SOS Forests

This is a real service. The handwriting is certainly on the wall.
Thanks for throwing it up there for various and sundry to see for themselves. I can imagine the spin houses are cranking up.

Golly Gee, Mike…atta boys from here. You said everything I would have and in a much clearer voice. Great references for those who care.

All the testimonies are posted, plus additional Testimony from somebody named Mike Dubrasich that has not been formally accepted into the Public Record yet, because I just mailed it in. [Early indications are that my testimony has been accepted]

Be sure to read that one. And also read the Testimony of Boyd Britten. He really tells it like it is.

Looks like Kulongoski’s “Federal Forestland Advisory Committee” may be a key linchpin for action in the state…

Susan, I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but the Federal Forestland Advisory Committee is a sad joke.

The FFAC was ordered by the state legislature over two years ago. Teddy the Torch dragged his feet for a year, and then appointed extremist eco-wacko lawyers and other holocausters to the committee.

Last Spring (two years post passage) they were still working on their “mission statement.” Shortly thereafter the sole decent appointee quit in disgust.

Ted is not only not with the program, he is a saboteur and monkey-wrencher who over the last 6 years has been consistently (I’ll give him that) pro-fire and anti-forest. The Far Left works Ted like a marionette, and the Far Left hates forests with a passion.

Remember, Ted ran on a platform opposing the Healthy Forest Initiative. When queried about the HFI during a 2002 campaign debate in Portland, Ted said, “It stinks. I think it just stinks.”

This was while the Biscuit Fire was in full firestorm and towns across Southwest Oregon were being evacuated.

Ted Kulongoski is no friend of forests. He has always been pro-fire, anti-forest. Don’t look for anything but monkey-wrenching and subversion of forest stewardship from the Federal Forestland Advisory Committee.

My analysis of the testimonies is that all save two are Old Paradigm.

Norm and Jerry cracked the old mold, and I expanded on their offering. The rest are lagging behind. I am very impatient, but I know it takes time for big ideas to take root.

There is a New Paradigm arising, however, and we need to help it along.

Hey, I can’t download that Donegan guy. If it matters, please fix. And elucidate us lazyniks on which ones show promise. Just the names so we have a clue.

Johnson and Franklin’s testimony is important. I think mine is, too. The others are some distance back on the learning curve.

Grant County Commissioner Boyd Britten’s testimony is worth reading. The others, well, make up your own mind.

Matthew Donegan’s file is there, but it is so large that it takes significant download time. Lots of images. Matt is co-president of Forest Capital Partners, LLC, a company that owns private industrial tree farm land. I have no idea why in the heck they asked him to testify, since the topic was forests on public land, not fast-growth, Douglas-fir fiber farming on private land. Not surprisingly, his testimony was completely off the point and might as well have been from Mars. So I wouldn’t waste your time with it, especially if your bandwidth is constricted.

I find it to be “interesting” that the IMC sites in Oregon wouldn’t even consider allowing the Jerry Franklin link to get to their readers. I guess the “Independent” part of IMC stands for Independent of differing opinions. For sites that claim tolerance, truth and independence from the mass media, they sure like their fascism and censorship, eh?

I did get that link up on the Rogue IMC site, but only for a few minutes. Surely he/she didn’t read the link. I also made sure that my minimal wording in the message was polite and encouraging but, to no avail.

To my knowledge, your “scoop” surely hasn’t been scooped up by any media outlet, still.

So the eco-holocausters are not only not reporting it, they are actively suppressing the information.

Pathetic, truely pathetic. But then, what’s new about that?

I’ve been censored before on the Portland site but, I’ve always been more of a moderate on the Rogue site, actually earning some respect while fighting for our forests. They’d better hope they don’t get caught lying to their readers (grin). If only the radicals of the 60’s could see what they have spawned now, eh? Today, it’s more about the donations money and a LOT less about our forests.

I’m finding it VERY frustrating that none of them even wants to talk about forests anymore. It’s REALLY gutsy for Franklin to reverse course on this and the eco’s have long hung their hats on his papers. It will be interesting to see what comes of all these testimonies in Congress. Will we get new salvage legislation in the Senate? The House passed the Baird/Walden bill long ago. The support was overwhelmingly bi-partisan and coast to coast.

Here’s some picture examples of how clean and beneficial fire salvage logging can be:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/604/1552/400/H-6-Camp_creek-web.jpg

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/604/1552/400/T-8-Camp_creek-web.jpg

Read the Johnson-Franklin statement carefully. Notice how they mince around the fire salvage issue. They all but exclude burned forests from their recommended treatments.

I hope the debate does not flounder on that point. I am willing to ignore the salvage issue and let them save some face in that regard, IF we can do restoration forestry on a landscape-scale in green, not-yet-incinerated forests.

Think of it as doing the salvage BEFORE the fire, and leaving the forest in a fire-resilient condition so that maintenance fires in the future do not kill all the trees.

If we can tend our green forests, then we don’t have to worry about the incinerated ones, for now. Once restoration forestry is widely applied and has proven successful, then the old burns can be revisited.

Fire salvage is a hot button issue that I wish would go away, because it detracts from the larger message of green forest stewardship, which is truely revolutionary.