SOS Forests

Where are the “resource benefits” in this photo?

(Sort of a “Where’s Waldo” type of question.)

If goshawks were living there (notice any habitat that WAS there isn’t there now), they would be feasting on all those black-backed woodpeckers that have flown in to feast on all those bugs inside all those dead trees. The meadows are, at least, “re-charged”, and local woodcutters will have lots of easy gittin’s.

Hmmmm, do firefighters get hazard pay during Let-Burn fires?

Reply: no woodcutters inside the National Park. That would be too commercial for the Park Service, which is all about “nature” — not counting their lodges, roads, tour buses, laser light shows, etc. etc. etc.

And yes, firefighters get all kinds of extra pay for not fighting fires. And the bigger the unfought fires get, the more firefighters get double-overtime and hazard pay for avoiding any real work. That’s why Let It Burn fires can run up fire non-suppression expenses into the tens of $millions.

This is sort of like watching a small infection with all the right stuff there to become sepsis. A pimple that can consume the whole body in time.

In Portland, some people who have similar beliefs to the Econazis view that fire is natural (they think God will cure a wound or disease, and you can help that with prayer — so no need for medical care) and you don’t have to fight little piss ant fires like this, but pray instead. The judge took away their infant and won’t let them have her back. She has an eye infection that could cause her to lose her vision. The judge has told the parents and their attorney that the kid is not going back until there is no medical problem, and after that, there will be regular medical reports on the kid the rest of her life until she gains her majority.

We need the same tough love from a judge in this fire issue. Just take away from the USFS, NPS, etc., the management of fire. Let a judge make the decision to fight any or all fires, and charge the agencies to get the job done or be in contempt.

Reply: EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!!!

Now that I have had the time to let the large photo load, I see the fire is burning in one of the few spots that still have seed (green) trees.

Reply: Yes, the fire is in one of the scattered unburned islands from the 18,500 acre Columbine Fire of 2007. Which in turn was a large unburned island following the 1988 fires (1.2 million acres). So much for “diversity” across the landscape. As fine fuels grow back in the midst of all that dead, dried wood, continuous across hundreds of miles, we can expect more megafires to rage across Yellowstone and across entire states like Idaho. Absent any efforts to mitigate the probability, that is.