[thechat] roll yr own blackout
Judah McAuley
judah at alphashop.com
Mon May 21 15:27:10 CDT 2001
At 03:05 PM 5/21/01 -0500, Ben wrote:
<snip>
>Or allowing the preservation of national forests so that wildfires spread
>faster?
<snip>
Ok, I was planning on staying out of this thread because I'm too busy today
to troll, but I have to say something on this point. The Timber industry
has done a fantastic job of convince the public and Congress that logging
is "good for forest health" and that not logging has caused increases in
insect predation. Well, that is a load of crap. Logging stresses forests
(I wonder why?) and logging equipment acts as vectors for invading pests
and diseases. But the biggest cause of declining forest health is fire
suppression. Many of our forests have a natural fire pattern that sees a
low-intensity burn every 30 or so years. It destroys the small and
weakened trees and leaves the big healthy ones that then regenerate the
forest in the newly cleared land. If we keep fire from the area for 60
years (due to fire suppression), then a great deal of dead material builds
up on the ground, trees become crowded and stressed, and disease and pests
start attacking. Now a small fire comes through and becomes a big fire
because we've been screwing around with the way forests have evolved to
work. Then the timber companies point at the fires and use it as an excuse
to log different forests that have 150 year fire cycle and aren't at risk
of catastrophic fires yet.
The Forest Service is *finally* starting to try and manage forests with
fire in mind as a *good* thing and they are constantly getting crap for
it. Yet it's the sanest thing they've done in 50 years.
Look at the regrowth of Yellowstone after the floods and St. Helens after
the explosion. Complete disaster was the best thing that could have
happened to them.
Now if only we had the political balls to torch stressed areas, reset the
clock to zero, and then leave them the hell alone, we might get some more
genuine wilderness back.
Judah
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