Or so my soil analysis tells me. At the blueberry farm we are currently using fulvic acid and some humic products to encourage release of otherwise unavailable P and N in the soil as part of our fertilizer program.

The only way a chemical can kill fish is to either poison them by interfering with their body chemistry, or to remove the oxygen from the water, and thus suffocate them. Too much N or P would just grow more plants, except the dosage from fire retardant is too little to have any effect, and the fact that the water is running off to the ocean as fast as gravity and resistance will allow — disbursing the retardant pretty quickly.

A fire, however, will change the whole chemistry and erosion budget of the watershed. Not only do you lose physical character to the stream profile by erosion and loss of coarse woody debris, which again and again looses a load of retained sediments down the stream in runoff events, but it changes all the pool-riffle relationships. Holding pools get filled as do stair-stepped waterways that allow fish to “ladder” their way up small tributaries. Those are lost and the stream becomes a sluice way, which does inhibit or prevent fish from upstream access.

The negatives of fire on the landscape are myriad, and if the area was “special” enough to be designated as protected habitat, how does fire improve that? It does not, not in the short term. Habitats are lost, diversity is lost, and species are lost.

Fire is benign when controlled by season and ignition, when it creeps along the ground and stays out of the crowns. Holocaust fire, igniting the canopy with aerial firebombing, is just Hiroshima without the high levels of radiation — albeit radiation levels do increase as mineral soils are exposed to the elements, having lost the protection of the duff and the organic fines in the top 3 to 18 inches of mostly mineral soil during the fire, and more afterwards due to erosion.

The USFS, prompted by the ENGO’s and Judge Molloy, have banned fire retardant and adopted canopy firebombing. How does that make sense?

Reply: The FS’s slogan is (no satire) “Reintroduce Fire”. They do so aggressively and without regard for the law (i.e. criminally). The US Forest Service has become a bellicose occupation army inflicting disaster across the West. It is time (past time) to zero out that agency and give the land back to the residents.

Of course fire is our domain. You don’t see any other critters packing matches or a zippo. We find all the time that other creatures use tools of one sort or another. Recently it was the bear using a rock to accomplish dermal abrasion to remove the detritus of hibernation. But not fire. That tool is ours alone.

The whole essence of survival is being able to either control or follow the environment that nourishes and promotes reproduction and long life. Fire is most important to our species. It allowed us to manage the environment, change the nutritional components of “food”, forge metals into tools, and protect our lives from wildfire, enemies, and diseases.

Of course we have used fire since we evolved. Yes it has been the most useful of our tools/skills. Apparently modern man has lost a lot of empirical knowledge of how fire is/was used in the past. The push to regain that knowledge and skill has been placed on Federal land managers, who seemingly can’t manage much other than self survival and cashing a paycheck. Academics are marginally better, if at all, as it appears they protect their livelihoods sort of like musk ox protect their young: circle up with all the weapons pointed out from their enclave of cloistered safety.

Ron Wyden wants America’s forests to burn. That’s why he supported the ban on fire retardant. That’s why he supports firebombing old-growth.

His little dropping in the Oregonian is a feint, a mis-direction, to plant the false impression that he is somehow concerned about the deliberate destruction of our forests by catastrophic fire.

Don’t be fooled by the snakiest deceiver in the US Senate. He favors forest incineration. Always has, and he has not changed his stripes.

The wooden lectern (”forest products”) is the obvious give-away of course.

Congratulations, Ron! Another great award to display at the bookstore!