[thechat] roll yr own blackout

[Judah McAuley]

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