SOS Forests

Plutocrats On Parade

We reported [here] that industrial wood products giant Georgia-Pacific has climbed into bed with radical extremist enviro groups. The “news” was acclaimed with crapastic rhetoric by the MSM [here].

Questions have arisen regarding this pusillanimous propaganda:

1. What advantage is it to GP to blacklist 600,000 acres of private timberland that does not belong to them?

2. Who funds the Dogwood Alliance? (and the Natural Resources Defense Council and Rainforest Action Network?)

And two related history questions:

3. What global giant timber company engineered the Northwest Forest Plan that halted timber harvest on 25,000,000 acres of the most productive forests in the world?

4. Why?

Here are the answers:

1. GP has blackballed 600,000 acres of private land in the hopes of bankrupting the owners of that land. GP wishes to constrain the market supply of wood fiber. They wish to halt the commercial production of wood fiber on all acres that they do not own.

2. GP funds the Dogwood Alliance and the others. They are proxies for GP. They do GP’s dirty work.

3. Weyerhaeuser dreamed up and engineered the Northwest Forest Plan. The roots go back to Arkansas when Bill Clinton was governor and a Weyerhaeuser puppet. Big W is the largest landowner in AK, in case you didn’t know. With Slick Willy as Pres, Big W seized the opportunity to shut down 25 million acres (much more than that eventually) of Fed land (esp. high site Douglas-fir land).

4. It is to the advantage of industrial forest owners like Big W, GP (the Koch Bros), et al. to constrain the wood fiber supply by bankrupting and shutting down competitors, the easiest targets being public land and small private holdings. The Big Boys use phony environmentalism to promote their Big Business agenda

There is a glut of wood fiber in the world today. Despite all the shrill and bug-eyed hysteria about “deforestation”, there are more trees on this planet and more acres with trees today than at any time during the entire Holocene.

This phenomenon (big bullying with propaganda theater) is so common and reenacted so often that I wonder why so few seem to be aware of it. Be that as it may, foresters, farmers, miners, and other natural resource producers and regions are patsies in this game. We are not doing the Big Boys any favors by maximizing wood fiber production. That’s exactly what the Big Boys don’t want. They will crush us if they can. The more land they can take out of tree production, the better. The poorer and hungrier the workforce, the better. The Big Boys want you to be landless and starving.

There are no such things as “endangered hardwood forests”. By their own admission, the Dogwood Alliance claims 90 million acres of Southern hardwoods exist. All the fear mongering is a fraud. The kept “scientists” who claim there is something special or fragile about these allegedly “endangered” forests are lying whores.

The entire Big Lie is designed to do you maximum harm. If you defy the Big Boys and their proxy enviro running dogs, they will burn you out with deliberate acts of arson. In fact, that is their intent whether you play along or not. They want your wood fiber destroyed before it ever can reach market. Hence our modern era of megafires.

Oregon’s economy is wrecked. Has been for 20 years. The cabal of Big Government, Big Business, and Big Media has used Big Lies to beat Oregon’s economy to death. We have led the Nation in unemployment, business bankruptcy, home foreclosure, alcoholism, drug abuse, broken families, ignorance, and hunger for two decades. Oregon’s motto is “We Are Pigeons and Patsies Here”. We work for peanuts for corrupt plutocrats who steal our wealth and take it elsewhere. That’s the tradition and the modern reality.

Don’t blame solely the enviro-wacko Gadarene swine. They are funded by big industrialists who wish to keep the masses poor so they can pay them starvation wages. Big government is in cahoots with the industrialists, too, with the goal of inflicting economic pain to the point of starvation. The universities are serfs of both and have so corrupted “science” that it is unrecognizable today as science. Big media purveys sensationalism for the purpose of distracting the citizenry from the truth in front of their eyes.

I invite your critique of the foregoing. Try to explain why I am wrong. Good luck, because I am right and you know I’m right. But let’s discuss it, anyway. I think we should fight back against the wholesale destruction of forests, even if our foes are giant industrialists, big government, the Main Stream Media, and other powerful plutocrats and thieves.

Time to Boycott Georgia-Pacific?

Industrial giant Georgia-Pacific has climbed in bed with radical extremist groups.

Georgia-Pacific Increases Forest Protection and Expands Sustainable Forestry Practices

G-P News Release, November 16, 2010 [here]

Georgia-Pacific LLC announced today it is expanding its forest protection and sustainability efforts with an updated policy to better identify and protect endangered forests in the United States; promote conservation of forest diversity; and enhance its sustainable forestry and recycling practices.

