Are environmental policies affecting wildfires? Yes
Are environmental policies affecting wildfires? Yes
21 September 2012
published by www.denverpost.com
USA –– If President Obama was serious about saving and creating jobs, he would have done something to save the jobs at Sacramento-based Aero Union. He didn’t lift a finger. In fact, he pulled the trigger, killing the air tanker firm and making Colorado’s Waldo Canyon fire worse in the process.
Over 18,000 acres of forest were destroyed; 350 homes were raised; septuagenarians William and Barbara Everett were killed; and area streams were polluted by fire-related ash, debris and soil run-off. Last year, the U.S. Forest Service abruptly canceled its contract for six of Aero Union’s air tankers. This left the Forest Service short of tankers just as last year’s fire season was getting under way. Only a few weeks later, fires swept through Texas, burning 100,000 acres and leaving four dead.
The administration apparently learned nothing from the tragedy. In the intervening year, it did little to address its tanker shortage, and Colorado paid the price for it.
The administration says it canceled the contract due to aircraft safety concerns. That doesn’t explain why it dithered in replacing the aircraft. But something else may: President Obama’s allegiance to his green allies.
Environmentalists have long opposed the use of slurry, the fire retardant dropped from air tankers, due to its potential for polluting streams.
Following an accidental drop of slurry into Oregon’s Fall River in 2002 and a subsequent environmentalist lawsuit, the Forest Service issued new rules barring drops of retardants within 300 feet of waterways except when fire threatens human life and property. Make no mistake: The rule inhibits firefighters’ ability to control blazes. Now the agency is implementing even more stringent regulations prohibiting drops within 600 feet of waterways. Little wonder it was in no hurry to line up replacement tankers.
Hampering fire control efforts is only one way federal policy driven by greens contributes to wildfires. One of the main culprits for the Colorado fires is believed to be pine beetles. The beetles carry a blue stain fungus that pulls moisture from trees. In sufficient numbers, these insects can cause whole forests to die of dehydration, creating a tinderbox.
What forests are most susceptible to beetle infestations? According to the Forest Service, the ones with large-diameter trees and dense stands.” Environmentalists have blocked logging operations that could thin these stands at every turn.
In 2003, the General Accounting Office estimated that 190 million acres of federal land were at high risk of wildfire due to “excess fuels buildup in forests.” Environmentalists claim that our federal fire suppression efforts are responsible for much of the fuel buildup and they aren’t entirely wrong.
Thanks partly to effective suppression methods, the average number of acres burned annually dropped from 38 million acres in the 1930s to about 3 million acres in the 1980s. By the 1990s, wildfires started to increase again and in the last decade claimed an average of 6.9 million acres annually.
The answer to this problem isn’t to stop suppressing fires, as some environmentalists suggest. Even if we were willing to risk lives and property by taking the “let it burn” approach, the fuel load today is so great that this would produce catastrophic fires, fires so intense that they would cook the soil and destroy whole ecosystems.
The answer is to reduce the fuel load through thinning of trees followed by forest management using prescribed burns, logging and other measures that could restore forests to their historic states. This wouldn’t just save and create jobs, as President Obama says he wants to do. It would also save and create healthy forests.
David A. Ridenour is president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank.
