Search results for: “wildfires”

  • Blood letting and wildfires

    In Medieval society, if someone were sick, the common solution was to bleed the patient to rid the body of “bad” blood. If the patient recovered, then obviously bleeding was the cure. If the patient died, it was because not enough of the “bad” blood had been removed. In many ways, our approach to wildfire…

  • Response to Senator Daines Washington Post commentary on wildfires

    Montana GOP Senator Daines recently published a simplistic and misleading guest commentary on a wildfire in the Washington Post. In that editorial, Daines, like many other misinformed logging proponents claims more logging would reduce large wildfires and he blames “environmental extremists” for delaying the forest reduction projects. Most of the wildfires burning under low to…

  • House Natural Resources and Ag Sec. promote more logging to reduce wildfires

    The House Subcommittee on Natural Resources chaired by Tom McClintock (R) of California is advocating more active management of our national forests based on the presumption that logging/thinning will reduce large wildfires. A clear indication of McClintock’s perspective is found in the title of a recent hearing he chaired called “Oversight Hearing on Burdensome Litigation…

  • No! California’s Forests are not Failing to Regrow after Big Wildfires

    “Rather than alarming, a lack of conifer regeneration allows other vegetation its “moment in the sun” so to speak, and provides for a much more diverse forest ecosystem” . . . . George Wuerthner – – – – – – Recently researchers at UC Davis and the US Forest Service presented a new scientific study that suggested…

  • Montana senators use wildfires to pump for more logging

    It is now wildfire season in Montana and in the rest of the western states. It is similar to recent years. This means quite a few wildfires in August. The year-to-year differences are almost entirely accounted for by the weather (forest dryness, the temperature, thunderstorms, and presence of wind). August is the prime month because…

  • WHY FIRE SUPPRESSION HAS HAD LITTLE INFLUENCE ON WILDFIRES

    WHY FIRE SUPPRESSION HAS HAD LITTLE INFLUENCE ON WILDFIRES A common assertion, oft repeated by the timber industry, the Forest Service, and even far too many conservation groups (like The Nature Conservancy) is that a hundred years of fire suppression has contributed to the large wildfires we are seeing around the West. The logic goes like this.…

  • Republicans use wildfires to immunize logging from public influence.

    Republican congressionals advance bill that bars public review and lawsuits over logging in our national forests- One version, Resilient Federal Forests Act, has passed the House and now the U. S. Senate takes up legislation that supporters, overwhelmingly Republican, say will reduce catastrophic wildfires and “streamline” environmental review of logging projects. The legislation will also…

  • A fatal flaw in plans for Western states to grab the public lands — paying for wildfires

    Politicians claim states will make money managing federal lands. They conveniently avoid the “elephant in the room” The renewed effort to move the national forests, BLM lands, and maybe national parks and monuments into state management or ownership likes to talk about economics. However, these people don’t use hard economic figures in their quips to…

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