“This policy continues our commitment to sustainability in the fiber we source and the products we make,” said Jim Hannan, Georgia-Pacific chief executive officer and president. “We continue to believe it is possible to operate in a way that is environmentally responsible and also economically sound. This policy also gives us the opportunity to address issues of increasing interest to our customers and to consumers.”

The policy update is the result of ongoing discussions with customers and suppliers, and several years of consultation with a number of environmental organizations, including the Rainforest Action Network, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Dogwood Alliance. …

It isn’t enough that these billion dollar sue-happy Luddites are cutting the throats of forest-based communities across the U.S. and around the world. Now Georgia-Pacific shareholders are dumping more $millions into the coffers of the Gadarene holocausters.

Interestingly, GP is owned by the Koch Brothers, who are big backers of the Cato Institute, an allegedly “libertarian” think tank in the belly of the beast (DC). However, many are aware that the Kochs are “crony capitalists” [here] if not out-and-out global Socialists.

Southern hardwoods are the most valuable timber in America today, especially when logs have figured grain. There is no environmental detriment to professional forest management in Southern hardwood forests. Interestingly, G-P owns no Southern hardwood land and is not in the hardwood milling business. But if they can screw their competition with throat-cutting pseudo-enviro lawsuits, they will, using proxies to do their dirty work.

G-P has chugged the radical enviro Kool Aid, and is now funding wholesale destruction of forests and economies — the real agenda of the Rainforest Action Network, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Dogwood Alliance.

What bastards! G-P ought to be shunned like the evil business lepers they are.

Destroying History With a Vengeance

The US Forest Service has an unfortunate habit of destroying historical structures, on purpose, with glee, even though the structures are on (or qualified for) the National Register of Historical Places.

It happens all the time, mainly in association with “used” wildfires, but also as stand-alone acts of official arson.

Last summer the USFS burned up numerous cabins in the historic Kimberly Mining District of Utah. The weapon used was the Twitchell Canyon Whoofoo Fire [here, here, here, here, here, here], which ignited in July and was Let Burn until it blew up in September. Besides shutting down the Interstate and a key powerline corridor, and eventually costing $18,000,000 to suppress, the Twitchell Canyon Government Arson Project wiped history off the map.

Nothing new about that practice. In 2008 the USFS burned up historic cabins and lodges in Wyoming during the Gunbarrel Let It Burn Monstrosity Fire [here, here, here, here], with typical officious impunity. Good riddance to history said the obsequious functionaries.

It is tough to top the Payette NF, however, when it comes to deliberate arson. They lie, cheat, and sneak around in the middle of the night with drip torches deliberately setting private property on fire. Hard to believe, but absolutely true. Ask any resident of Yellow Pine or Warren, Idaho.

Just recently the Payette NF Gang decided to incinerate yet another cabin, the Bill Timm Cabin in Roosevelt. Yellow Pine resident Scott Amos explains [here]:

According to Krassel District Ranger Anthony Botello, the USFS directives require the Payette National Forest to “reduce our inventory” of historical structures. I.E., BURN BABY BURN!!!! Apparently through any means necessary, and without regard for the Antiquities Act, National Historical Preservation Act, or the will of the American people!

PNF CLAIMS BILL TIMMS BUILT CABIN IN 1969, SIX YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH!

The official USFS archaeological report, required to comply with the National Historical Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA 1966), states the following:

1) [Falsely] The cabin was built in 1969, therefore is not eligible for entry into the National Register of Historical Places and will be destroyed (by USFS rangers).

2) [Falsely] The man who built it, Bill Timm, who died in 1963, reportedly did not build his cabin until 1969!

3) [Correctly] Shows a picture of Bill Timm (as a VERY old man) posing for a newspaper reporter in front of his cabin that he built, dated 1950!!! According to people who knew Bill Timms, he would have been in his 80s in 1950. If he died in 1963, he would likely have been in his 90s. And, the USFS account that he was able to build the cabin sometime around 1969 is simply OUTRAGEOUS!

The Krassel Ranger District burned up their own Work Center in 2007 during the phenomenally egregious Summer of Holocaust in central Idaho [see photos here, a collection of 30+ posts here].

