SOS Forests

The New Office of the Oregon State Bimbo

Family values took another plunge in Oregon this week when Gov. John Kitzhaber ordered that his “companion” Cylvia Hayes (not wife, they’re not married) be given a special office in the State Capitol Building.

First Lady Cylvia Hayes gets office in Capitol, briefings from Kitzhaber’s staff

By Harry Esteve, The Oregonian, April 25, 2011 [here]

SALEM -Gov. John Kitzhaber’s companion Cylvia Hayes has been given a separate office, desk and computer in the governor’s suite of offices in the state Capitol, an unusual arrangement for Oregon first ladies.

She also is getting briefings from the governor’s policy staff on issues he’s working on, another departure from past practice.

Hayes shares the office and desk on a part-time basis with Michael Jordan, the state’s chief operating officer. Jordan’s main office is in the Department of Administrative Services but he sometimes needs working space at the Capitol, said Christine Miles, Kitzhaber’s spokeswoman.

So does Hayes, who has taken on statewide hunger issues as her main project, Miles said. …

Bimbo Hayes, the Goober’s sex toy, also lives in Mahonia Hall [here], the opulent mansion built by former Goober and child rapist Neil Goldschmidt.

Kitzhaber was doing a different bimbo, one Sharon LaCroix, when he was first elected Goober in 1992. Eventually Kitz got Sharon pregnant and had to marry her. But then he divorced her soon after that and abandoned her and the rug rat.

Family values are a joke to the Ruling Elite of Oregon. Neil Goldschmidt repeatedly raped his children’s 14-year-old baby sitter when he was Mayor of Portland [here]. The girl was the daughter of one of his aides, who gladly procured her own daughter for Neil’s proclivities. The Sheriff of Multnomah County, Bernie Guisto, helped with the cover up. He was doing Neil’s wife, Margie. Eventually the rape victim turned 21 and sued Neil, who paid her $50,000 to keep quiet about it. Neil didn’t pay the Portland Oregonian newspaper, but they kept mum anyway, for “political” reasons.

Neil’s rape victim became a street junky and eventually did time in the penitentiary, but Neil went on to become Governor and then Secretary of Transportation under Clinton, another serial rapist.

Neil never did a minute of jail time for his crimes, but he did mastermind Kitzhaber’s first administration. And his new one, too. Neil and his consiglieri, Tom Imeson, ran Kitzhaber’s December 2010 transition team for Kitz’s new administration, just as they ran his first administration and Ted Kulongoski’s too [here]. Child rapist Neil Goldschmidt has run Oregon State government like a puppet master since the 1980’s.

Neil Goldschmidt and Tom Imeson are promoting a boondoggle rebuild of the I-205 Columbia River Bridge. Kitzhaber and WA Goober Christine Gregoire are pawing all over each other to oblige Neil. There are $millions in “consulting fees” and cost-overruns — excessive graft to be had by the ethically-challenged. Goldschmidt’s backroom dealings on the new bridge (Portland’s attempt to best Boston’s endless graft tunnel) actually began when Kulongoski was Goober.

And ethically-challenged they all are. State Bimbo Hayes was investigated by Oregon Atty Gen. John Kroger for sleazy dealings with state contracts. A whitewash ensued, and an expensive one, costing Oregon taxpayers close to half a $million before the investigation was swept under the Capitol rug [here].

It is interesting that Bimbo Hayes is now “concerned” with hunger in Oregon. Her “companion” and his ilk destroyed Oregon’s economy, inflicting hunger where there was none before. A quarter of the population in many rural Oregon counties are now on food stamps, in a state with a formerly abundant and healthy agricultural sector. Maybe she thinks the peasants should eat cake.

Oregon is also famous for child prostitution [here]. Much of that “trade” is run directly by the Oregon Dept. of Human Services (DHS) through their Independent Living Program [here] for minors who want to be “emancipated” from their parents. They shuck their parents with the State’s assistance, and then the State pimps them out.

Interestingly, after Kitzhaber-appointed DHS Director Gary Weeks was cashiered (during Kulongoski’s reign) for running a state-wide child prostitution ring out of his Dept, he was hired by WA Goober Gregoire to be the new Director of the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries. The Dems are one big family, although a trifle short on family values.

And on and on. Current Mayor of Portland Sam Adams was caught soliciting gay sex from minors in the bathrooms of the State Capitol [here], but Portland voters elected him anyway. It’s no biggy. Everybody in Portland does it. The State Capitol Building is a hotbed of perversion. Just like in the Congressional office buldings in Wash DC. Portland is proud of being “weird” [here], although they are probably not as “weird” as San Francisco, Ann Arbor, New York City, Wash DC, and other metropoli of the Empire.

It’s the New Revolution. Ethics are made to be broken. The peasants have only one use, and that is as sex toys for the Perverted Elite. Demonstrate your loyalty and donate your own children today. Oregon’s leaders are horny as slavering dogs and need immediate gratification!

NAFSR Position Statement on Forest Health and Fire

by the National Association of Forest Service Retirees (NAFSR)

Note: NAFSR is a private, independent, non-partisan, non-profit association, whose members believe in the U.S. Forest Service and its Mission! Members dedicated their careers to protecting, developing and managing the nation’s National Forest System lands and advising and cooperating here and around the world on such matters. The NAFSR website is [here].

Position Statement on Forest Health and Fire, April 27, 2011

To achieve forest health, protection of adjacent communities from catastrophic fire, other forest management goals and to maintain National Forest lands in an ecologically sustainable condition, the NAFSR advocates use of proven silvicultural practices and prescribed fire to achieve these goals.

The National Forests are capable of providing the many values and benefits that people expect from their forests, but they need proper management in order to provide these values. NAFSR supports prescribed fire, commercial timber harvest, and noncommercial treatments on National Forest lands allocated for such uses through appropriate land and resource management planning processes. Further, we believe the commercial utilization payments can be a big part of financing the total treatment needs of the forests.

