About "Healthy Forests Initiative" thing,

[bobbyboucher]

or whatever the hell they call it. You know, cutting the forests to prevent forest fires. Is there some article or source out there that can clearly explain the negative affect of the logging industry on our forests throughout our nation's history and its relation to today's reality and the Bush plan.

I am just looking for an informative article to send to a Bush supporter who claims the environmentalists are causing fires.

Thanks.

[La_Serpiente]

1. We had a prior article on it here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/10/30_logging.html

[gristy]

2. logging the forest to save it

destroying iraq to free it
polluting our skies to clear them
etc.

[Cleita]

3. The Sierra Club.

http://www.sierraclub.org/

As far as I know they haven't been infiltrated by the neo-cons yet.

[arewethereyet]

4. no denying that the logging biz is a disaster

but even science agrees that failure to manage undergrowth and keeping the population in sustainable numbers (overcrowing) was not a good plan. Its true that nature can manage this but it's methods are rather troubling to civilization. There is a better way.

Now will they do it right ? Unlikely.

[maggrwaggr]

5. Fires in So. Cal are part of the climate

just as a gentle reminder to our gentle listeners.

Chapparal has to burn to release its seeds. What burned in California wasn't trees but chaparral.

now back to our regularly scheduled programming

[maggrwaggr]

6. "the environmentalists are causing fires."

Right. So right.

Can you just laugh in the guy's face and tell him he's an idiot?

Tell him if he doesn't want his house robbed, to empty it out. Sell all his possessions, and then there will be nothing to rob.

Tell him if he doesn't want his bank robbed, it should be emptied of all money.

A forest that can't burn isn't a forest.

Stupid idiots.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

7. I don't have an article for you, but I did have two forest fires in my

neighborhood this summer, one of which forced an evacuation. After I week I insisted on being let back in, and there were a couple more weeks before they got control of it.

I live in the Lolo national forest; the day the fires started, there were lightning storms - more than 50 fires started in Lolo NF at once. So first off, if your Bush-supporting friend is religious you can remind him that God starts most forest fires, not environmentalists or loggers. Well one fire was about 6 miles away, to the south, and was a little worrisome, several other fires were quite a bit farther away to the West . The first fire got pretty bad and started moving in this direction... then they discovered another one burning that was pretty close to some houses even closer. After about a week the cops came around and issued and evacuation 'warning' - be prepared to get out on 8 hours notice. Things didnt really change much for almost a week, and then I noticed an awesome and terrifying thing. To the northwest, a massive column of smoke. Words can't describe it. So massive and powerful that it formed it's own cyclone. This picture was taken from about 25 miles away. But I was just 3 miles away from the 'blowup'. What happened was those fires to the west I wasn't worried about burned together and jumped the fire line, the wind blew it right up a drainage, and 8000 acres burned in 4 hours. That fire burned through sections that were virgin, clearcut, thinned , whatever -- no difference. When nature (or God, if you are so inclined) gets going there is little we can do to affect it. Suddenly that fire was just 3 miles away (as the crow flies), and within a half mile of structures.

The section to the immediate west of me (a section is 640 acres, one of the squares of the checkerboard of logging you'll see in the west), is heavily logged -- not totally clearcut however. But was that a comfort to me? Not at all. There is an incredible amount of dead wood left behind by the logging company. Not just slash -- along the road they stacked logs that they never hauled out -- I'm talking a pile of logs 2 miles long 60 feet wide and 20 feet high. Kind of like a fuse.
I was evacuated for awhile. Actually I came back early. It was like being in a war zone. The national guard patroling, helicopters overhead constantly... smoke, of course. Well we were lucky in my neighborhood, no homes lost.



And 'Healthy Forests' -- includes NO MONEY for wildfire thinning projects near woodland communities.

[maggrwaggr]

8. good story. Thanks for the first-hand perspective

just reiterates my point that a forest that can't burn isn't a forest. it's a parking lot.

[newyawker99]

9. Hi bobbyboucher!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[sandnsea]

10. Fire supression

Years of bad logging and fire supression to protect those trees so they could be logged has contributed to the undergrowth. I have to think that El Nino a few years ago, when things were really wet, also led to an increase in undergrowth. Followed by a severe drought. I've not seen much discussion on that though.

Anyway, it's logging that leaves huge piles of slash that burn like crazy. It's replanting 'forests' that aren't diverse and have too many trees that create sickly stick forests that burn. These 'forests' can also be on private land, but adjacent to national forests which means both go up. It's fire supression that has let forest undergrowth build up for decades. Probably more that I'm not thinking about at this second.

In California, Davis asked for money to do something about that undergrowth and Bush didn't give him the money. The undergrowth can also be turned into biomass fuels. Most environmental groups are all for thinning around communities to protect them and then using fire to take care of the undergrowth in national forests and wilderness areas. And, if we don't change the way we log and continue clear cuts and replants, we'll just recreate the problem we have in different sections of land.

And NO Old Growth Logging. There's only 4% left in the U.S.

That's the way I understand it all anyway.