So anyone remember the "healthy forest initiatve"
http://kyl.senate.gov/...
Restoration techniques involve reducing the excessive accumulation of underbrush and small trees on our national forests that are the result of decades of well intentioned, but unwise, fire-suppression practices and forest-management policies.
Or this?
http://forestfire.nau.edu/...
As fires burned across the West last summer, Arizona politicians such as then-Gov. Jane Hull and U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl said appeals filed by environmentalists had delayed or blocked forest thinning projects that could have prevented wildfires that scorched millions of acres.
This is from Northern Arizona University
Through the use of methodologically questionable and uncorroborated data, rhetoric, and focusing events, government policy makers framed the debate by shifting the blame for wildfires from previous Forest Service policies and management to environmental organizations, demonized as overzealous obstructionists to common sense wildfire policy.
NOW....ARIZONA IS BURNING
http://www.azcentral.com/...
For only the second time, the U.S. Forest Service decided Tuesday to completely close Coconino Forest on Friday. The forest's 1.8 million acres stretch from the Mogollon Rim north of Payson to west of Flagstaff and the San Francisco Peaks. The first time was four years ago during Rodeo-Chediski, the largest wildfire in state history.
Tens of thousands of state campers will encounter either gates shut and locked or temporary barricades on roads throughout the forest and will face fines ranging from $100 to $5,000 if they decide to cross anyway.
It also could prove to be costly in lost business to jeep tour companies in the Sedona area, the Arizona Snowbowl, which has scenic skyrides up the San Francisco Peaks, and an outdoor tour industry centered on hiking, fishing and mountain biking in the Sedona and Flagstaff areas.
I submit... that Kyl's scare tactics and bullying of environmentalists and opposing the common sense fire prevention techniques is what will make this fire and this fire season 10x worse than it had to be. Jon Kyl and every gosh darn Republican who pushed the "healthy forest" aka the LUMBER INDUSTRY bill is RESPONSIBLE
As you see from the first quote, Kyl was actually fighting AGAINST the major premise of every succesful fire fighting technique out there; which is that you burn away the brush and dead twigs that lie on the forest floor and are the REAL REASON these fires happen so fast and burn so hot.
This is the way NATURE does it. Flash fires that burn the forest floor quickly and cleanly and then the fire is done. But if allowed to accumulate, then you have these major fires and what Arizona was asking for, was for a pre-emptive attack on the fire season. Let us burn these things away during the winter, when the ground and trees are wet and do it in a controlled fashion.
INSTEAD, Kyl and his crony Republicans said " that doesn't work, we need to allow the lumber industry to cut through the red tape and cull the forest more".
So basically defied common sense, facts and science and went with a bill that would line the lumber industry's pockets ( which is fine, its a major industry in Arizona) but at the expense of people's homes and lives by making fire seasons much more worse by not addressing the real problems we are having.
Its just so INSANE>... thoughts?