Posted by
Steve on Monday, June 06, 2011 11:35:13 AM
We have a major fire here in Arizona. It is in the northeast
part of the state near Showlow. Today on KFYI, they were talking about the fire
when the state senator from the area called up. She was very informative of the
situation that existed prior to the fire and conditions right now.
Right now, the conditions are that the fire is zero percent
(0%) contained. That means the Forest Service does not have any control over
the fire at all. The fire can go in any direction it chooses and the Forest
Service cannot stop it. The Forest Service says that they do not expect to get
any containment of the fire until the Monsoons hit. The fire has destroyed
approximately 300 square miles right now. It is the third worst fire in state
history. The monsoons are not expected to start for at least another two weeks
to a month. Given that much time before they have any containment the fire will
cover a minimum of 600 square miles and probably much more than that. It will
most likely be the worst fire in state history after all is said and done.
Conditions used to be that there was logging in Arizona. It
was never as big an operation as the Northwest in Washington and Oregon, but it
employed about 11,000 people. Environmentalists in the Forest Service decided
that the purpose of the Forest Service was not to provide timber to the United
States. The Forest Service was to protect all the wildlife that exists within
the borders of the Forests. A brief history of the Forest Service is in order.
The Forest Service was set up to insure that the United States would have a
continual supply of timber. The Park Service was set up to protect all the
wildlife that exists within its borders. In other words, environmentalists
changed the goal of the Forest Service from producing timber to protecting
wildlife.
To make their point, environmentalists would file lawsuits
to prevent any logging on National Forest land. They also worked to eliminate
or reduce any livestock grazing in the forests. This resulted in a forest that
was not managed. It produced a forest that was essentially like the situation
that existed in Yellowstone National Park prior to their catastrophic fire.
A catastrophic fire happens when a forest is mismanaged. A
well-managed forest will have fires, but never have a catastrophic fire. A
poorly managed forest will have fires that become catastrophic. This fire is
catastrophic. It proves that the management of the forest was wrong. Whatever
policies were managing the forest have to be changed to allow the forest to
fulfill its purpose.
The wildlife that were supposedly protected by mismanaging
the forest have been destroyed by this catastrophic fire. The environmentalists
will come here and try and tell us that the fire was a result of global
warming. That is absolutely false. It is a result of mismanagement. Whoever was
mismanaging the forest should be replaced with people who will do a good job of
managing the forest. That will never happen because a government agency manages
the forest, but is what should happen. Public agencies never take
responsibility for their actions. They just cover their backsides and go on
doing what they were doing until someone calls them on the carpet. That will
not happen under this current administration.
The area destroyed by this fire will recover. It will never
be anything like it was during the lifetime of anyone alive today. But about
80-100 years from now, the forest will be returned to what it was before the
fire. Hopefully, the forest will be better managed.
I hate to ever say that Europeans ever do anything better
than us, but Germans know how to manage forests. German forests have little
undergrowth. Our forests have tremendous amounts of undergrowth. We have lots
of catastrophic fires. Germans have almost no catastrophic fires. The
difference is in the management of the forests. They do it right. We try and do
it without doing anything. I thought we had learned that lesson after
Yellowstone. But we keep learning the lesson, but never making the changes. The
reason is we are dealing with environmentalists. Environmentalists are like
kids. They know everything while actually knowing nothing. Since they know
everything, you cannot teach them anything. But because they know nothing, they
continually do the wrong thing. With kids, they eventually learn that they do
not know everything and act accordingly. With environmentalists, that period of
waking up never happens. They continue to act as if they know everything.
Environmentalists are killing us slowly.