For your edification and pleasure, please check out the latest title in the W.I.S.E. Library:
Blackburn, Thomas C. and Kat Anderson, eds. Before The Wilderness: Environmental Management by Native Californians. 1993. Malki Press - Ballena Press [here]
Before the Wilderness is one of the best and most important works ever published in the field of Western landscape natural/cultural history.
The title is not a joke. Wilderness is a modern concept. Before Euro-American mythical glosses and ugh! racist and destructive laws were enacted to codify “wilderness,” the land was home to people and animals. Wilderness is a myth. This book is a fascinating and scholarly exploration of the facts.
What else is there to say? A must read.
February 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Forestry education
We received the following note from Yahoo at Yahoo, a nom-de-plume no doubt.
You refuse to understand or even see all sides of any given issue. Y at Y
Got me! Partly. I don’t refuse to, but I definitely don’t understand the Sierra Club’s position. Why don’t you explain it us. Make their case.
Because I think I nailed them. Their goal is to incinerate America’s priceless heritage forests and any and all private property within 30 miles of Federal land. By “incinerate” I mean burn it hot and hard, altering whatever ecosystem is there to ashes and weeds. They do so to gain control over those properties. They seek to destroy, render useless, and then seize control of the burned lands. By “control” I mean dehumanize, leave to rot, sprout tick brush, and burn again.
Why else would the Sierra Club (and their ilk) sue every single Healthy Forest Restoration Act project since that Act was widely discussed, debated, passed, and funded by the U.S. Congress, signed by the President, and implemented by the USFS as ordered?
Do they despise and seek to undermine democracy in general?
Is it because “the loggers are cutting ancient forests”? Hardly. Have you read the HFRA? It expressly forbids any fuels management in old-growth stands. And yet, the old-growth stands are the ones that need the treatment the most! They are the stands with the most resource values most at risk from catastrophic fire. That’s what the top foresters and forest scientists say, and I agree. But the HFRA is very limited to second-growth near private property and communities.
Instead of restoration forestry, as implied in the title, the HFRA is a fuels management program in dense, high-risk forests at edges of the USFS boundaries. The idea is to prevent private property (ranches, farms, tree farms, rural residences, rural communities, and sometimes urban areas) from being incinerated by fires that arise on Federal lands.
Why is the Sierra Club against that? Make their case.
They were bugged because the diameter limits weren’t small enough. The point to any forest treatment is what’s left, not what’s removed.
For maximum safety, the USFS could strip their land to bare dirt a mile wide inside their boundary. But a better idea would be to leave a park-like forest with widely-spaced tree crowns and grassy understories that are periodically control-burned to prevent fuels build-up. You know, the heritage condition, referencing the healthy, sustainable forests of pre-Contact eras.
The HFRA doesn’t go that far, even in second-growth, but it’s a start. Or would be, if the ilks didn’t sue to enjoin every HFRA project.
I have no idea why they do that. I see only evil motives and tragic outcomes in their machinations. Make their case.
February 22, 2008 | 2 Comments | Topic: Saving Forests
George Taylor, State Climatologist for Oregon, today announced his retirement.
Dear colleagues-
After nearly 19 years here, I have decided to retire from OSU. I have gotten involved in mapping and analysis of extreme precipitation for use in dam safety and other engineering applications, a field known as “Probable Maximum Precipitation.” I am starting a small consulting company to pursue PMP studies, and I am excited about the prospect. Prior to coming to OSU, I was self-employed for a number of years, so I know what I am getting into!
Thank you for your support and friendship during my time here. I wish you only the best in the future.
George
George Taylor is a dear friend. He is not only one of the top weather experts in the world, he has a wonderful family, goes to church regularly, rides a bike, eats organically, and is multi-talented and super-intelligent.
George has had to put up with a lot of flack because he doesn’t buy into the global warming hoax. See The Great State Climate Debate [here].
His scientific research tells him that the small global temperature variations of the last century are typical oscillations and not a rush towards climate catastrophe.
George’s mistake, if any, has been to be honest about his findings when asked. He has not gone out of his way to pound his message into the Media and World Wide Web (I am guilty of such behavior, George is not).