NAFSR believes that current treatment levels on National Forest lands are insufficient to maintain forest health, meet the goals for hazardous fuel reduction to reduce wildfire risk, provide resilient forests capable of withstanding future shifts in climate conditions, or provide protection from wildfire as well as economic and other community benefits.

Fire control should be aggressive while prescribed fire use should also be increased and appropriately managed. Natural fires should only be allowed to burn when approved plans are clearly indicated under weather, time of year, and fuel conditions encountered, and under the direct supervision of fully qualified fire supervisors.

Planning and treatment must be at an annual scale of millions of acres over the next half century. We must recognize that the environmental costs to wildlife habitat, domestic and industrial water supplies, soils, and viewsheds of inaction, or inadequate levels of action, will be with us for decades to centuries. There will also be serious financial and economic costs to local communities and businesses as well as the taxpayers if action is not taken.

The National Forests have a Congressionally mandated mission, and management goals are determined through comprehensive land management planning processes with extensive public participation, and include not only healthy forest ecosystems but also protection and well being of adjacent communities and other values. Forest managers are then responsible for selecting appropriate, site-specific practices, which may include commercial thinning and harvest, pre-commercial thinning, and use of prescribed fire to accomplish desired forest health, watershed, wildlife and fishery habitat objectives. Consideration must be given to maintenance of a diversity of tree species and age classes, diverse structure and function, and thus treatments should not be limited to any particular size of trees or other vegetation. Focus should always be on the remaining conditions following thinning instead of what is removed. Skillful use of silvicultural practices can achieve desired resource conditions including appropriate forest densities, reduced fuel loads, and mimic natural levels of forest openings and understory vegetation. Healthy forest ecosystems are the key to how disturbance events such as fire or pest outbreaks perform. Removal of excess biomass is critical for allowing fire use to return without detrimental effects.

Forest Service leaders should take advantage of collaborative planning processes with interest groups and communities, while providing focused leadership in order to minimize problems with gridlock resulting from public disagreements with choices made to restore the forests. Building coalitions at national, regional and local levels to support science informed decisions can greatly reduce conflicts that have led to delays in the past.

Appropriately scaled forest industries should be encouraged to utilize and sequester carbon from thinning and harvest products as well as helping the economy of communities.

Furthermore, NAFSR believes that current laws and regulations offer ample protection to sustain the full range of forest values on public lands. We believe that timber harvesting is a legitimate use of the national forests as the multiple-use Sustained Yield Act of 1960 calls for, and that it will promote wildlife and fishery habitat as well as recreation opportunities.

ISSUE

For almost a century, through forest fire protection efforts, wildfire on National Forest lands has been purposely suppressed in many areas that are naturally adapted to periodic low intensity wildfires. We now know from science and experience this policy has had some unintended and undesirable consequences, including altered tree species composition and increased density of trees per acre. This increased stand density, or overstocking, increases fire hazard in most forest types. Because of lack of vigor, dense forests are highly susceptible to insects and diseases and, consequently, increased tree mortality. Excess tree density as well as mortality increases fuel loading, resulting in hazardous forest fire conditions that can put watersheds, wildlife habitat, and other forest values at risk. These conditions also increase fire suppression costs and make wildfire control more dangerous and difficult. Unnatural fires resulting from extremely dense stands create artificial and unnatural conditions for soil erosion, flooding, plant invasion, type conversion and altered viewsheds. The dominant factor affecting forest fires, health, and vigor is stand density.

For nearly four decades, National Forest Managers have recognized the fact that overcrowded forests are not sustainable without some form of treatment. The public as well has seen vast areas succumb to insects, disease and wildfire.

BACKGROUND

Fires in Western ecosystems are problematic with uncharacteristic fire becoming more destructive and costly. Forests on National Forests of the West are most often far too dense. There is a huge increase in woody biomass, mostly in the overstory, above natural levels in almost every forest ecosystem. This excess forest density has contributed to a serious decline in herbaceous vegetation in the forest understory.

Certain circumstances can exert uncommon stress on forests and predispose them to extraordinary insect outbreaks and damage. In stands that are unmanaged by either silviculture, natural or prescribed fire, trees often grow too close together and develop small crowns and root systems. These stands have low vigor, leading to susceptibility to drought, insects, diseases, and catastrophic wildfire. Under these stressful conditions, tree mortality can be extremely high. Large areas of aging forests are also susceptible to insects and diseases. During the past decade, several of these forest health problems have arisen simultaneously, causing extensive tree mortality.

Because of widespread forest health problems, many of our forests would benefit from thinning or other measures to control stand density, reduce vulnerability to insect-caused mortality, increase diversity of tree sizes, and accomplish regeneration of desired tree species. However, National Forest managers often find themselves engaged in debate about the relative benefits and perceived detrimental effects of using active intervention to affect the future condition of national forest lands.

Some environmental concerns are misguided and lead to inaction or wrong action.

Unnatural and destructive wildfires are increasing in size faster than management is addressing the problems. Human developments on forest in-holdings of private land create both fire suppression and forest management problems.

Costs of forest management can be partially, if not completely, recovered from scientifically designed treatments based on soundly developed plans.

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Historical Anthropogenic Fire and Modern Park Management

Two recent additions to the W.I.S.E. Library deal with the confluence of historical (traditional) anthropogenic fire with modern problems (challenges) in managing large national parks.

In White, C.A., D.D.B. Perrakis, V.G. Kafka, and T. Ennis. 2011. Burning at the edge: integrating biophysical and eco-cultural fire processes in Canada’s parks and protected areas. Fire Ecology 7(1): 74-106 [here] the principal author, Clifford A. White, is Chief Scientist (emeritus) at Banff National Park in Alberta.

