Incinerating the Bitterroot
The following article appeared in the Missoulian today. Rather than comment on their site, I am commenting on mine.
State fire panel discusses solutions in Hamilton
By JOHN CRAMER of the Missoulian [here]
HAMILTON - Montana’s Fire Suppression Interim Committee kicked off its statewide road tour Monday at ground zero in the West’s growing dilemma on how to reduce large-scale wildfires at a time when more people are building homes in fire-prone forests.
No homes are built in National Forests. No one is allowed to construct residences on public land.
The Bitterroot National Forest, which the U.S. Forest Service considers America’s most threatened national forest because of the population explosion in the Bitterroot Valley’s “wildland-urban interface,” served as a backdrop for the state legislative committee’s first public forum.
Good for John Cramer for putting Wildland-Urban Interface in quotes. The WUI (pronounced Whooie) is a figment of the government’s imagination. The Bitterroot NF is not “wildland,” it is public forest. There are few urban areas in the Bitterroot Valley. Outside of those areas, the rest of land is rural private property. It is not “interface.” It is where all the farms, all the ranches, and all the homes are. People have the right to live on their land and more power to us.
We also have the right not be incinerated by wildfires emanating from the Federal Estate. If the USFS cannot contain fires on their acres, then they are remiss, not doing their jobs, and that land should be removed from public ownership.
We also have the right not to be incinerated by backfires set by remiss government employees, or we should have that right. Recently the Ninth Circuit Court held that private citizens do not possess any defense against firebrand USFS employees who burn our homes down [here]. I say take the land away from the recalcitrant, legally immune, incompetent USFS if they cannot forebear from burning down the homes of private citizens.
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Climate and Weather Federal forest policy Politics and politicians Private land policies Saving Forests The 2008 Fire Season
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News Droppings
It has been a busy week for news already. Some of the highlights (or lowlights):
USFS Chief Gail Kimbell proffered an excuse for soaring fire costs and her agency’s failure to do a Congressionally ordered analysis of the nation’s aerial firefighting program following fatal crashes of planes working on wildfires: “We are a nation at war, and we’re a nation with a huge budget deficit.” [here].
Pretty cheesy. We can’t do our job because the nation is at war. It could be the war that Kimbell is talking about is the one the USFS is waging on forests and landowners throughout the West. Her agency did find $54 million to spend on conservation easements to stop homebuilding on private land. It “saved” the taxpayers money by curtailing private property rights and resident stewardship of the land in favor of holocaust megafires.
Weyerhaeuser was busted in another anti-trust case. A Portland jury on Monday ordered Weyerhaeuser to pay almost $28 million for unlawfully monopolizing the market for finished alder lumber [here].
U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey was in Missoula on Monday to answer questions about controversial secret meetings between the U.S. Forest Service and the Plum Creek Timber Company. Plum Creek is the country’s largest private landowner, with 8 million acres nationwide and 1.2 million acres in Montana [here].
More gravy for the Big Potato. Maybe Mark doesn’t realize that we’re a nation at war.
In wildlife news, a rabies outbreak is plaguing the Southwest. A rabid bobcat attacked two hikers, who had to kill it with a hammer [here]. Lesson: never go hiking without a hammer. For more rabies news see Wolf Crossing [here].
Speaking of disease-carrying animals, twelve “environmental” groups have sued to halt wolf delisting [here]. Nuff said.
On the climate front, the founder of the National Hurricane Center is being forced out for his failure to buy into Algore’s Inconvenient Lie [here]. Naughty, naughty. Here come the PC police.
And finally Friends of the Earth have been blamed for starving millions of poor to death after spreading ugly rumors about American food aid to Africa [here]. Guess that’s one way to deal with the overpopulation problem. Pin a medal on FOE.
Lovely news. Going outside now. Had my fill of it. If there were some way to dig the news into my garden, I’m sure I could grow pumpkins the size of Volkswagens. For big punkins, it’s all about the bull …
Not a Conspiracy-A Business Plan
by Bear Bait
The Land and Water Conservation Fund. The money to buy land from willing sellers to provide for resource, water, air and ecosystem conservation. And it comes from taxes on motor boat fuel, Federal surplus land sales, and offshore oil and gas fees and royalties. The slush fund for NGO preservation. They buy a piece of ground, and the Govt gives them twice what they paid for it. Back door tacit funding by Big Govt for Big NGOs.