Once upon a time Payette NF functionaries trekked to a stream below an old mine and poured a bottle of cyanide into the water. Then they “tested” the water, found high levels of cyanide (surprise surprise!) and blamed it on leachate from the mine. Hard to believe, but absolutely true.

Destruction in the name of “preservation” is standard operating procedure for the US Forest Service. And not just in backwaters like Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. In Southern California the wackos have coddled tick brush, which they call “old-growth chaparral”, forbidding any fuel reduction treatments. Said tick brush frequently explodes into fatal holocausts like the Station Fire [here, here, here, here] and the Cedar Fire (which burned 3,241 homes and killed 16 people).

Now the Gadarene destructionists, led by geriatric Goober “Moonbeam” Brown, want to declare SoCal National Forests as “wilderness” to ensure bigger and more destructive holocausts in the heart of their largest cities.

Hard to believe, but absolutely true.

The list goes on and on. Toxic “environmentalism” is more than a disease, more than a religion — it is a full frontal assault on civilization and humanity fomented by liars, cheats, and thieves.

But you already knew that.

Owl My Regrets

SOS Forests has been quiet for awhile because I have been working on some special projects. One of those is my “comments” on the 2010 Draft Revised Revised Revised Revised Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl [here, here].

I am sad to say that I have not finished with that project, and the time has passed for official comment submitting. It’s not a big deal, since my comments were sure to be ignored anyway, but I regret not having met the Federal Gummit’s deadline.

One problem I encountered is that nearly every sentence in the 181-page DRRRRRP-NSO is replete with offensive, atrocious, egregious eco-babble. I would sit down with the steaming pile, read a paragraph or two, and groan with agony. Then the dog, who is very sensitive, would start barking like the terrorists from the USFWS were at the door. Then my long-suffering wife would get upset at me for upsetting the dog, and threaten to put the offending DRRRRRP-NSO into the woodstove.

I tried but could not control my emotions. The neo-fascist enviros have managed to incinerate millions of acres of America’s priceless heritage forests and shut down Oregon’s economy behind their outrageously junk pseudo-scientific lying crap about the Spotted Owl.

Their 20-year stranglehold has left Oregon in ruins. And the New Plan is worse than the Old Plan!

Somebody needs to call the USFWS on their horrific bullshit. I have volunteered. And I will complete the job. All will be posted here at SOSF.

But not today. I need a break from the agony. ‘Tis the season of goodwill and peace on Earth, and I need to get in the spirit. Later, after Christmas, I will take up the Owl burden again.

Meanwhile, here’s wishing that your next two weeks are cheery and bright, and may you be graciously mindful of the Reason for the Season.

OR State Forester Resigns Upon Request of the Board of Forestry

Announcement by Oregon Board of Forestry chair John Blackwell
October 19, 2010 [here]

For immediate release

Oregon State Forester Marvin Brown is stepping down at the end of the year, Board of Forestry Chair John L. Blackwell announced Monday. The Board accepted Brown’s resignation after determining that the Department of Forestry needs fresh leadership.

Blackwell, of Portland, said the seven-member board believes that new leadership is essential as the board and the Oregon Department of Forestry address complex and difficult issues ahead.
“Marvin has deep knowledge of forestry, and of the many public benefits that sound forest management provides,” Blackwell said. “We thank him for his steady leadership and professionalism during challenging times.”

He praised Brown’s role in improving management plans for state-owned forests, and in guiding the board in carrying out Governor Ted Kulongoski’s direction to provide a voice and vision for Oregonians in the management of federal forestlands, the bulk of Oregon’s forestland base.
“For nearly eight years, Marvin Brown has been a key member of my natural resources cabinet,” Kulongoski said. “From guiding the discussion on federal forestlands to acquisition of the first new state forest in more than 60 years, Marvin leaves with a solid record of achievement. I wish him all the best in his new endeavors.”

The Board of Forestry’s members, who are nominated by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate, oversee forest policy matters within the state’s jurisdiction, and appoint the state forester, who serves as director of the Department of Forestry. … [more]

Comments on the State Forester Resignation

Natural Resource Report, October 21, 2010 [here]

The Oregon Department of Forestry Department announced this week that the State Forester, Marvin Brown, is leaving at the close of 2010. Below are some quotes on the resignation and the official press release from the Department of Forestry. … [more]

Private Woodlands and the Statist JOF

by Travis Cork III

Note: Travis Cork is a South Carolina consulting forester and the author of The Fictional Ecosystem and the Pseudo-science of Ecosystem Management, W.I.S.E. White Paper No. 2010-3 [here] and The Market Illiteracy Embodied in the Politically Correct Version of Sustainability, W.I.S.E. White Paper No. 2010-4 [here].