Banff National Park is Canada’s oldest national park (established in 1885) and most famous; Banff is Canada’s Yellowstone.

In “Burning at the Edge” the authors examine changes in historical fire frequency and extent. They show clearly that “climate” cannot be an explanatory factor for those changes. Instead, human ignitions or lack thereof have governed the fire regimes of Banff for thousands of years.

For more than ten millennia, First Nations of indigenous peoples have occupied almost all areas of Canada, with population density highest in more southern areas (McMillan 1995). Studies clearly show that humans set low intensity fires that burned over the long term within the larger matrix of fires (Lewis and Ferguson 1988, Turner 1999). Historically, at least in some areas, human use, not suppression, of fire was more significant. Fire was an easily available tool that could be routinely used for purposes ranging from altering wildlife habitat, to improving berry crops, to warfare (Boyd 1999, Stewart 2002). People living on the land understood fire’s role intimately, and because it was their most powerful tool to change landscapes, integrated this understanding into daily decisions for survival. …

Without traditional anthropogenic fire for 100+ years, biomass has accumulated and as a consequence, modern fires are large, destructive, and expensive. The solution to the crisis-level fire problem, argue the authors, is to restore cultural fire to the landscape.

Fire practitioners in Canadian parks and protected areas are stewards of combined eco-culturally and biophysically driven fire regimes. Similar to earlier generations of First Nations, today’s land managers face the same issue in maintaining eco-culturally important patches of relatively frequent, low-intensity fire dependent ecosystems within a landscape matrix of less frequent, large area, high-intensity fire. From the above case histories, it appears that managers are recognizing significant spatial and temporal interactions on the edge between these two general fire regimes. Moreover, managers are rediscovering First Nations’ traditional ecosystem knowledge of the human actions that were most practical for fire use in these northern regions where high-intensity fires are a dominant ecological force (Lewis and Ferguson 1988).

Management fires lit under an eco-cultural paradigm maintain an important component of the long-term regime while providing greater capacity for larger, higher intensity fires to occur with few negative ecological and socio-economic implications.

Not catastrophic “natural” fire. That’s not the solution — it is in fact the problem. Banff NP is a natural wonderland, a gift from Mother Nature, and we all love nature to beat the band. But, and it’s a big but, Banff is better off, nature at Banff is better protected, if traditional land management (anthropogenic fire and anthropogenic predation) is practiced there.

Another recent addition to our Library is: Iokiñe Rodríguez (2007) Pemon Perspectives of Fire Management in Canaima National Park, Southeastern Venezuela. Hum Ecol (2007) 35:331–343

Canaima NP is a world-class park, home to the Gran Sabana (great savanna) and tepuis (table-top mountains). The cliffs that surround the tepuis are so steep and challenging, making the plateau tops so remote, that Arthur Conan Doyle sited his novel, “The Lost World”, there.

Canaima NP is the Yellowstone of Venezuela. Canaima NP is not a lost world, however. People have been resident there for ~15,000 years. The Gran Sabana is anthropogenic — human burning practices created and maintain the anthropogenic mosaic of grasslands and tree islands.

Park managers today wish to eliminate the cultural ties and traditional management of the Pemon people. Dr. Rodríguez reports:

For more than 30 years, different institutions have striven to change or eliminate the traditional use of fire throughout the area popularly known as the Gran Sabana, in the eastern sector of the park. Fire control policies have been based on the assumption that the use of fire, particularly savanna burning, is causing a gradual reduction in forest cover (Galán, 1984; Gómez and Picón, 1994). Despite concerns over the use of fire in the park, land managers have shown little interest in understanding local fire regimes and Pemon views of fire. Instead, fire control has been based largely on preconceived ideas and unsubstantiated hypotheses of the impacts of fire, resulting in a long conflict between the State and the Pemon over the use of fire in the park.

Not only is shortsighted “natural” management destroying the Gran Sabana vegetation, the blindness of park managers is also destroying an entire culture — the culture that created the park vegetation arrangements in the first place.

An excellent slide show presentation put together by Iokiñe Rodríguez and entitled “Reframing the fire narrative in Canaima National Park, Venezuela” is [here].

The problems in both parks (and in Yellowstone, too) are more than environmental. Fire has not been eliminated; anthropogenic fire has. Cultural heritage has been denied and social injustice inflicted — to the detriment of the environment, because the culture and the environment were closely interwoven and mutually interdependent.

That’s the take home lesson.

AFE Discovers Anthropogenic Fire

It’s a breakthrough. The latest issue of Fire Ecology [here] is all about anthropogenic fire.

Fire Ecology is the ‘zine of the Association of Fire Ecologists (AFE). You may remember the AFE from their infamous 2006 3rd International Fire Ecology & Management Congress held in San Diego [here], during which they “voted” to adopt a Declaration which stated “climate plays a central role in shaping fire regimes.” The Declaration recommended Let It Burn incineration of America’s forests today (the Holocausts Now philosophy), because later on it might get warmer and then the fires will be really big, hoo boy.

The 2006 AFE Declaration (don’t you just love it when allegedly scientific organizations issue political declarations?) also blamed humanity (you and me) for messing up the “natural” fire regimes — they declared, “Human activities [recently] have significantly increased the number of ignitions in temperate, boreal, and tropical regions.”

As I pointed out at the time, that accusation is totally false. In fact, human beings (and/or our close relatives) have been the principal fire igniters on Earth for approximately 1.6 million years, and modern man is nowhere near the fire bug that we were a mere 500 years ago.

Now, nearly five years later, the AFE has seen the light. Finally they have crept out of the darkness and embraced the actual scientific truth about fire, which is that most fire on this planet has been anthropogenic for many hundreds of thousands of years, through at least 15 Ice Age glaciations (~105,000 years long each) and 15 interglacials (~10,000 years long each).