Softwood lumber and timber is in worldwide surplus. Pinchot would be proud of his efforts at forestry education, and those who followed his lead. Great reforestation and aforestation efforts, worldwide, have grown the softwood timber supply in a mathematical progression to where that resource is a glut on the market.
However, it is a young forest, worldwide, with post WWII forest repairs in Europe and Asia, and international land management providing species travel worldwide. The long cutover ponderosa pine of the new West is now produced in Chile and Argentina, Douglas-fir is grown in New Zealand, Ireland, England, France; the list is long.
My friend who imported pine from South America to serve the US market now sells the very same wood, all of it, to China. And he is not sure how long that market can last. The East Coast of the US gets wide dimension softwood from Europe for home construction, cheaper than they can get it from the West Coast.
To use the new forest, at the earliest possible entry, the whole of home building was changed to use engineered wood products in lumber, truss, beam, and panel constructs. Your grandparents house in no way resembles today’s methods, quality of materials, or durability. But neither do your shoes. Large logs are still cut in a handful of mills to make special products for historical reconstruction, remodeling, and export. There is only a vestigial milling capacity and market for those products. It is a small log economy we now live in now, and wood fiber is the one commodity the world is over-supplied with, other than human beings.
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The Forest Incineration Conspiracy Continued
I presented the Forest Incineration Conspiracy last post. The bottom line is that multi-national forest landowners are engaged in territorial hegemony, taking over as much land as they can for reasons of money and power. That takeover will not serve our economy, will not create jobs, will not increase general community wealth, will nor benefit “nature”; in fact, just the opposite of those things are occurring.
Need more evidence? As Bear Bait pointed out [here]:
We are exporting the value added jobs. The profits are made offshore and not subject to US taxes. That is a real model in Seattle that Weyco and their ilk have to see with some pain. Look for it to happen to logs and lumber.
And then this just in over the insider wire:
2007 Softwood log exports from the West Coast increase [here]
PORTLAND, Ore. April 24, 2008. A total of 879.9 million board feet of softwood logs was exported from Washington, Oregon, northern California, and Alaska in 2007. The 2007 volume was up 11.6 percent from the 2006 total of 788.4 million board feet, according to Debra Warren, an economist at the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station.
“ Some 546.8 million board feet or 62.1 percent of the west coast softwood log exports in 2007 went to Japan, 264.8 or 30.1 percent went to South Korea, 42.4 million board feet or 4.8 percent went to China, and 7.2 million board feet or 0.8 percent was exported to Taiwan,” says Warren. …
Other statistics included in the report are:
Log exports for 2007 from Washington and Oregon totaled 673.0 million board feet, up 26.0 percent from the 2006 volume of 534.3 million board feet.
A total of 457,000 board feet of logs was exported from northern California, up from
75, 000 board feet in 2006.Alaska exported a total of 206.5 million board feet in 2007 compared with 254.1 in 2006.
Douglas-fir accounted for 53.7 percent of the 2007 log exports; western hemlock, 13.6 percent; Sitka spruce (out of Alaska), 17.3 percent; and other softwoods made up the remaining 15.4 percent.
The total value of 2007 log shipments was $544.1 million at port of exportation, and the average value was $618.40 per thousand board feet. Douglas-fir averaged $780.17 per thousand board feet; western hemlock, $521.92; and other softwoods, $460.77.
Those are NOT logs off USFS lands; they are from private lands, and from the Big Baron’s lands in particular. There is next to no cut from USFS lands. Roughly a quarter of the log harvest from the PNW got exported. No mill jobs for you! You will be allowed to purchase the imported wood products, however, if you can afford them!
That’s what happens when multi-nationals own the land base in the U.S.A., land of the slaves, home of the saps.
