The Pacific Northwest’s fires don’t interest people for much the same reason that people in New York and D.C. don’t understand why Westerners like pick ups, SUVs and guns.
You’ll notice, however, that those items have been front and center in the national debate for the last two decades, so you should probably listen up to what I’m about to tell you.
The conflagration enveloping forest land in Idaho, Washington, Oregon and points west would be a huge national story if the media told you the truth about them.
One complex of the Oregon fires is burning dangerously close to the jewel of the Columbia Gorge, the Multnomah Falls Lodge.
But for going on three decades, the environmentalists who have been peddling the save-the-trees-owls-man-made-global-warming-cooling-a-mud-puddle-is-a-navigable-waterway theories – the very people who tout “visiting the forest” in ads – have been setting the table for the devastation you see.
While photos like this one of downtown Portland, Oregon point up in heartbreaking detail the ash rains that haven’t been seen in these parts since the explosion of Mt. St. Helens in 1980, the photo also points up a big ‘environy,’ a word my old friend Jim Walker of Orbusmax, coined.
The radical environmentalists who populate all of Oregon, Washington and the federal government’s highest echelons of government have worked tirelessly to destroy the logging and forest management industries. In fact, they’ve largely succeeded.
Former logging towns are ghost towns. Entire regions are on government welfare to make up for the private wealth the environmentalists destroyed.
But these so called environmentalists have destroyed much more.
Federal and state forests haven’t been properly managed because to do so violates the beliefs of the nuts like this who worships trees. Remember her?
EarthFirst Mourning Loss of a Tree – Crying & Screaming
Tree farts, yes they’re in part mourning the loss of tree farts from their fallen comrade. Evolutionary biologists agree according to bovine data, people ani…
Yes, logging companies in the past have clear cut and moved on with negative consequences. But good forest management practices no longer use this tactic because forest land that is privately managed considers forests what they are: crops.
Because the Earth Firsters, Earth Liberation Front and other domestic terrorist groups as well as their less radical allies in the Sierra Club have pressured government with their tree sitting, spiking and screaming, the forest land largely is not allowed to be salvage logged.
The radical environmentalists in government don’t allow the felled logs that occur naturally or after fires to be logged and sold. Put another way, environmentalists don’t want the garden weeded. Those ‘weeds,’ provide the dried out, diseased fuel that quickly burns.
Furthermore, Oregon doesn’t actually ‘fight’ fires anymore. Forests are largely allowed to burn up, though efforts are made to save homes … sometimes.
Large tanker planes that are used all the time in California wildfires are not used in Oregon because environmentalists don’t want whatever fire retardant to be put into the forests to pollute the streams.
And, as an alert reader pointed out, there’s the issue of “crowning,” in which fires quickly move from tree-to-tree in densely packed forests. Thinning the crop is a good thing, but the same people who think they invented community gardens and composting don’t consider forests in the same way. Maybe they’re too busy screaming at trees … or something.
You might not be convinced yet that these decisions are such a bad thing.
Ok, try this:
We are constantly told that the reason we have “man made global warming” is because there is too much CO2 in the atmosphere. Environmentalists contend, with good reason, that forests are wonderful ‘sinks’ in which CO2 is stored. That’s indisputable. You learned that in 6th grade science class.
But what happens when those forests catch fire helped along by all that dry underbrush and felled logs that were not allowed to be salvaged?
All of that CO2 is released into the air.
What happens to their man made global warming theories then? Their own forest policies argue against their “man made global warming” theories.
What happens with all that ash from the burned up wood? All of that ash is released into the air as pollution. The pollution that the trees were meant to clean up.
Where does that ash go? Into storm drains to pollute the streams. The same ones the environmentalists didn’t want the fire retardant in.
Falling leaves seem to be a bigger problem in clogging storm drains than any fire retardant sprayed upstream over a forest fire would. But you don’t see environmentalists calling for deciduous trees to be banned. Weird, really.
In fact, the inescapable conclusion then is that forests need to be properly managed. Like the crops they are, forests need to be weeded and nourished and selectively harvested to mitigate the damage of forest fires.
Even this chick gets it:
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Efforts must be made to “save the forests” by not letting them burn to ash, which pollutes the air.
Indeed, look at what the National Park Service considers the net gain of letting fires just burn, baby, burn:
Among the other benefits of prescribed burning are:
- Insect pest control
- Removal of exotic, or non-native, species that compete with native species for nutrients and other needs
- Addition of nutrients for trees and other vegetation provided by ashes that remain after a fire
- Removal of undergrowth, thereby allowing sunlight to reach the forest floor to encourage growth of native species
- Encourage the growth of fire-dependent species
If it occurred to you while reading this short list of benefits looks an awful lot like managing forests, you win a lucite block emblazoned with “WINNER!!!” on it.
Environmentalists have failed at their forest ‘management.’
Their record speaks for itself.
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Oregon needs help. 300,000+ acres are burning through our beautiful state… #oregonfires #sendhelp pic.twitter.com/xATIyzetQn
The people who have been doing proper forest management for profit for decades – the ones who are left, I mean – likely have the best practices to lead the way.
It’s time to start listening to them again.
