Lonesome Incineration Planned, Perpetrated
The Rogue River-Siskiyou NF is deliberately incinerating vast tracts of priceless, heritage, old-growth forest today on the Middle Fork of the Rogue River.
On the orders of RR-SNF Supervisor Scott Conroy, crews are backburning in the vicinity of the Middle Fork Fire, one of the Lonesome Complex of fires in the Oregon Cascades [here].
Despite the fact that weather has been cool and rainy, no attempt whatsoever has been made to attack the Middle Fork Fire with intent to contain, control, or extinguish it. The fire has been burning for three weeks and is presently 963 acres. It could have been readily contained, especially considering that nearly $3 million has been spent watching it.
The plan is not to contain the Middle Fork Fire, however, but to expand it across thousands of acres.
The Cascade crest south of Crater Lake is an important historical/cultural area used by First Resident Native Americans from dozens of tribes for thousands of years. Ancient trails pass through tended huckleberry and beargrass fields. It is one of the most valuable anthropological sites in Oregon. It is also home to ancient trees and spotted owl nesting stands.
Yet the avowedly racist and anti-forest RR-SNF is deliberately incinerating this precious landscape with malice aforethought and the intention of converting the forest to “northern chapparal,” otherwise known as tickbrush.
This criminal act is being conducted in secret, with no declaration to the public, no NEPA process, no Congressional mandate, and with taxpayer dollars from an exhausted USFS budget.
Please call Rogue River-Siskiyou NF Forest Supervisor Scott Conroy at (541) 618-2200 and ask him to cease and desist in his illegal incineration of your forests.
Also, please call Congressman Greg Walden at (541) 776-4646 and ask him why he desires the USFS to lay waste to the forests in his district.
by bear bait
Update Friday morning:
Situation as of 09/04/2008 5:00 PM
Personnel: 62
Size: 1,030 acres
Percent contained: 35%
Costs to Date: $3,200,000
Burnout in progress on west end of fire.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My question is and always will be: where in the hell are the smoke opponents from Eugene on this deal? Each time forest fire smoke gets to Eugene they raise hell with the DEQ about field burning because they don’t know their backsides from an excavation site.
Eugene is the place FUSEE advocates from, (goal: to end all logging and to burn our forests in the name of “forest health.”)
So this NOT fighting fire, the miles-away back burns, and then the months-long “interior fuel island burnouts” process goes on… The “mosaic of burned and unburned areas” is propaganda vomit, and when the fire is controlled, the fire bosses go in and burn out the mosaic! The bullshit gets pretty deep, and the wool being pulled over the public has to be imported, but it is still there — unreported by the urban know-it-all media.
If there is a fire, a fire that is NOT being fought, that is being ALLOWED to burn, there is smoke, and that is not a good thing. Grass seed farmers are getting screwed by a selfish, self serving, urban tribe of lawyer-leeches that chase smoke until it comes up against their ability to charge hours. (I am getting tired of the two-faced urban agenda for America. If that makes me a bad boy, a bad bear, then so be it.)
If smoke is bad, then so must be fire. They go hand in hand. You cannot whine about ag controlled burns, slash burning behind logging, and then back slap and hoorah uncontrolled wildland fire. It makes you a HYPOCRITE. It burns the emperors clothes off. It destroys all the whiny arguments. If Air Quality is important, then wildland fire unfought is in violation of our Public Law.
I would certainly like to be an attorney who was involved in an air pollution case, and be able to say my source is minimal, and perhaps not even a threat to human or world health because THE US GOVT IS FOULING THE AIR PURPOSEFULLY TO AN EXTENT A BILLION TIMES MORE THAN WHAT MY CLIENT IS ACCUSED OF DOING, WITHOUT PENALTY OR PUNISHMENT, AND LAUDED BY THE VERY SAME PEOPLE WHO ARE SUING US IN THIS CASE. HOW CAN THEY HAVE IT BOTH WAYS???????
Or words to the effect. I just want them to get on the same page, and have a common sense approach… no more insanity as public policy — please!!!!