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The Forest Incineration Conspiracy
Conspiracy theories abound in our day and age. There exists the general feeling that we are being scammed big time by some secret group, or not so secret group, for their benefit and to the detriment of the mostly powerless populace.
The list is lengthy: the Global Warming Hoax, the Communist Conspiracy, the AIDS epidemic, the Tri-Lateral Commission, the CIA, the Zionist Movement, Islamo-Fascism, the Ozone hole, Big Oil, the Salmon Hoax, spotted owls, etc, etc.
My “favorite” and the pet peeve of this blog is the conspiracy to incinerate America’s priceless heritage forests.
Many conspiracy theories border on the absurd, but some are blatantly evident. The Global Warming Hoax, for instance, is not secret but rather is trumpeted every day in the Media. We know the names of the conspirators; they are quite proud of their involvement and roles and have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure everybody knows their names.
The Forest Incineration Conspiracy is less obvious regarding its chief manipulators, but like all the other blatant and non-absurd conspiracies, the root goal is the same: money.
How, you ask, can destroying forests possibly make anyone rich? There is some push to increase fire suppression outlays, and that leads to more profits for firefighters and firefighting equipment suppliers, but their increased income is minimal and widely distributed. Nobody is making enormous windfall profits by burning down forests, at least not within the fire community. Nor are the Federal land management agencies profiting by ruining natural resources. Nor are enviro groups expanding their memberships by advocating abandonment of responsible stewardship in favor of habitat destruction.
The case could be made that all these special interests are shooting themselves in the foot by promoting Let It Burn. Indeed, I have made that case again and again.
So who profits by burning down millions of acres of public forests every year?
Private commercial forest owners, that’s who.
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Major Shift At Weyerhaeuser
Last week the Weyerhaeuser Company announced that Daniel S. Fulton has replaced Steven R. Rogel as president and CEO. From the Weyerhaeuser press release [here]:
FEDERAL WAY, Wash., April 17, 2008 — Weyerhaeuser Company (NYSE: WY) today announced that the board of directors has elected Daniel S. Fulton, 59, president and chief executive officer and a member of the board effective immediately. Fulton has served as president since Jan. 1.
Fulton assumes the role of CEO from Steven R. Rogel, 65, who remains chairman in a non-executive role.
The change is more than a customary replacement of one executive for another. It marks a major shift in the corporate strategy at the largest timber company on the West Coast. Since incorporation in 1900, Weyerhaeuser has been a vertically integrated forest product company (VIFPC). That means they owned timberland and sawmills, as well as a product distribution chain. VIFPC’s were the classical standard model in the U.S. timber industry for nearly a century.
But that has changed. The trend recently has been toward dis-integration into separate land-owning companies and milling/manufacturing companies. The new arrangement has been driven by high capital gains taxes on the integrated sister companies. Real estate investment trusts (REIT’s) that own only land receive much more favorable tax treatment than manufacturing plants. Very often REIT’s are acquired (or invested in) by pension and insurance funds for exactly that reason: low tax rates.
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Ninth Circuit Rules Against Burned-Out Homeowners
In the Summer of 2000, the USFS set a backfire that backfired in Ravalli County, Montana, in the Bitteroot Valley.
The year 2000 was a particularly bad year for fires in the Bitterroot region; 307,000 acres burned, nearly 20 percent of the Bitterroot National Forest. An additional 50,000 private acres burned in Ravalli Co., including 70 homes, 170 other buildings, and 95 vehicles. From a USFS report:
The fires blackened the western skies above the town of Hamilton, burned deep into the back country above West Fork’s Painted Rocks Lake, and stretched from the height of Lost Trail Pass down the Sapphire ridges, past Darby to four miles east of Hamilton (USDA Forest Service, 2000). Private property losses were high ranging in the millions of dollars.
Some of those losses were the result of a backfire set in Spade Creek on the Spade Fire, one of the Sula Complex of fires. The backfire, not the main fire, burned down a number of homes. Homeowners who lost their homes were upset, formed a group they called “Bacfire 2000,” and in 2002 sued the USFS for damages.
Last fall, five years later, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy rejected that lawsuit. Last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Judge Molloy’s ruling.