The September issue of the Journal of Forestry has three op-eds regarding what’s happening “In and Outside of America’s Private Woodlands.” One might think that at least one of the op-eds would have an opinion from a private perspective, but all three are written from the statist perspective. The response by Fischer and Ruseva builds on the statist perspective of Messrs. Coufal, Wiedemann, and Greason.

The question is should the NIPF [non-industrial private forest landowner] be left to manage (or mismanage) his forest as he chooses, or should the state force its management choices on him.

Fischer, et al. write:

[The] ramification of “unregulated” timber harvesting as an ecologically harmful practice become even more salient once viewed through the prism of ecosystem services. As Coufal and colleagues acknowledge, “high-grading impacts all values of the forest.”

A legally-defined and enforceable framework of property and use rights that recognizes the public goods and CPR [common-pool resources] characteristics of forests can have important implications for the existing incentives to harvest. If WE [emphasis added] believe that private forests provide important ecosystem services enjoyed by society, then the need for [public] forester involvement in timber harvesting becomes a pertinent question.

It is discouraging and embarrassing to see the level of detachment from reality in the natural resource community. This community has taken a page out of Keynesian economics and sees the natural world in terms of simplistic aggregates, i.e., watersheds, ecosystems, biomes, etc. That the individual, whether it be man, animal, insect, plant, microbe, or any other form of living thing, is the basic unit of life is a fact that many in the natural resource community,especially in academia and bureaucracy, ferociously refuse to acknowledge.

The ecosystem concept is worse than a detachment from the reality of the natural world. It is a destructive device to justify the control-predictably by supposedly enlightened, superior humans-of inferior humans in their interactions with other individual organisms.

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Shrooming in Oregon

Correspondent and innovative tree farmer Jose Javier of the Navarre region in Northern Spain asks (in the W.I.S.E. Colloquium: Innovative Tree Farming [here]) about inoculating Douglas-fir with truffles for commercial harvest.

I know that commercial harvest of wild mushrooms of the morel and chanterelle varieties can be a lucrative business here. But I don’t know about truffles.

If you have expertise in these matters and have knowledge you can contribute, please join the discussion [here]. Thank you.

Enviro-Extortion Is the New Game

OPINION EDITORIAL
FROM: KAREN BUDD-FALEN
BUDD-FALEN LAW OFFICES, LLC
DATE: SEPTEMBER 7, 2010
RE: GETTING PAID TO GO AWAY - AND THE TAXPAYER AND CONSUMER GET TO PAY AGAIN

It is no surprise that there is a big difference between legal requirements, radical opinion, political power, private extortion… and then there is the rest of the story.

With regard to the payment of attorneys’ fees to radical environmental groups, radical opinion and political power seem to often win and legal requirements are ignored. In fact, political power supporting radical opinions forced payment of at least $4,697,978 in taxpayer dollars to 14 environmental groups in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

Political power payments for radical opinions happens 21% of the time when attorneys’ fees are paid.

And then there are the cases where these same radical environmental groups are extorting millions from major corporations and local governments as payment to drop appeals and protests. For example, recently Western Watersheds Project (“WWP”) and Oregon Natural Desert Association (“ONDA”) extorted $22 million from El Paso Corporation to drop their protests of the Ruby Pipeline project. In another case, the Center for Biological Diversity (“CBD”) extorted almost $1 million from Alameda County, California to drop its protests to a City’s approval of a residential and commercial development project. The general theme is that money changes hands, development moves forward and the taxpayers and consumers get stuck with the bill.

The story goes like this:

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Comments Submitted on Draft Cohesive Strategy

The Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC) has embarked on a “Cohesive Strategy” planning process [here, here, here, here, here].

The “Cohesive Strategy” was mandated by the Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement or FLAME Act [here, here, here].

A draft report entitled National Wildfire Management Report to Congress and Cohesive Strategy Draft has been issued [here, 3.2 MB] and comments were requested.

W.I.S.E. has complied and submitted our Comments today [here, 1.7MB].