To be clear, the authors of the articles are experts who have long been cognizant of the importance of anthropogenic fire. It’s the org (AFE) that is crawling towards the light. The authors have already been in the light for decades. Surprisingly (perhaps) the org has not been run by actual fire ecologists, but instead by political operatives with limited understanding of fire ecology, although that may be changing.

Some highlights of the new Fire Ecology issue (Volume 7, Issue 1 - 2011) are

Introduction - 4th International Fire Congress: Fire as a Global Process [here] by Francisco Seijo, Robert W. Gray, and Sandra Rideout-Hanzak

Debates about the scale, ecological effects, and motivations of pre-scientific anthropogenic burning have been present since the inception of the scientific study of landscape fires as the following quotations show. Local communities have in many places burned the land for centuries. …

Fire-prone flammable ecosystems cover about 40% of the Earth’s land surface, including some of the most biologically diverse ecosystems on the planet (Bond et al. 2005). Over the last quarter of a million years [note: actually 1.6 million years, but let's not argue about it], some, and in many cases all, of the fires affecting ecosystem structure and composition in these flammable ecosystems have been ignited by humans. …

Australia - A Model System for the Development of Pyrogeography [here] by David M.J.S. Bowman and Brett P. Murphy

A growing body of research has shown that Aboriginal fire use is skillful and responsible for the functioning of ecosystems that were encountered by European colonists (Bowman 1998). A prime example of the importance of Aboriginal fire management concerns the ecological effects when this tradition of fire management is disrupted. …

The survival of cypress pine was a consequence of Aboriginal patch burning that occurred for a number of reasons, including but not limited to preserving patches of wild yams (Russell-Smith et al. 1997), managing country for spiritual obligations (Yibarbuk et al. 2001), preserving unburnt areas for fire drives of wild game later in the year (Haynes 1985), and maintaining grazing habitat for game (Murphy and Bowman 2007). It seems that the creation of habitat heterogenity was critical for the survival of a range of plants and animals that are currently undergoing precipitous declines following the cessation of Aboriginal fire management (Franklin 1999, Woinarski et al. 2010). …

European settlers have struggled to comprehend the ecology of fire in Australia and have made only halting progress toward the accommodation of fire in their environment. The extreme fire events in southern Australia since the beginning of the twenty-first century highlight the vulnerability of Australian society to catastrophic fire. There remains a heated debate about the cause of these extreme events, with a Royal Commission inquiring into the bushfires in Victoria on 7 February 2009, which saw the loss of 173 lives, 3,500 structures destroyed, and 450,000 ha burnt by over 400 individual fires. ..

[R]esearch in northern Australia has revealed an underlying logic to Aboriginal landscape burning (Lewis 1982, Head and Fullagar 1997, Russell-Smith et al. 1997, Bowman and Prior 2004, Vigilante and Bowman 2004, Murphy and Bowman 2007), although appreciation of the full complexity remains beyond our grasp.

Burning at the Edge: Integrating Biophysical and Eco-Cultural Fire Processes in Canada’s Parks and Protected Areas [here] by Clifford A. White, Daniel D.B. Perrakis, Victor G. Kafka, and Timothy Ennis

Abstract

Currently, high intensity, large-area lightning fires that burn during droughts dominate Canada’s fire regimes. However, studies from several disciplines clearly show that humans historically ignited burns within this matrix of large fires. Two approaches for fire research and management have arisen from this pattern: a “large-fire biophysical paradigm” related to lightning-ignited fires, and an “eco-cultural paradigm” related to human-caused burning. Working at the edge between biophysically driven fires and eco-cultural burns, and their associated management and research paradigms, presents unique challenges to land managers. We proceed by describing fire frequency trends across Canada, and how an interaction between changing climatic and cultural factors may provide better causal explanations for observed patterns than either group of factors alone. We then describe four case histories of fire restoration into Canadian landscapes moving through evolution, or deliberate intent, towards increasing emphasis on an eco-cultural paradigm. We show that use of cultural burns maintains this facet of the long-term regime while providing greater capacity for larger, higher intensity fires to occur with fewer negative ecological and socio-economic implications. Key lessons learned by practitioners restoring fire to landscapes include: 1) fire is only one process in ecosystems that also include other complex interactions, and thus restoration of fire alone could have unintended consequences in some ecosystems; 2) recognizing long-term human roles of not only fire managers, but also hunters and gatherers is critical in restoration programs; and 3) this diversity of past, present, and future ecological and cultural interactions with fire can link managers to a broad constituency of stakeholders. Bringing this variety of people and interests into the decision-making processes is a necessary pre-requisite to successful fire management at the edge.

The latter paper is truly excellent, paradigm-shattering, and worthy of deeper study and review — and we will do so in a subsequent post. Please read it now, however, as homework, so you will be ready when we present our review. Thank you.

Score one for AFE. They are approximating relevancy at last. Kudos to all involved in the new issue.

Muddying the Waters in SW Oregon

The enviro-holocaust lobby is up in arms about gold-dredging on the Chetco River:

Gold mining project in Ore hits clean water snag

A Washington developer’s plan to mine for gold on one of Oregon’s most pristine salmon rivers has hit a roadblock.

By JEFF BARNARD, Seattle April 19, 2011 [here]

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — A Washington developer’s plan to mine for gold on one of Oregon’s most pristine salmon rivers has hit a roadblock.

A state environmental official has concluded it could be difficult for developer Dave Rutan to get a clean water permit as long as he wants to use suction dredges to mine the Chetco River inside the Kalmiopsis Wilderness on the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.

Oregon administrative rules prohibit gold mining dredges from causing any increase in muddiness in rivers within certain federal wilderness areas, including the Kalmiopsis, or a 10 percent increase in muddiness in rivers designated essential salmon habitat, such as the Chetco.

The rules were cited in a Jan. 28 letter from Oregon Department of Environmental Quality Water Quality Division administrator Neil Mullane to the U.S. Forest Service.