W.I.S.E Initiates Fire Tracking Site
The Western Institute for Study of the Environment is pleased to announce the creation of the W.I.S.E. Fire Tracking website [here].
We will endeavor to keep site visitors up-to-date on large wildfires while they are occurring. This is a difficult job requiring attention to a variety of news outlets on a round-the-clock basis. We will very much appreciate your input throughout the fire season to keep the W.I.S.E. Fire Tracking site as current as possible.
This service depends on your assistance. We appreciate your donations of information and funding. For the latter, please see our donation page [here].
USFS Issues New Planning Rule
Today the new US Forest Service Planning Rule was posted in the Federal Register [here]. A new Rule was required because the 9th District Court enjoined the old rule (2005) in January. That one was a rewrite of the older rule (2000).
The Summary of the new USFS Planning Rule from the Federal Register:
SUMMARY: This final rule describes the National Forest System (NFS) land management planning framework; sets up requirements for sustainability of social, economic, and ecological systems; and gives directions for developing, amending, revising, and monitoring land management plans. It also clarifies that, absent rare circumstances, land management plans under this final rule are strategic in nature and are one stage in an adaptive cycle of planning for management of NFS lands.
The intended effects of the rule are to strengthen the role of science in planning; to strengthen collaborative relationships with the public and other governmental entities; to reaffirm the principle of sustainable management consistent with the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act of 1960 (MUSYA) and other authorities; and to streamline and improve the planning process by increasing adaptability to changes in social, economic, and environmental conditions.
This rulemaking is the result of a United States District Court of Northern California order dated March 30, 2007, which enjoined the United States Department of Agriculture (the Department, the Agency, or the USDA) from putting into effect and using the land management planning rule published on January 5, 2005 (70 FR 1023) until it complies with the court’s order regarding the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) (Citizens for Better Forestry v. USDA, 481 F. Supp 2d 1059 (N.D. Cal. 2007)). The purpose of this final rule is to respond to the district court’s ruling.
This final rule replaces the 2005 final rule (2005 rule) (70 FR 1022, Jan. 5, 2005), as amended March 3, 2006 (71 FR 10837) (which was enjoined by the district court’s ruling) and the 2000 final rule (2000 rule) adopted on November 9, 2000 (65 FR 67514) as amended on September 29, 2004 (69 FR 58055).
DATES: Effective Date: This rule is effective April 21, 2008.
The gist of the new Rule (contends the USFS) is that Forest Plans are “strategic” guidance documents and do not specify any actions. Therefore they have no environmental effects in and of themselves, and so do not require Environmental Impact Statements. Only specific projects require EIS’s, not Forest Plans.
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World’s Oldest Tree Discovered?
The BBC and the London (UK) Telegraph announced last Thursday that the World’s Oldest Tree had been discovered in Sweden. While this is not precisely correct (as I will explain below), nevertheless it is an important and significant finding with implications for our modern times.
From the BBC [here]
Swedes find ‘world’s oldest tree’
A tree said to be the oldest on the planet - thought to be nearly 10,000 years old - has been found in Sweden.
Scientists from Umeaa University discovered the spruce [Picea abies, commonly Norway spruce] on Fulu Mountain in Dalarna province while carrying out a census of tree species there in 2004.
The age of its genetic material was recently calculated using carbon dating at a laboratory in Miami, Florida.
World’s Oldest Tree?
Scientists had believed the world’s oldest trees were 4,000-year-old pine trees found in North America.
The oldest, a bristlecone pine [Pinus longaeva] named Methuselah located in California’s White Mountains, is aged 4,768, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
The new record contender, which would have taken root just after the last ice age, was found among a cluster of around 20 spruces believed to be more than 8,000 years old at an altitude of 910m (2,985ft) on Fulu Mountain.
The visible portion of the spruce was comparatively new, but analysis of four “generations” of remains - cones and wood - found underneath its crown showed its root system had been growing for 9,550 years, Umeaa University said.
