Re: A fire bill to fight fires
Man, I cannot believe it. Someone with some common sense!<br /><br />There needs to be changes in the forest law, and somehow we need to get the courts out of the job of forest management. We also need to get the politicians out of the job of forest management.<br /><br />There are lots of talented professionals in the US Forest Service, as well as private industry, that know how to dramatically reduce the threat of fire on our forests, if they are given the funding and left to the science of it.<br /><br />Private industry has long known how to manage their forests to reduce the risk of fire, but it requires funding to thin unmerchantable forests, which the Forest Service does not have. The house bill proposes to increase timberlands available for harvest by private industry, but they are only interested in mechantible timber, which is not where the fires start. It will do nothing whatever to reduce the number or size of fires until funding is provided to thin and manage unmerchantable areas. Federal law demands that profits from timber sales revenue go into the general fund, and the same law forbids the US Forest Service to let below cost timber sales (which is why thinning projects on young unmerchantable forests are not done)<br /><br />The house bill is a simple sham to make more federal timber available for harvest for large timber companies, who of course spent a ton of money on camapign contributions. It has nothing whatsoever to do with fire management, no matter what noble sounding name they give it.