Dave Rutan, agent for Chetco River Mining & Explorations LLC of LaCenter, Wash., refused comment when contacted by The Associated Press.

The Forest Service has suspended an environmental review of Rutan’s gold mining plan until he resolves the issue with the state, Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest spokeswoman Virginia Gibbons said.

“This is very good news for the wilderness, and it is also good for taxpayers, because basically the developer needs to get his state permit before the feds should have to look into it,” environmental consultant Andy Kerr said. “Just because you have a federal mining claim doesn’t give you carte blanche to destroy wilderness values.” …

The prospect that suction dredge mining could cause an increase in sedimentation that would be harmful to gravel beds where salmon lay their eggs landed the Chetco on the American Rivers list of the nation’s 10 most threatened rivers in 2010. …

What is ironic about these crocodile tears is that the Kalmiopsis Wilderness has been subjected to two of the largest Let It Burn fires in Oregon state history. The Silver Fire (1987) severely roasted 180,000 acres, including half of the 100,000-acre Kalmiopsis Wilderness Area. Then in 2002 the Biscuit Fire reburned the Kalmiopsis and an additional 400,000 acres [here, here, here].

Those fires fried the vegetation, including old growth trees [here, here] and caused extreme erosion — soil was sucked up into fire plumes and blown off the site, as well as eroded directly into the Chetco River, leaving behind only a rubble of heavier stones [here].

The Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest doesn’t give a hang about destroying vast landscapes with catastrophic fires, denuding soils, causing massive erosion, and burying salmon gravels in mud. They yearn to apply Let It Burn to every square inch of the RR-SNF [here, here, here, here]

During discussions with the RR-SNF staff and their toady envro-holocaust supporters, they said directly and unequivocally that they wished for “natural” fires to incinerate the forest, regardless of what effects that might have of streams and aquatic health.

At no time, ever, has the RR-SNF consulted with Oregon Department of Environmental Quality Water Quality Division administrator Neil Mullane before allowing holocausts to incinerate whole watersheds, nor has Neil Mullane and the ODEQ requested any such consultations, nor has Neil Mullane or the ODEQ voiced the slightest concern over the massive water (or air) pollution arising from those fires.

It’s easy to pick off individuals who make a tiny mess, and crow in the papers with phony holier-than-thou environmentalism, but when we lift the media/bureaucratic veil and see the gargantuan destruction the whiners themselves have engendered, the shock wave of hypocrisy knocks you off your feet.

The Wild Frontier

Last week Frontier Airlines, the fossil-fuel-burning, tarmac-hogging, government-subsidized, crony-capitalist transportation company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Republic Airways Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: RJET), declaerd itself to be, and we quote, “the official airline of The Wilderness Society.”

Yes, sports fans, it’s true:

Frontier Airlines Partners With The Wilderness Society

by Businesswire (A Berkshire-Hathaway Company), April 12, 2011 [here]

DENVER-(BUSINESS WIRE)-In further support of the communities in which it flies, Frontier Airlines is pleased to announce a partnership with The Wilderness Society, a leading public-lands conservation organization working to protect wilderness and inspire Americans to care for our wild places. Frontier Airlines, a wholly owned subsidiary of Republic Airways Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: RJET), will serve as the official airline of The Wilderness Society and support its ongoing efforts to protect America’s great places.

Frontier’s partnership with The Wilderness Society will support wilderness and wildlife protection in communities across the United States, including areas within the White River National Forest region of Colorado, the San Gabriel Mountains in California, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, among others.

“Frontier is more than an airline with animals on its tails, we are a Company with an intense passion for the communities we serve and a real responsibility to help protect the incredible wilderness habitats our guests travel to each and every day and in which our ‘spokesanimals’ call home,” said Bryan Bedford, chairman, president and CEO of Frontier Airlines. “We are so pleased to work together with The Wilderness Society in their effort to protect the nation’s wilderness and inspire people to connect with these great places.”

“The partnership between Frontier Airlines and The Wilderness Society enables people to experience first-hand nature’s treasures,” said William H. Meadows, president of The Wilderness Society. “Together we can protect the places we love by connecting people to iconic American landscapes that sustain Frontier’s ‘spokesanimals’.” …

Frontier will support The Wilderness Society through financial contributions, creative fundraising efforts and employee volunteerism. …

Evidently the chairman, president and CEO of Frontier Airlines is too busy polluting the friendly skies to realize the wilderness is a pernicious and destructive myth:

* the land has been home to human beings for many thousands of years

* real human beings, not wild savages

* real human beings have modified landscapes across the continent for sustainable survival

* real human beings made this continent into productive homelands millennia before Frontier Airlines started ripping off travelers and taxpayers

* wilderness designation means humanity is excluded, traditional stewardship terminated, and catastrophic fires ensue

* No Touch, Let It Burn, Watch it Rot wilderness policies are actually bad for wildlife, including “spokesanimals” — killing real and cartoon creatures and incinerating their habitat

* The Wilderness Society is already dripping with cash and doesn’t need any of Frontier’s excessive profits

* When the next holocaust destroys umpteen “wilderness” acres and burns into town, it would be karmic justice if Bryan Bedford’s home burns down.

* Because, among other justifications, Bryan Bedford’s home is built of materials which were once raw and harvested from productive resource lands, something he despises now that he is as rich as an oil sheik

* when Bryan Bedford decides to forcefully evict and ethnically cleanse hundreds of millions of acres, and burn those acres into moonscape wastelands, he is actually doing grave harm to people who might otherwise have had the wherewithal to fly occasionally on Frontier Airlines but now are bankrupt and losing their homes

It is clear. Bryan Bedford wants to tango. Fine with me. Happy to oblige.