Some additional comments:

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OFRI: Numbskulls On Parade

More money down the tubes. The Oregon Forest Resources Institute has issued a new “special” report six years in the making: Federal Forestland in Oregon - Coming To Terms With Active Forest Management of Federal Forestland [here, 3.1 glossy MB].

The report is “special” only in the sense that it is filled with errors, misstatements, and poppycock. Which is about what you’d expect from yet another government bureaucracy.

The Oregon Legislature created the Oregon Forest Resources Institute (OFRI) in 1991 to improve public understanding of the state’s forest resources and to encourage environmentally sound forest management through training and other educational programs for forest landowners. OFRI is funded by a dedicated harvest tax on forest products producers [here].

Tax the victims, shove the knife in deeper, and twist it.

The problem with crappy forest policy is that it is based on crappy forest science. Political solutions crafted by numbskulls, with no conception of what it is they are attempting to regulate, is doomed to failure.

Failure is OFRI’s middle name.

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“Sustainability” Is an Unsustainable Marxist Hoax

We are pleased to announce that a new W.I.S.E. White Paper has been posted in our Forest and Fire Sciences Colloquium [here]:

Travis Cork III. 2010. The Market Illiteracy Embodied in the Politically Correct Version of Sustainability. W.I.S.E. White Paper No. 2010-4

This White Paper is an excellent cutting-edge review of the folly and fallacies of “sustainable forestry” programs, whether run directly by government or by government-affiliated special interest groups.

By way of introduction to the topic, the following note from the author describes some of the tragic consequences of the red tape Gordian Knot that is “sustainability” in practice.

******

Pick Your Poison While We Pick Your Pocket

By Travis Cork, Practicing Professional Forester and Forestry Consultant

When my client Bud E. called to find out why his property had been decertified as a Tree Farm, in his opinion “given a black mark,” he also asked if there were any advantages to being in the Tree Farm system.

I told him that there are no advantages, but there are plenty of disadvantages.

The parent of the Tree Farm System, American Forest Foundation (AFF), is an aggressive supporter of the one entity on Earth that most threatens sustainability. That entity is government at all levels. AFF supports programs that will allow their members to pick the pockets of other taxpayers, all supposedly in the name of sustainability.

That these programs are adding an unsustainable debt load that our children and grandchildren can never pay, does not seem to be a concern to AFF.

Apparently the one way Bud can remain in the Tree Farm system is to allow a bureaucrat with the South Carolina Forestry Commission (SCFC) to write a “management plan” that incorporates all of AFF’s standards of sustainability.

What about the SCFC? If we took it off the taxpayer teat, how would it pay its way? How would it be sustained?

The SCFC has survived as long as it has due in large part to the fact that the productive economy has created enough wealth which SCFC can siphon off without causing an uproar among taxpayers. By pricing the subsidized services it offers at below-market-rates, it finds and maintains a clientele simply by pricing competition out of the business. It also survives because of its access to government’s monopoly of legalized violence. It uses its regulatory authority to force its existence on us, even though there are superior ways to deal with issues such as BMPs and timber theft.

In fact, there is no person less qualified to write a management plan advancing true sustainability than a bureaucrat with any bureaucracy, be it SCFC, USFS, NRCS, FSA, or any other. Bureaucrats are isolated from any measure of profit and loss. For the NIPF [non-industrial private tree farmer], profit and loss matters. For the bureaucrat, as long as it can force the taxpayer to support it, profit and loss has little relevance. (If bureaucrats understood the true nature of sustainability, they would not be bureaucrats.)

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All Lands Management, Government-Style

Once again the US Forest Service is blaming everybody but themselves for catastrophic megafires that arise on unkempt, fuel-laden Federal lands and are exacerbated by the USFS’ own Let It Burn policies.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack blames all those private homes, including those that haven’t been built yet, within 30 miles of the unmitigated hazards the USFS has created.

The solution: eliminate all homes with 30 miles of Federal lands. In other words, strip the Western U.S. of all residents. Heck, strip the eastern half, too.

The Federal Government can’t prevent illegal immigrants from pouring over the border, but they are all hot to get the bayonets and cattle cars out to drive legal resident humanity off the continent.

When the Station Fire burned down 89 residences, when the Angora Fire burned down 254, when the Cedar Fire burned 3,241 homes and killed 16 people, whose fault was that? Not the folks who mismanage and unmanage the Federal Estate. Nope, it was the victims who were so self-interested and disregarding of the commonweal as to build a home within 30 miles of Federal land.

