As summer advances, debate over the handling of forest fires, is one again on the front burner.
Are the ways forest fires are being fought and prevent “firewise?” By Heath Druzin and Rocky Barker. Idaho Statesman. “We spend billions attacking almost every wildfire, but scientists say that’s bad for the forest, can put firefighters in unnecessary danger and doesn’t protect communities as well- or as cheaply – as we now know how to do.”
Reporters Druzin and Barker cite USDA’s inspector general who concludes that too many Americans who live to areas prone to forest fires do not join with their neighbors and/or accept personal responsibility to construct and landscape their homes in a way to reduce the danger of being burned in a wildfire. This is due in considerable measure to the federal effort to put out every fire and throw billions into wildfire suppression with no constraints.
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I believe their has been a decline in personal responsibility, but then I might be criticized as sounding cranky.
Note: please read the sidebar on rangefires. They are quite different the forest fires, and there are far too many of them. The result and the cause is mostly the spread of the flammable exotic cheatgrass.
Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
From the looks of the dead forests of central Idaho, not the way it lokked ten years ago… they should have let it burn.
The bark beetle infestation is devastating the forests of Idaho and a lot of this is due to forest fire suppression policies for the sake of timber harvests and trophy homes;
Thank you Larry Craig, Mike Crapo, Dirk Kempthorne and many others.