For his honesty George has been hounded by political nitwits like Governor Ted Kulongoski, who publicly declaimed, “Taylor is not my climatologist.” George’s dean, Mark Abbott of the College of Atmospheric Sciences at OSU, has also been less than supportive. Both Ted and Mark are extreme global warming alarmists. They are wrong in their climate assessments, too, but science does not enter into their politics.
Finally George had enough of the backbiting, sniping, jerking around, and public insults, and decided to take early retirement. Ted and Mark cannot steal his retirement funds. George is forming his own consulting company, too, to work on protecting us all from major floods. As Oregon’s State Climatologist his concerns have always been the safety and well-being of Oregonians. His efforts in that regard will continue
I salute George Taylor and wish him all the best. I am glad he is done with those fools at OSU. Now he will have more time to play guitar with me. He has contributed some excellent essays to W.I.S.E. [here], and we all hope for more of them, now that he a little more free time.
SOS Forest Kudos are sent to George Taylor, and a song, and a prayer. Beyond the blue horizon lies the rising sun.
February 21, 2008 | 1 Comment | Topic: Climate and Weather
The following horrible news just came in. It seems the Sierra Club is up to their old sick tricks of burning down America’s forests and all the neighboring private property, too. The raging arsonist commies at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals share the slime pit. If you know a Sierra Club member, please feel free to set their home on fire.
Logging in limbo
By JIM MANN The Daily Inter Lake, Sunday, Feb 17, 2008 [here]
James Stupack has become an experienced hand at fuel reduction work, carrying out the first project exclusively aimed at reducing national forest fire risks to adjacent properties from Hungry Horse to West Glacier in 2004.
Stupack, the owner of Tough Go Logging, is now neck deep in fuel reduction projects on the Flathead National Forest as a subcontractor on projects in the Swan Valley and on his own contract in the Blankenship area north of Columbia Falls.
But those projects and others — nine across the Flathead Forest and hundreds across the country — were approved under a special rule that has been found unlawful by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In ruling in favor of the Sierra Club, the court ordered a lower court to issue an injunction to stop projects approved under the “categorical exclusion” rule, but that has yet to happen.
February 20, 2008 | 10 Comments | Topic: Saving Forests
A great forester, teacher, and I am proud to say my friend, Dr. Benjamin Stout, passed away last Fall. The following obituary was written by his family, especially by his daughter Susan, Research Project Leader at the USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station in Irvine, PA. Ben and Susan were the only father/daughter Fellows of the Society of American Foresters in the history of that organization.
Ben was greatly admired, respected, and loved, and he is greatly missed. All of his friends in Oregon once again extend our sympathies to his family.
Benjamin Boreman Stout, 83, 1545 Takena St., SW, Albany, OR died Sunday morning July 29, 2007 at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Corvallis, OR.
He was born March 2, 1924 in Parkersburg, WV and grew up on the Stoutland Farm in Ben Lomond, WV. He graduated from Point Pleasant (WV) High School in 1941 and enrolled as a forestry student at West Virginia University. After the start of World War II, he enrolled in the Enlisted Reserve and was called to active duty on May 13, 1943. He served with Patton’s army in the Europe, liberating a concentration camp, and participating in Patton’s grand march toward Berlin. His military experience was recognized with the Bronze Star “for meritorious achievement in ground combat against the armed enemy in the European Theater of Operations.”
After his return from war service, he completed a bachelor’s degree in forestry at West Virginia University in 1947. He went on to earn a master’s degree in forestry from Harvard University in 1950 and a Ph.D. in forest ecology from Rutgers University in 1967. The first steps in his career were as a consultant forester, and then as manager of Harvard’s Black Rock Forest in Cornwall, NY. Later, he served as Professor of Silviculture at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where he went on to serve as Chair of Biological Sciences and Associate Provost (1959 - 1978). He ended his academic career as the Dean of the School of Forestry at the University of Montana in Missoula from 1978 through 1985. Finally, before his retirement, he served as director of the acid deposition research program for the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement from 1985 until his retirement in 1991.
February 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: In Memorium
Gregory asks: “Why do some people wish to shut down the U.S. economy (indeed the world economy) to ’save’ a species that is not endangered from ‘climate change’ that isn’t happening?”
This is an excellent and important question.
Why do some people wish to burn our heritage forests in megafires, and hope those fires spread to private land where the residents can be burned out, too?
Why do some people wish to inflict killer wolf-dogs on innocent human victims?
