” He also handed out a brief report detailing the number of fires reported in the 2011 fiscal year, which officially ended Thursday. As of the morning of June 30, Delfin told lawmakers that the Forestry Division had battled 1,021 fires in fiscal year 2011 and that 756,249 acres had burned across the state, engulfing 100 structures and 40 homes. The Track Fire in northeastern New Mexico earlier this month burned through the watershed that supplies water to the town of Raton. Read full story here: News New Mexico
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1 comments:

Anonymous said...

B$ there were "environmentalists" there were people who loved the forests. B4 there were environmentalists people went intot the forests and removed old dead trees for personal use. After the environmentalists, people could no longer use these things so the detritus piled up. Then came fire.

If one wishes to place blame for the shabby shape of the forests and the massive fires, one should point directly at the environmentalists. In their zealousness to maintain the forests, they have placed the forests in a precarious position. Fires occur all the time, removing the dead and the weak. But the environmentalists want to maintain things are they are, have always been, and always should be but that is only because the environmenalists have little understanding of the dynamics of the world.

Respect for nature is different from environmenalism. Respect involves recognition of the dynamic system in place, the ever-changing, ever evolving alterations of nature.

Did mismanagement result in the massive fires of 2011? Of course. Throughout the world, forestry managers work with the people to "manage" that which fuels the fires. Except in the US, where the "it belongs to all of us" attitude has resulted in the fuel being left in place. The result, devastating fires that have destroyed old forests for one, two or even three generations.

FIrst, get the feds out of the forest business. There is no constitutional authority for the federal government to have forests or any kind of land within state borders. Put the forests back under state control. Allow those who are willing to go in and remove the "fuel" to do so, charging a fair rate for the "fuel".

The average person is too far from the land today to really grasp its importance. Urbanization has destroyed America. Education cannot fix it unless that education literally returns people to rural life.

July 1, 2011 at 9:39 AM

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