Vilsack Highlights Report Showing Threats to Private Forested Lands

Forest Service study supports “All Lands” approach outlined by Vilsack last year

USDA Press Release No. 0401.10, August 11, 2010 [here]

Washington, D.C. - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today held a national conference call to highlight a USDA Forest Service report entitled Private Forests, Public Benefits [here], showing that privately held forests in the U.S. are under substantial stress from development and fragmentation, and that increased housing density in forests will exacerbate other threats to forests from wildfire, insects, pathogens and pollution. These threats to the important goods and services provided by privately owned forests — which make up 56 percent of all forested lands — emphasize the importance of the collaborative, cross-boundary approach to conserving and restoring our forests as laid out by Secretary Vilsack in a major address last year.

“Americans rely on their forests for a wide range of social, environmental and economic benefits, including clean water, wood products, habitat for wildlife, and outdoor recreation,” said Vilsack. “The Private Forests, Public Benefits report shows that now, more than ever, we need to take an ‘all lands’ approach to managing our nation’s forests, whether they are national forests or under the stewardship of state or private entities.” …

The study touted above is a product of the USFS Open Space Conservation Strategy [here], the brainchild of former USFS Chief Gail Kimbell.

There is no (none, zero, nada) stautory directive from Congress to engage in the Open Space Conservation Stategy. The civil servants thunked it up all by their lonesomes.

Congress did not order it, the Pipple did not order it, it has never been through any democratic process. It’s just another wild and crazy scheme drawn up by overpaid, underworked, government functionaries with too much power and too much time on their hands. With your money.

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State Foresters Don’t Like Federal Let It Burn Policies

On July 6 the National Association of State Foresters (NASF) released a “briefing paper” entitled “Identifying Communities at Risk and Prioritizing Risk-Reduction Projects” [here].

This paper is intended to provide national guidance for identifying communities at risk, conducting planning efforts that are consistent with national initiatives, and to reinforce the role of the National Association of State Foresters (NASF) in setting priorities, effecting progress, and measuring success toward reduction of wildfire risk for America’s communities.

The NASF is “a non-profit organization comprised of the directors of forestry agencies in the states, territories and the District of Columbia of the United States.” Ostensibly the NASF represents State Foresters. Their concerns are such things as wildfire suppression funding, sustainable forestry, forest product markets, etc.

In their briefing paper on Communities At Risk, NASF acknowledges that “communities” is a difficult thing to define and map:

Unfortunately neither definition for community nor wildland urban interface lends itself to a spatial analysis using geographic information systems. … The number of communities, community boundaries, and wildland urban interface are so dynamic that strict definitions and inventories are generally not applicable. A flexible and expandable approach to identifying communities and addressing risk may be necessary in some areas.

But they are giving it a shot. In their briefing paper NASF expresses valid concern about fire risks and is attempting to address them:

Projects, not communities, should be prioritized based on probability of success, efficiency through community involvement and collaboration, and on sustainability. However, wildfire risk will be the key principle used in identifying projects from the outset. As the challenges of addressing communities at risk increase, the process may become more focused on additional mitigation measures that address actual risk—fire prevention, forest resource management, and Firewise principles.

That was July 6th. On July 12 NASF released another briefing paper (which does not appear on their website!) entitled “State Forestry Agency Perspectives Regarding 2009 Federal Wildfire Policy Implementation” [here].

That second briefing paper is a little more hard hitting than the first one. It acknowledges that State Foresters have no say so in how the Feds fight fires that threaten communities at risk. State Foresters wish that the Feds would implement aggressive fire suppression strategies,

Safe and aggressive initial attack is the best suppression response to keep wildfires small and costs down.

but they recognize that the Feds are not doing so. They also recognize that Federal Let It Burn policies impact state fire suppression efforts when the Fed fires leap across jurisdictional boundaries and impinge on state-protected lands:

Prior to the core fire season, an extensive outreach effort should be made to explain federal fire policy to cooperators, local government representatives, and private property owners. Consistent use of terminology (i.e. “fire use, appropriate management response, or resource benefit”) and a clear explanation of related processes (i.e. WFDSS, Management Action Points, Long Term Implementation Plan, etc.) should be addressed.