Please BOYCOTT of Frontier Airlines, a wholly owned subsidiary of Republic Airways Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: RJET)

If you love this country; if you don’t want it destroyed in holocausts by the nabob urban elite; if you respect your fellow humans and human heritage; if you value stewardship, wildlife, water, recreation, scenery, and other natural renewable resources; if you value your home and neighborhood;

then please BOYCOTT Frontier Airlines.

Do not fly on that lunatic carrier, do not own stock in them, and encourage your friends to BOYCOTT and reject them utterly.

Bryan Bedford makes too much money as it is. So does William H. Meadows. Those pigs are living in Fat Land while they promulgate absurdist lies that lead directly to megafire catastrophe, racism, economic deprivation, rape by fire of the landscape, and abandonment of human heritage and stewardship of multi-millennial vintage.

Let us now bankrupt Frontier Airlines and drive Bryan Bedford and his family into the gutter. That’s what Bryan Bedford wants to do to you and your family. Turnabout is fair play.

Frontier Airlines belongs in the economic dumpster, the trash bin of history. Let them burn in Chapter 11. See how they like it. It’s what they want for you — what’s good for the goose must be good for the klepto-aristocrat ganders.

A Cultural Practice Within a Cultural Place

Review by Mike Dubrasich of:

Pyne, Stephen J.(2011) Our Pappies Still Burn the Woods IN Florida: A Fire Mosaic (web-published here)

Right off the bat let me reveal my biases. Steve Pyne is a friend and an Honored Fellow of W.I.S.E. He is, IMHO, one our greatest contemporary writers. It is thus difficult for me to be critical of his essays. I really like them. That being the case, you will have to take the following review with some lemon to cut all the sugar.

Dr. Stephen J. Pyne (Regents Professor at Arizona State University) stumbled on some funding (from the U.S. Forest Service, Department of the Interior, and Joint Fire Science Program) to grease the skids while he writes a couple of new books. Because We the Taxpayers are footing the bill, and because Pyne is a brave fellow (and competitive, eh Steve?) he decided to post the essays that will (possibly) go into his new books as he writes them. To that end he set up a blog! [here].

As a blogger myself, and speaking for all bloggers everywhere (and why shouldn’t I?) Pyne puts all of us extemporaneous blog-alists to shame. He is a pro writer, and stands out like a exceedingly healthy thumb amongst all the rest of us sore phalanges (or filangies in NewUrbText).

Just to rub our noses in it, Dr. Pyne is spitting out classic, great essays as fast (or faster) than rest of us spit out poor quality amateurish essays. (You know, for me it’s like playing catch with Willie Mays or something. I am thrilled but it’s also humbling to the core.)

One of his rapid-fire classics is entitled “Our Pappies Still Burn the Woods“, which is not an original title but one he borrowed from John P. Shea, an obscure psychologist/sociologist who wrote an essay of the same name published in 1940 in American Forests. Leave it to an historian to dredge something like that up from the depths.

According to Pyne, Shea’s essay is loathed by the “southern fire community” although I bet 99% of the community members never heard of it. But no matter. It sets the theme, because the original essay (by Shea) is (according to Pyne) an exercise in cultural bigotry and class disdain. And Pyne’s essay (of the same name) is all about cultural bigotry or something darn close to it.

Shea’s targets were the poor Southern trash who burned (without permits) their landscapes, when they felt like it, to the consternation of public officials, especially the U.S. Forest Service honchos who were often called upon to put out the fires.

Pyne’s targets are variously Shea, foresters (thanks a heap, Steve), fire scientists (heh, heh), the American fire community (touché), the general American public, and cultural bigots worldwide.

But Pyne’s writing is so good, and his thoughts so bullseye, that in the end we victims are grateful for the lessons. Even though he cites some clod who referred to foresters as morons, an unkind cut, but a lash I frequently apply to others, so it’s a just comeuppance I suppose. More than that, it’s part of the lesson, a reprimand for lousy writing and worse thinking, of which I am frequently guilty, and so I take my medicine, which Pyne somehow makes palatable and even fun, with gratitude. And after all, if your topic is shortsighted bigotry, some demonstrations are appropriate.

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Cohesive Strategy Promising

Review by Mike Dubrasich, Exec Dir W.I.S.E.

Last month without fanfare the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC) released the final version of the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy Report (aka the CS Report).

The Secs of Agriculture and the Interior had been directed by Congress through the “Federal Land Assistance, Management, and Enhancement Act of 2009″ (aka the FLAME Act) to develop a comprehensive wildland fire management strategy and present it to Congress last November. The process took a little longer than expected, in part because the WFLC held fourteen forums across the country to discuss the issues with interested citizens. That effort at dialog was serious and it took time, as well as generating significant input for consideration.

We have discussed the Cohesive Strategy previously [here, here, here, here, here, here, here]. The final (March 17, 2011) version of the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy Report is [here]. A companion report, entitled The Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement Act of 2009 Report to Congress, is [here].

The CS Report is technically Phase I. Phase II will be Development of Regional Strategies and Assessments, and Phase III will be National Trade-Off Analysis and Execution. The nominal purpose of this 3-Phase project is to “systematically and thoroughly develop a shared national vision for present and future wildland fire and land management activities in the United States,” including “a dynamic approach to planning for, responding to, and recovering from wildland fire incidents”.

The CS Report identifies three “challenges” associated with fire management:

* Restoring and maintaining resilient landscapes. The strategy must recognize the current lack of ecosystem health and variability of this issue from geographic area to geographic area. Because landscape conditions and needs vary depending on local climate and fuel conditions, among other elements, the strategy will address landscapes on a regional and sub-regional scale.

* Creating fire-adapted communities. The strategy will offer options and opportunities to engage communities and work with them to become more resistant to wildfire threats.

* Responding to wildfires. This element considers the full spectrum of fire management activities and recognizes the differences in missions among local, state, tribal and Federal agencies. The strategy offers collaboratively developed methodologies to move forward.