Why do some people hate any sign of humanity and wish to cleanse the planet of all their fellow humans?
I think the answer has something to do with general ignorance, fear, and hatred; deep-seated, innately human ignorance, fear, and hatred.
Hitler didn’t put millions of people to death in gas chambers by himself. He had to have help. Ditto Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Ghengis Kahn, Julius Caesar, and all the murderous tyrants of history. They all needed some help, mainly a host of ignorant, fearful, hate-filled minions to carry out their slaughters.
Those tyrants may be dead, but inhumanity is alive and well.
February 18, 2008 | 7 Comments | Topic: Saving Forests
In 2002 The USFS published a report entitled The Process Predicament. The report was intended to analyze the problems that USFS has with planning and implementing active management projects. The report found that eco-litigation was at the root of the effective shut-down of that agency.
The Report (without appendices) is [here]. The Executive Summary is posted below. The Report with appendices may also be found [here].
It is of interest to note that the Report generated no substantive changes. Since issuance the following megafires have occurred:
Biscuit Fire (2002) 500,000 acres
Hayman Fire (2002) 138,000 acres, five firefighter deaths
Rodeo-Chediski Fire (2002) 467,066 acres
Cedar Complex Fire (2003) 721,791 acres, 3,640 homes burned ,15 deaths
B an B Fire (2003) 90,000 acres (now a complex of over 150,000 acres)
Tripod Complex Fire (2006) 300,000 acres
Yellow Pine Complex Fires (2007) 750,000 acres
and many, many more. Here are the national wildfire acreage totals:
2007 - 9,749,239
2006 - 9,890,823
2005 - 8,686,753
2004 - 6,790,692
2003 - 4,918,088
2002 - 6,937,584
For further discussions of the megafires see SOS Forests > Past Catastrophes [here]
The massive destruction of forests, wildlife habitat, watersheds, and all resource values has burgeoned and shows no sign of slowing down. Active management has ground to a virtual halt. The agency is is in disarray and has shed thousands of employees every year since.
February 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Federal forest policy
On February 5th Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) introduced S. 2593, the Forest Landscape Restoration Act of 2008. It is similar in some respects to the Pacific Northwest Forest Legacy Act suggested by Rep. Peter DeFazio in January [here], but Bingaman’s bill is also substantially different.
The full text of S. 2593 is [here]. An excerpt:
The Secretary, in consultation with the Secretary of the Interior, shall establish a Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program to select and fund ecological restoration treatments for priority forest landscapes in accordance with applicable law.
(b) Eligibility Criteria- To be eligible for nomination under subsection (c), a collaborative forest landscape restoration proposal shall–
(1) be based on a landscape restoration strategy that–
(A) is complete or substantially complete;
(B) identifies and prioritizes ecological restoration treatments for a 10-year period across a landscape that is–
(i) at least 50,000 acres;
(ii) comprised primarily of forested National Forest System land, but may also include other Federal, State, tribal, or private land;
(iii) in need of active ecosystem restoration; and
(iv) accessible by existing or proposed wood-processing infrastructure at an appropriate scale to use woody biomass and small-diameter wood removed in ecological restoration treatments;
All analyses and comments are more than welcome, they are urgently needed. Please review and send us your thinking. Thank you.
February 15, 2008 | 8 Comments | Topic: Forest Landscape Restoration Act of 2008, Federal forest policy
What should the USFS be doing?
Stuff like the Jim’s Creek Savanna Restoration Project. See [here].
February 14, 2008 | 7 Comments | Topic: Saving Forests
The United States Government Accountability Office issued a report on wildland fire management, GAO-08-433T [here], and presented it in testimony before the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives yesterday.
There are numerous flaws in GAO-08-433T.
1. The report considers only the budget funding for firefighting, not the financial losses from forest fires.
The “cost” of a forest fire is much, much more than the dollars spent on suppression. Any competent accounting MUST include the losses associated with the fire.
The GAO are accountants, right? It’s in their name. They seem clueless about basic accounting, however. If one of the GAO accountant’s home burned down, you can bet your bottom dollar they’d hound their insurance company for the funds to restore and replace their home. They would not request merely that the fire department get suppression funding.
This is so basic that their complete blindness to fire losses defies explanation.
February 13, 2008 | 5 Comments | Topic: Federal forest policy
