Thin The Trees!

Raskolnikov

http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/08/22/bush.timber/index.html

The above link goes to an article about a new Bush policy whose aim is to try and stop forest fires by cutting down forests. Ironically the scheme is called Healthy Forests. It's a completely ridiculous plan which is supposed to protect Americans when in a matter of fact it is going to correct the exchequer balance of payments

sceptre

It;s been a whole since I heard an idea as nutty as this. Just read the story in a few places.

Associated Press:

The logging proposals — first outlined Wednesday — prompted howls from environmentalists. But the Bush administration said changes are necessary to clear a decades-long buildup of highly flammable materials and lessen the risk of catastrophic burns.

Well of course it's flammable - it's wood ffs

This year's wildfires across the West have renewed the perennial debate between conservationists who prefer thinning just near property that involves only brush and small trees and logging interests who argue that decreasing the risk of fire requires cutting some larger trees in deeper woods as well.

One side of this argument makes sense and has no conflict of interest. Guess which one.


Miami Herald:

Industry groups and the federal Forest Service, which is part of the Agriculture Department, contend that the Sierra Club proposal should permit thinning well beyond established communities.

''Most of the fires are actually not near towns and communities,'' said Michael Klein, a spokesman for the American Forest and Paper Association, a logging industry group. ``They are for letting it all rot and burn until it gets close to our towns.''

Washington Post:

Even the facts in the forest debate between conservation groups and Bush's political allies in the West are in dispute: In a report last year, the General Accounting Office found that only 20 of more than 1,600 proposed forest-thinning projects had been challenged by outside interests. But last month the Forest Service issued a report saying that more than half of recently proposed plans to thin forests in the West had been appealed, and delayed, by environmental groups.

Might help if they agreed to let the right hand and left hand talk to each other I suppose.

Here's a link to the White House page on the policy:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/healthyforests/index.html

Sensible thinning is a good thing. Even in old growth forests if it means that rotting trees are thinned. However it's most likely that the new policy won't restrict the thinning to this - in any case the logging interests (who are obviously supporting this) won't be all that interested in just cutting down rotting trees in old growth forests so will obviously have the "initiative" include the right to cut down a percentage of whatever they damn well please. They're letting loggers decide whether it's a good idea to cut down more trees for crying out loud. If it happened here we'd already be scheduling a new tribunal.

Manach

I might suggest not building where there has been historically forest fires. Nah, too naive of me.