Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
A Letter and an Editorial
http://www.oregonlive.com/letters/or...editorial/1052
56792916000.xml headline: Letters Clear-cuts don't save forests 05/12/03 Your article, "Debate will begin today on GOP plan for forest health" (April 30), which discussed the "Healthy Forest Restoration Act," shines a light on the disconnect between the bill's name and its meaning. The bill would allow for 1,000-acre clear-cuts. Are we to believe that 1,000-acre clear-cuts are the key to achieving healthy forests? As illogical as Rep. Greg Walden's bill is in its use of clear-cuts for forest health, it also goes beyond that to reduce the risk of forest fire. The bill identifies areas at "high risk of fire" locations that receive 160 inches of rain per year. That's more than double the combined annual rainfall of Portland and Seattle. Are we to believe that places receiving 160 inches of rain each year are at a high risk of fire? I don't want any more 1,000-acre clear-cuts in Oregon. DAVID WILKINS Oregon Natural Resources Council North Portland http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/13..._on_wildfires+ ..shtml A BOSTON GLOBE EDITORIAL Wrongheaded on wildfires 5/12/2003 AST YEAR the Western Governors Association, concerned about damaging wildfires in the region, put together a 10-year plan for dealing with them. Sensibly, its major goals focused on protecting life and property by thinning trees and underbrush around houses and protecting watersheds. This approach is quite different from the one now favored by the Bush administration, which wants to use the threat of wildfires as an excuse to invite timber companies to cut down valuable old-growth trees in remote areas. As a quid pro quo, the companies would also do some removal of the wildfire fuel -- underbrush and smaller trees -- in those areas. This policy of saving the forest by destroying the trees would help line the pockets of timber companies, but it would do little to protect against the fires that are most dangerous to the public. Moreover, the administration's approach, reflected in a bill sponsored by Representative Scott McInnis of Colorado, sets a perilous precedent of short-circuiting the environmental review and appeals process. The use of this process by environmentalist opponents of timber cutting has been blamed for stalling high-priority fuel reduction projects, but two studies, one by the Genral Accounting Office and another by Northern Arizona University, cast doubt on that contention. No one disputes that the West faces a major risk of wildfires each summer. A wrongheaded and nearly century-long policy of suppressing fires, which was not reversed until the 1990s, created a dangerous buildup of fuel in the woods. The region is also in the fourth year of a severe drought. Sprawl development around big cities and second home projects in scenic mountain areas have pushed more homes into the ''wildlife urban interface,'' where uncontrolled fires ignite houses and put both residents and firefighters at risk. A bill sponsored by two of Congress's experts on forestry would give priority to community protection zones. This proposal, from George Miller of California and Peter DeFazio of Oregon, would provide fire prevention grants to communities based in part on their willingness to take such common-sense measures as requiring nonflammable roofs on dwellings. Unlike the McInnis bill, this one preserves environmental laws and regulations. Both Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman signed on to the Western Governors Association's wildfire plan before the administration began promoting the wildfire issue as a way to open up old-growth areas for industry cutting. There is a strong consensus among many state and local officials and environmental organizations in favor of reducing wildfires by thinning around communities and watersheds. The country can do that without torching its environmental laws. |
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Forum | |||
C&E News editorial on report by President's Cancer Panel | Edible Gardening | |||
Our Home-Grown Melamine Problem NYT Editorial | Gardening | |||
Editorial | Gardening | |||
Editorial On Forest Health and demonizing Bush | alt.forestry | |||
A Letter and an Editorial | alt.forestry |