Politics and politicians Saving Forests The 2009 Fire Season Uncategorized Useless and Stupid
by admin
USFS Replaces Fire Retardant With Napalm
The US Forest Service will no longer be using fire retardant to douse forest fires. Instead they will be using a type of napalm to blast America’s forests to charcoal.
In response to a lawsuit brought by the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, and the subsequent ruling by Federal Judge Donald Molloy [here], Thomas Tidwell, Chief, USDA Forest Service decided last December to ban the use of fire retardant on 30 percent of USFS lands.
The Nationwide Aerial Application of Fire Retardant on National Forest System Land — Record of Decision is [here]. Some quotes:
Aerial retardant drops are not allowed in mapped avoidance areas for threatened, endangered, proposed, candidate or sensitive (TEPCS) species or in waterways. …
Some species and habitats require that only water be used to protect their habitat and populations; these habitats and populations have been mapped as avoidance areas. Incident commanders and pilots are required to avoid aerial application of fire retardant in avoidance areas for TEPCS species or within the 300-foot (or larger) buffers on either side of waterways. …
When approaching an avoidance area mapped for TEPCS species, waterway, or riparian vegetation visible to the pilot, the pilot will terminate the application of retardant approximately 300 feet before reaching the mapped avoidance area or waterway. …
[T]he Proposed Action prescribed a 300-foot buffer area between retardant application and surface waters on national forests, excluding about 30 percent of NFS lands from aerially delivered retardant use. …
In Western Oregon, a 300-foot buffer on either side of streams encompasses about 85 percent of the land base (because it’s wet here and we have lots of streams).
So the USFS has effectively banned the use of fire retardant on the most productive lands in the National Forest System.
What they didn’t ban was the use of aerially applied incendiaries, such as were used in Western Oregon last summer to catastrophically burn (100 percent mortality) green, old-growth, spotted owl habitat [here].
Fire retardant is a phosphorus-nitrogen-water based slurry that puts fires out. It has no effect on plants or animals, except to very slightly fertilize the soil. The effect is so slight it cannot be measured. Oh yes, another effect of fire retardant is to save the plants and animals from incineration and immolation.
Fire retardant was banned. In place of fire retardant the USFS now uses explosive chemicals encased in polyacrylate “Ping Pong balls” and ejected by AH-64 Apache, UH-60 Black Hawk, and other combat-ready attack helicopters [here].
The chemicals of choice are glycerin (1,2,3-propanetriol) oxidized by potassium permanganate [here].
14KMnO4 + 4C3H5(OH)3 -> 7K2CO3 + 7Mn2O3 + 5CO2 + 16H2O
Explosive chemicals shot from helicopters do not put the fire out; they expand fires by aerially igniting forest canopies and inducing fire storms. The effect is similar to napalm, killing plants, animals, and people [here].
It is unlikely that radical anti-forest, pro-holocaust groups like FSEEE will be suing to stop the use of potassium permanganate-glycerin Ping Pong balls dropped on forests by attack helicopters, because they think the best thing to do to America’s forests is to burn them to the ground.
The US Forest Service agrees. Their de facto mission is to commit total destruction to America’s forests.
Burn, baby, burn.
by Barbara W.
At first reading, I thought this article was a satire, but no: our Forest “Service seems hell-bent in its efforts to destroy every living tree. Each year in WY when the FS starts “controlled burns” and they inevitably evolve into uncontrolled burns, they place signs along the highway which read WILDLAND FIRE USE and urge the public not to report the blaze they’ve started. They have systematically incinerated many of the high white bark pine areas they advertise they are trying to protect. A great many of the pristine areas in the Gros Ventres, Wyoming and Wind River ranges have been actively destroyed by the FS. I’m beginning to think their slogan must be “The Only Good Tree is a Dead Tree.”
Reply: The FS’s slogan is (no satire) “Reintroduce Fire”. They do so aggressively and without regard for the law (i.e. criminally). The US Forest Service has become a bellicose occupation army inflicting disaster across the West. It is time (past time) to zero out that agency and give the land back to the residents.