Food for thought… only?
by Roni Bell Sylvester, Good Neighbor Law [here]
Pope Benedict XVI warns “failure to ensure the right to food is a violation of human dignity.” He wants our planet to grow enough food to assure that no one “goes to sleep on an empty stomach.”
But Pope Benedict faces a strong opponent.
Mr. Al Gore thought he’d won the title of President of the United States of America, but found out later that he hadn’t. Filled with rage, Al rallied his buddies at the UN and the European Union to come up with a plan whereby they could crush America and give Al title to a territory much larger than America. Something like… the world.
They needed to come up with something that would stir millions to march faithfully behind them. They met on a big O yacht and tried to figure out how to make billions of dollars and help Al get title to the world.
They founded a new religion they named the “Church of Global Warming,” and anointed Al Gore Head Preacher. In his first sermon, Preacher Gore asked his people “Weather - or not?” They answered in unison, “Weather!” And thusly they set up a doctrine that portended to stop “climate change” and any other loose change that followed.
How does this tie into Mr. Gore competition with Pope Benedict’s call to feed the poor and hungry? Well, the Church of Global Warming is using a method called Precautionary Principle to crush America.
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Attention Oregon Global Warming Alarmists
Here it is: Global Cooling. How do you like it?
Coldest Winter on record. Just what you wanted. Enjoying the April snow?
Attention Far Left Socialist voters. Governor Dumb Bunny Ted is holding GW Alarmist meetings, trying to orient the entire State government to combating global warming by shutting down all economic activity, tearing down dams, and encouraging megafires. Are you pleased?
The moron you elected twice reached down to OSU and forced out the only academic with the guts to tell the truth about the impending global cooling. Do you like that kind of interference in academic freedom? Are you satisfied now that freedom of thought has been curtailed at your university, and no one but sycophantic twits are left there? Twits that are dead wrong about climate change?
Did you get tire chains for your Priuses?
Don’t worry. Next summer will be the nicest day of the year. You won’t need chains to drive out to your favorite incinerated forest and gaze lovingly at the miles and miles of blackened snags.
You wanted change. Don’t worry. You’ll soon be out on the sidewalk begging for some.
Let’s elect some more extreme leftist bonehead Stalinists. Keep Oregon Charcoal Grey. It’s all about “quality of life” right? Huddle in the dark and cold and tell yourself that the quality of your life is vastly improved.
Vote lefty-freeze the planet. Give up your freedoms; it’s worth it. Abort your babies, euthanize your parents. You’re saving the planet!!
Let’s all sing some Communist anthems. Maybe that’ll keep us warm.
Ban homes; we can all live under the urban bridges. Drink right out of the sewer discharge pipes that pour filth into the estuary in Portland. We’re Dreamers here. Dream on.
Thank There Is No God that the Religious Right doesn’t have a single rep in the Legislature. Make Oregon safe for wolves. Burn Baby Burn. The only good forest is dead, burned, tick brush. Fight Global Warming. We like it cold as ice.
So strap on your jackboots and goosestep down the avenue. You won the battle! Universal death care! Sing the Happy Slave Song. Freeze your brains. Be as Left as you can be. Save the planet from humans such as yourself. If everybody else is jumping off the cliff, might as well join them. Ban the board! And don’t leave any carbon footprints on your way out.
Napolitano On Megafire
The U.S. House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on the Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement Act, or FLAME Act, on April 10th. Yesterday the Committee passed the FLAME Act, which will now be presented to the entire House. From the news release [here]:
The FLAME fund would be separate from budgeted and appropriated agency wildland fire suppression funding for the Forest Service and the Interior Department, and is to be used only for the suppression of catastrophic, emergency wildland fires. The annual agency budgets will continue to fund anticipated and predicted wildland fire suppressions activities. Monies for the fund will be appropriated based on the average costs incurred by these agencies to suppress catastrophic, emergency wildland fires over the preceding five fiscal years.
The FLAME Act does not guarantee good stewardship, or good fire management, or a reduction in fire suppression costs or fire losses. It merely juggles the funding. But the hearing did provide an opportunity for a select few individuals to express some sentiments to Congress.