The Feds are doing crazy stuff, i.e. Let It Burn, and they are not providing any sort of credible explanation for it, not to State Foresters’ satisfaction at any rate. Furthermore, the Feds are burdening States with fire suppression costs from those “escaped” fires. That is not satisfactory to NASF, either:

On incidents where the decision is made to manage a fire or portion thereof for resource benefits, the jurisdictional agency should be prepared to assume all suppression costs.

Adjacent fire protection entities, including state and local government, should be consulted regarding fire management strategies, and shared decision-making reinforced whenever possible.

Adjacent fire protection entities should provide prompt notification to agencies when concerns exist about wildfires that are managed strategically for resource benefit that have the potential to impact adjacent jurisdictions.

When conflicts regarding fire response arise at the local level, each geographic area should establish protocols for how to pursue and resolve issues at a higher level, if needed. Such a protocol should be developed and adopted at the Geographic Area level.

What the State Foresters are saying is that the Feds are out of control. The Feds are allowing wildfires to burn, allegedly for resource “benefits”, but those fires are blowing up, crossing onto state-protected land, putting communities at risk, and placing tremendous burdens on the states to put out uncontrolled fires emanating from Federal lands.

That is a serious issue in states and locales where the Feds own 50, 60 or even 90 percent of the land.

The Feds are not “cooperating” or “coordinating” with state fire agencies. They are not even communicating. There are no explanations, no notices, no consultations regarding foofurbs (fires used for resource “benefit”). And when damages to private landowners arise from Federal Let It Burn fires, the Feds are not assuming any liability or recompensing the States or the victims.

Financial and personnel impacts to other fire protection entities due to resource-benefit fire management strategies should be mitigated as much as possible.

Any available claims process for resource losses from a fire managed for resource benefit should be made known and available to all potentially affected parties.

Many National Forests have adopted Let It Burn. In the case of forests like the Rogue River-Siskiyou NF, every single acre on the Forest has been determined to be suitable for Let It Burn [here, here, here, here, here, here, here and more]. The Payette NF has deliberately incinerated over a million acres since 1993, decimating forests, watersheds, homes, and communities [here and more]. The list of “escaped” Let It Burn fires goes on and on. Every state in the West has been impacted by damaging fires that “escaped” Federal control and spread to state-protected lands.

NASF is not too pleased about that:

Broad application of modified suppression strategies—particularly within the WUI, commercially viable timber stands, or critical watersheds/wildlife habitat—is not advisable. Within these areas, federal agencies should limit the use of resource-benefit fire strategies to lands where priority areas identified in local Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs) have been treated to reduce fire risk.

Expanded use of resource-benefit fire management strategies may transfer a significant amount of financial and safety risk to state and local governments. Consequently, representatives from these entities should be informed well before the fire season and directly involved with any decisions to expand use of this tool.

In areas where resource-benefit fire management strategies are appropriate, stakeholders must continue dialogue aimed at clearly conveying the roles, responsibilities and liabilities that may come with such strategies. Pre-season exercises and discussions are vital to ensure management of such fires minimizes threats to adjacent property and the frustration of affected communities.

That rhetoric is rather subdued, in my opinion. NASF should take the gloves off. Federal Let It Burn fires are NOT benefiting resources and they ARE putting communities at risk. State Foresters need to do more than politely complain — they need to DEMAND accountability. The Feds should have to prove to the States that Let It Burn is risk-free and beneficial, or else cease and desist from Let It Burn practices.

“Pre-season exercises and discussions” will not suffice. The only responsible course of action is to contain, control, and extinguish wildfires unless and until the Feds undertake legally-mandated, exhaustive and collaborative processes that demonstrate to everyone’s satisfaction that Let It Burn fires are appropriate.

Road Closure Meeting With the Payette National Forest Highlights

By Scott Amos, Letter to the Editor, Yellow Pine Times, May 25, 2010

Folks from Big Creek and I did attend the meeting with the Payette National Forest office in McCall today. Much material was gathered which was not otherwise available to the public. It shows that the USFS believes there is only one job in Yellow Pine related to tourism and 40 government employees reside in the Yellow Pine area.

I started to offer the loan of my calculator to the PNF, but figured with their government budget they should have plenty. Then I thought they may have not been sufficiently task trained in the operation of calculators. I held a brief class with present PNF employees and counted five businesses in and around Yellow Pine. I even used a visual aid, my fingers on one hand, but it was like explaining differential calculus to a kindergartner. I really got a lot of blank stares when I explained some of the five businesses in fact have MORE than one employee, and one employee does not run, operate, and maintain all five businesses simultaneously. Therefore, I will offer a class free of charge to any PNF employees who are interested in operating, maintaining, and understanding calculators. They can even be clean and green solar calculators, if they prefer.