While there is plenty of bureaucratic obfuscation in the CS Report, careful parsing reveals some elements that represent real progress forward. This review “reads between the lines” and highlights selected phrases and sentences from the CS Report for interpretation. Other reviewers may interpret it differently.

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The Long Road To Government Shutdown

by Congressman Denny Rehberg (MT), April 8, 2011 [here]

Today, our national government moved closer to a shutdown. It has taken us years to get this far off track and despite doing everything in my power to reduce the deficit and avoid a government shutdown, our system of government simply cannot operate if the Senate and White House refuse to come to the table.

Unfortunately, some politicians will use this shutdown as an excuse to get on TV and point fingers. Not me. I’m going to keep working hard for you exactly like I always have. I’m going to work to get things back on track in Washington so our kids and grandkids are free from the crushing burden of debt and taxes.

But you deserve to know the truth. There’s going to be a lot of spin, and finger pointing. So let’s set the record straight once and for all.

Here’s how we got here:

February 12, 2010 - Democrats Raise the Federal Debt Ceiling (Again)

For the record sixth time since taking power in January 2007, Congressional Democrats voted to increase the federal debt ceiling to support their budget-busting big government agenda. At this point, they had already passed bailouts for Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Goldman Sachs, AIG, General Motors Corporation and Chrysler, Bank of America, and a massive failed Stimulus. Congress was still working on Obamacare.

Spring 2010 - Congressional Democrats Fail to Pass A Budget

Each year, Congress is supposed to pass a budget. But last spring, with record debts and deficits and a big-government agenda, neither Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives or Harry Reid’s Senate passed a federal budget. It was the first time Congress punted on this most basic of responsibilities since the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. Read about it in The Hill [here].

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Salazar’s Withdrawal of the WOPR Vacated

U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates ruled last week that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar acted illegally when he unilaterally and without due process withdrew the the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Western Oregon Plan Revision (WOPR) in July of 2009 [here].

The BLM Western Oregon Plan Revisions applied to only O&C lands, some 2 million acres in Western Oregon (less than 10% of federal forest lands in the state). The WOPR was created via a lengthy and public NEPA process and was consistent with the 2008 Spotted Owl Recovery Plan. The incoming Obama Administration withdrew the WOPR as one of Salazar’s first acts as Sec Int, however, claiming that Bush Administration officials somehow tainted the plan by failing to “follow established administrative procedure.”

Now the federal courts have ruled that Salazar “failed to follow established administrative procedure” when he nixed the WOPR without any public process at all.

Note: we and others predicted this ruling [here, here].

The lawsuit was brought by Douglas Timber Operators of Douglas County, Oregon. The Pacific River Council intervened on behalf of the Defendant, Ken Salazar.

Judge John D. Bates entire ruling is [here]. Some selected excerpts:

Plaintiffs, timber companies and trade and workers’ associations that support enhanced timber harvest in western Oregon, challenge the decision of defendant, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, to withdraw the Records of Decision (”ROD”) approved on December 30, 2008, that had adopted the Western Oregon Plan Revisions for six Bureau of Land Management districts. The Secretary withdrew the ROD for the Western Oregon Plan Revisions on July 16, 2009, explaining that the December 2008 approval of the Western Oregon Plan Revisions ROD was “legal error” because the Bureau of Land Management had improperly concluded that it was not obligated to engage in inter-agency consultation under the Endangered Species Act.

Plaintiffs make five claims that the withdrawal decision was unlawful. First, they allege that defendant violated the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (”FLPMA”). Second, plaintiffs allege that defendant violated the rulemaking procedures under the Administrative Procedure Act (”APA”). Third, they claim that defendant violated the public notice provision of the FLPMA, 43 U.S.C. §1712(f). Fourth, they allege that defendant’s breach of the 2003 Settlement Agreement that established a December 31, 2008 deadline for revising the resource management plans for six western Oregon districts was arbitrary and capricious and an abuse of discretion under the APA. Fifth, and finally, plaintiffs allege that the defendant also violated the APA because the defendant’s “legal error” explanation was not rationally connected to the Secretary’s decision to completely withdraw the approved ROD. …

On December 30, 2008, the Department of Interior adopted six revised resource management plans, collectively known as the Western Oregon Plan Revisions, for 2.5 million acres of BLM lands in western Oregon. Compl. ¶ 9; Pls.’ Mot. for Summ. J. (”Pls.’ Mot.”) [Docket Entry 30] at 1. The ROD approving the six plans increased allowable annual timber harvest from the 208 million board feet provided under the Northwest Forest Plan to 502 million board feet. Compl. ¶¶ 9, 12. The Final Environmental Impact Statement (”FEIS”) completed prior to adopting the ROD determined that “[t]he revision of resource management plans to allocate lands to various categories of use, with associated management direction for planning future activities on those lands, would have no impact on listed species or critical habitat.” …

Subsequently, on July 16, 2009, the Acting Assistant Secretary of Interior for Land and Minerals Management issued a two-page memorandum to the Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management that stated: “[b]ecause BLM’s ‘no effect’ determination was legal error based on the record before me and applicable law, I am hereby withdrawing the WOPR RODs effective immediately.” See Compl. ¶¶ 9, 13; Western Oregon Plan Revision Administrative Withdrawal Memorandum, July 16, 2009 (”Withdrawal Memo.”) at 2. The public was also notified of the withdrawal decision on July 16, 2009. Compl. ¶ 13. No formal notice and comment period was provided. …

The Secretary also contends that following the FLPMA planning procedures in light of the ROD’s [purported possible]“legal deficiencies” improperly “elevate[s] process over reason.” Def.’s Opp’n at 30. But courts often enforce procedural mandates even when an agency may reach the same decision after the required process is completed. See Util. Solid Waste Activities Grp. v. EPA, 236 F.3d 749, 752 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (rejecting “the proposition that agencies may correct their mistakes without complying with the APA’s procedural requirements” and requiring EPA to correct a word processing error in final regulations through notice and comment proceedings); Tribune Co., 133 F.3d at 68 (noting that “it is hornbook administrative law” that “an agency is bound by its substantive rules unless validly amended or rescinded”) (citations omitted). Hence, the Secretary lacked inherent authority to withdraw the 2008 ROD without following the procedures required under the FLPMA, and his decision to do so violated the APA. …

Plaintiffs have lodged a “credible” challenge, as well as a “colorable claim” that they would have presented specific comments in response to the decision to withdraw the ROD due to legal error, had they been afforded the opportunity to do so. See AFL-CIO, 496 F. Supp. 2d at 89. Nothing more is required to establish prejudice, and hence plaintiffs have met their burden here.