Among those presenting testimony on April 10th was Janet Napolitano, Governor of Arizona. Her entire testimony is [here]. Some selected excerpts:
Today I will share with you examples of significant wildfires in my state and discuss some of the risks I believe we face if we do not ensure a distinct funding stream for mega-fire suppression.
Arizona’s largest wildfires have occurred within the last six years. In 2002, the Rodeo-Chediski Fire burned 467,000 acres of east-central Arizona woodland over the course of a month, requiring the evacuation of more than 30,000 people.
The USFS Is Fundamentally Racist
And so is most of modern forest science. The USFS administrators and most forest scientists today (as well as most “environmental” groups) fail to understand or even acknowledge that Native Americans have had profound influences on our landscapes for millennia.
Euro-Americans did not encounter a wilderness. They came to a continent that had been occupied and resided upon for ten thousand years or more by actual human beings. Except for the tops of mountain peaks accessible only with modern technical climbing gear, every single acre in the continental U.S. had been trod with moccasins.
Every single acre had been explored, walked upon, and utilized by the human beings who had lived here continuously since before the end of the Wisconsin Glaciation. Anthropogenic fire had been visited upon all landscapes a zillion times. The vegetation had been totally altered, and over 40 species of wildlife had been hunted to extinction, by the long-resident humanity.
Every landscape was criss-crossed with roads. Lewis and Clark did not bushwhack from the Mississippi to the Pacific; they traveled on ROADS, Indian roads, roads that had been in place and heavily used for thousands of years. The Corps of Discovery arranged for guides to show them the right roads to take. The word “road” appears in the journals of L&C hundreds of times.
The Corps of Discovery did not “live off the land.” Yes, they hunted some, but there was very little game. For the most part, they purchased food from the resident human beings.
The resident human beings had established fields and tracts where they gathered roots and berries, drove game, captured fish in weirs, and produced through agricultural techniques the necessities of their lives: food, clothing, and shelter. Native Americans did not flit from bush to bush like butterflies, leaving no mark. On the extreme contrary, they modified the environment to suit their needs virtually everywhere.
The modern USFS and forest science establishments are utterly clueless about that. They still think of America as a recent wilderness. That kind of thinking is racist as well as completely wrong. The “science” is rank with Euro-centric falsehoods stemming from deep-seated racist blindness. The managers of our National Forests are completely oblivious to the landscape uses and patterns established by resident human beings.
The current Let It Burn philosophy imposed on our landscapes by blind racism is destroying the ancient human heritage. The urge to declare Wilderness Areas and Roadless Areas is nazi-like racism at it’s worst. The denial of the American Holocaust whereby millions of people were slaughtered over a 500 year racist jihad and ethnic cleansing is as objectionable and ethically bankrupt as the denial of Hitler’s Holocaust (or even more so).
Our forests and landscapes are being destroyed by a sick and twisted bureaucracy that is fundamentally racist to its core.
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Ag-norance
Ted Turner wants to eat you. Former media mogul (and still a prize ass) Ted Turner appeared on the Charlie Rose Show and issued a Soylent Green dire report [here]:
If global warming isn’t stemmed, “we’ll be 8 degrees hotter in 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow,” Turner said during PBS’ “Charlie Rose.”
“Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals,” said Turner, 69. “Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state … living conditions will be intolerable.”
Population control can help combat global warming he said. People should voluntarily pledge to have only one or two children, the founder of CNN in Atlanta said.
“We’re too many people; that’s why we have global warming,” he said.
Kobe beef, anyone? Cher and share alike? Pass the Col. Mustard?
But enough of the cannibal chatter-this post is about the profound ignorance most Americans possess regarding agriculture.
Does anyone out there know where food comes from? No, the answer is not the grocery store. Food comes from farms and ranches. Food is grown on purpose by people generally referred to as “farmers” and “ranchers” or “agriculturalists.”
Farmers grow edible plants on farms. That’s where food comes from. The edible plants need sunlight, soil, and water to grow. And warmth. This is a little known fact, evidently. Plants like it warm. Plants don’t grow very well where it’s cold, but they do great where it’s warm.
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