Clearly being alone in the woods for long periods of time with the hazardous fumes from our incinerated forests has affected the understanding they once had of calculator operations and basic math. Deciding one employee in tourism was too hard a concept, we did not dare talk about the 40 missing government workers with no Yellow Pine mailing addresses. That material will be offered in subsequent advanced government mathematics which is too advanced for introductory classes and could not be offered due to time constraints in explaining it to the students.

RS2477 Roads

From this point the discussion has been deemed to go to appeals. We briefly discussed RS2477 roads, but the PNF thinks we should spend lots of federal, state, and county money to find out that which we’ve already agreed upon as valid; i.e. yes many of the roads the county claims as their right of way ARE county RS2477 roads, but you, I, and the folks who don’t spend as much of the government money as we can aren’t qualified to settle the debate. Sounds like only a highly paid federal judge can read the documents we currently hold [presented by highly paid government lawyers] and say “yes, sounds like you’ve got a valid point.” Even though the PNF agrees the county has a valid point in claiming RS2477 jurisdiction.

The West Side Road to My Property

The representative present today stated on behalf of Suzanne Rainville, Forest Supervisor, that the roads (including my driveway) that she deemed “unworthy of public comment” would be “closed by de facto.” In other words, the roads the public wasn’t allowed to comment on will likely be obliterated, removed, and destroyed, even though some of them may qualify for protection due to their historical value under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1963.

The NHPA states:

(1)(A) The Secretary of the Interior is authorized to expand and maintain a National Register of Historic Places composed of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects significant in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture.

and that

(B) Properties meeting the criteria for National Historic Landmarks established pursuant to paragraph (2) shall be designated as “National Historic Landmarks” and included on the National Register, subject to the requirements of paragraph (6).

The National Historical Preservation Act of 1963 can and does include roads. Look up Historic Route 66 [here].

My driveway, Smith Creek Road, Three Mile Road, Hennesey Meadows Road, the Old Thunder Mountain Road, the Frog Pond Road, the Road Adjacent to the Frog Pond, and the Road Across from the Trail to Buckhorn Lake, are all historic and significant, especially to local residents. According to Yellow Pine legend and some maps dug from their dusty tombs these historical roadways are much older than the Route 66.

Just a thought.

*****

Note: see also Yellow Pine Road Workshop Planned [here], Payette Road Closure Appeal Meeting [here], and Boise NF and Payette NF Post-2007 Fire(s) Photos [here].

Holocausters Seize the Day

The Obama Administration has gotten in bed with the Burn Baby Burn crowd. If all goes according to nefarious plan, the holocausters will take landscape-scale forest incineration to new heights.

Get ready, America, for record megafires.

Three recent news blurbs indicate the power that radical anti-human, pro-holocaust crazies now wield with our dysfunctional government. First, it turns out Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was lying [here] when he told a Senate committee last March that there is no “hidden federal agenda” to unilaterally designate national monuments in Utah and around the West.

Govt Met With Environmentalists On Land Takeover

Obama Administration Consulted Environmentalists in Secret About Creating New National Monuments

AP, CBSNews.com, May 15, 2010 [here]

HELENA, Mont. (AP) - Recently released documents show the Obama administration was getting ideas from environmental groups about setting aside millions of acres in the West, drawing the ire of land users who said discussions were being developed behind their back.

In the documents - most of which are e-mail messages - the environmental groups suggest various ways to protect land, such as by creating national monuments, buying private land or through conservation easements.

A subsequent internal Interior Department memo - which the agency said is simply the product of brainstorming - listed 2.5 million acres in Montana for a new bison range as one of 14 sites in nine Western states being considered as national monuments. …

Republicans who submitted an information request to obtain the documents blasted the information as proof that the administration was privately crafting large-scale land use plans. Federal agencies have so far produced only a fraction of the requested documents, they said.

“We now find references to plans that Montanans were told weren’t in the works,” said U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, a Montana Republican. “This doesn’t pass the smell test.”

The e-mails show detailed discussions that went into brainstorming for the “Treasured Landscapes Initiative.” … [more]

The law allows the President to declare unlimited acres of Federal land as “national monuments”, a designation that, like wilderness and roadless, invites Let It Burn.

more »