Hence, the Secretary lacked inherent authority to withdraw the December 2008 ROD, and the failure to comply with procedures under the FLPMA was arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion under 5 U.S.C. § 706(2). …

Having found that the Secretary failed to follow the procedures required by the FLPMA (the Federal Land Policy and Management Act when he withdrew the 2008 Western Oregon Plan Revisions ROD, the Court need not reach plaintiffs’ remaining arguments — that the decision to withdraw the ROD is a “legislative rule” that cannot be repealed without notice and comment under the APA, and that the Secretary’s decision to withdraw the ROD because of alleged “legal error” was arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion under the APA. Compliance with the FLPMA public notice and participation requirements would largely suffice under an APA notice and comment challenge. …

For the foregoing reasons, the Court will grant in part and deny in part plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, grant in part and deny in part defendant’s motion for summary judgment, and vacate and remand the July 16, 2009 decision to withdraw the Western Oregon Plan Revisions ROD. …

Ken “Mr. Tamper” Salazar’s illegal withdrawal of the WOPR has been vacated. The political tampering by the Obama Administration of a valid public process is no longer in force. Salazar has yet to announce whether he will let the plan stand, go through a legal public process to withdraw it, or appeal the judge’s ruling.

Global Warming and Communism

You have to give the Commies points for honesty. They hate capitalism and blame capitalism for everything bad, so naturally glooobal waaarming is a capitalist plot, too.

The latest red eruption comes from noted Communists Jack Trevors [here] and Milton Saier [here], Editor-in-Chief and Associate Editor respectively of Water, Air, & Soil Pollution (WASP), An International (peer-reviewed) Journal of Environmental Pollution.

Although Jack and Milton are nominally (purported to be) microbiologists, they forayed into Marxist economics in their recent joint editorial in WASP [here]. Some excerpts:

These human-designed systems include our financial and economic systems—whether they be capitalistic, socialistic, or communistic, for example. Some societies may be more prone to one of these options than others. Thus, the capitalistic systems of economy follow the one principal rule: the rule of profit making. All else must bow down to this rule. For this reason, a capitalistic system cannot be expected to provide for its citizens without strictly imposed regulations on the capitalistic system itself; the owners of industry yield to their specific selfish interests—usually short term—without thoughts about the greater good of humankind or long-term planetary sustainability.

The current USA is an example of a failed capitalistic state in which essential long-term goals such as prevention of climate change and limitation of human population growth are subjugated to the short-term profit motive and the principle of economic growth.

So why has the USA failed so miserably to act in the interests of the common good? The answer lies at the human root of capitalism. The existence of human-caused Global Warming is an established fact with no evidence to contradict the basis for its occurrence. And the theoretical basis was established over 50 years ago! …

We believe these values can also be cultivated through education. They certainly will not result from the yielding to the greedy interests of profiteers! …

Just lovely. It warms me all over to hear yet another pair of trough sucking government functionaries rail against capitalist profit. How much better off we all would be if we embraced Communist LOSSES in all our endeavors. Personal, corporate, governmental, and pan-national bankruptcy are such wonderful things to aspire to.

Note that the the TSPEC (Trough Sucking Public Employee Class) reacts violently when their taxpayer victims (aka greedy capitalist profiteers) suggest that TSPEC-ers pay some small percentage of their own pensions and benefits out of their own personal capital. Heaven forfend! Time to riot in the streets.

The authors ask, “So why has the USA failed so miserably to act in the interests of the common good?” and answer their own rhetorical question, “The answer lies at the human root of capitalism.”

Capitalism has failed to provide for the common good? It certainly provides for Jack’s and Milton’s, and a few billion other folks, while Communism has succeeded only at murdering a hundred million people or more, and starving an equal number to death. The human roots of mass murder are not particularly sustainable or non-polluting, as the evidence plainly demonstrates. For some reason microbiologists failed to observe all that phenomenal blood-letting, though. They spend too much tine peering through microscopes and not enough time burying victims of Communist excess, evidently.

Obviously the correct response to such deep truths [sarc] from WASP is to SEIZE the capitalist assets of the editor authors. Commandeer their private property. They don’t want it, they recommend against owning it, and so it is fair game to whomever wants it. Jack and Milton and their overly large families can sleep under a bridge, a communist bridge, and forgo the failed comforts of our failed national experiment in failure-prone capitalism.

WASP is a journal that has jumped the shark. Time to seize their capitalist assets, too.

You’ve got to love this illogic: “The existence of human-caused Global Warming is an established fact with no evidence to contradict the basis for its occurrence. And the theoretical basis was established over 50 years ago!”

Except it’s not a fact, no matter how old the theory is, and all the evidence contradicts it. The theoretical basis for communism was established 160 years ago, and the evidence of its failure abounds, and yet the authors still believe in it, too. The adherence to junk theories, whether economic or environmental, seems to be a persistent trait of the TSPEC.

Some folks think Marxism has infiltrated university social sciences only. Nope, the infection has polluted every discipline, including real sciences such as microbiology.

Lysenko lives!!!!

Note: special comrade salute goes to Wm. Briggs [here] for the red tipoff.