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July 22, 2003
Proof Positive
A fire last year in a California forest proved that Bush's new management policy is correct....selective thinning and controlled burns are the best forest fire prevention tools.
September's blaze was named the Cone Fire, for the hill where it was first thought to have begun. It burned 2,000 acres of Lassen National Forest, and 1,600 of those were in Blacks Mountain Experimental Forest, a 10,000-acre area within Lassen set up in 1934 for ecological study by the Forest Service.
When the Cone Fire swept through these woods it came to a patch of forest that was different from the rest, and stopped dead, like a mime at an invisible wall. What stopped the fire was an experimental plot that had been selectively logged to thin it, and had been burned in controlled fashion. The result was an open forest, much the way it might have been 500 years ago when regular forest fires swept through the high dry country and no one tried to stop them.
You see, that's the way nature really works when there's no tree huggers around to interfer.
Ponderosa pine forests are no strangers to fire. Mr. Skinner has taken samples of trees up to 700 years old to find out their fire history. Most trees showed evidence of some sort of fire about every 7 to 10 years. And big, intense fires occurred every 20 years or so, up until a century ago when the idea of fighting forest fires took hold.
So if you really want to protect our forests, the next time a tree-sitter tries to stop timber management just break out your chainsaws.
The trees will thank you for it.
Posted by Rita at July 22, 2003 05:56 AM
Comments
I've come to the conclusion that these clowns aren't "pro-environment" near as much as they are "anti-human."
If saving the forest helps humans, then they are against it.
That's the only conclusion I can draw, given the stands they take.
Posted by: mtpolitics at July 22, 2003 08:44 PM
Shalomkkll
Posted by: Lolita at October 11, 2003 08:16 AM