WRONG-HEADEDNESS, NOT HEAD
CASES, KILLS FORESTS
William Perry Pendley
President and Chief Legal Officer Mountain
States Legal Foundation
When the Hayman Fire, the largest wildfire in Colorado
history, first began, the smoke billowed over my office in
southwestern Denver. Outside, I could smell the fumes from
flames fifty miles away. Worst yet, I could see the ash in
the air! The night before, as my wife and I stood on our
deck in the foothills west of Denver, we had smelled smoke
and feared that a fire was nearby. It wasn't; what we
smelled were the beginnings of the Coal Seam Fire some 110
miles west in Glenwood Springs. A few days later, when I
called a sheep rancher in Bayfield, I was told he had gone
to protect his flock; the Missionary Ridge Fire was out of
control near his grazing allotment. Then, one of my
attorneys was summoned home; the Hayman Fire was wildly out
of control, moving much too fast toward Denver's
southwestern suburbs.
My attorney was not the only one trying to figure out what
he should load into his car if the reverse 911 system rang
his phone and he heard the recorded message every westerner
fears: "GET OUT!" Today the most frequent topic of
conversation in the rural west is what to take and what to
leave behind if and when the fires come. Storage facilities
anywhere near timber country are quickly filling up as home
owners realize that all that they value will not fit in
their cars, fully loaded with gas and backed into their
garages or up their driveways.
Westerners are doing something else. The hills are alive
with the sounds of chain saws as landowners cut away low
lying branches and fell dead trees and the roar of mowers as
owners cut bone dry native grasses. Those with trucks are
loading them with raked up pine cones, needles, and the
other slash that usually dots the landscape and hauling them
off to county collection points. Those without trucks or
friends from whom to borrow them are bagging up the debris
and stacking the porcupine-looking bundles at their front
gates.
There is some great irony in what these homeowners are
doing. Because, for years and years, their neighbors have
refused to do what everyone knows must be done to limit the
destructive force of wildfires. No, it is not their human
neighbors who have failed to perform this essential task; it
is their federal government neighbors, that is land
management agencies like the National Park Service, the U.S.
Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management.
But the federal agencies have had help. As one Forest
Service official said amidst the national disaster that is
Arizona's wildfires, "It only takes one person with a stamp
to throw a wrench into the works [of thinning the forest]."
So, armed with hundreds of millions of dollars in annual
donations, environmental groups have bought stamps and
lawyers to file appeals and lawsuits to halt the pursuit of
forest health on our nation's public lands. Remarkably, the
environmental groups that have prevented the type of prudent
forestry practices that would enhance, if not ensure, forest
health disclaim responsibility. As one environmental group
representative testified recently before Congress, "Hey man,
it's not us, it's the weather!"
There is nothing we can do about the head cases who light
fires, like the sad soul who started the Hayman Fire, the
sicko who lit more than 15 fires along U.S. 285 south of
Denver, or the slack-jawed idiots who keep tossing
cigarettes or torching campfires despite warning signs every
half mile and acrid smoke billowing overhead. But we can do
something about the wrong-headedness that creates as
national policy a point of view that wildfires are "nature's
way" and the proper prescription for western forests. That
may sound dreamily sensible in a Starbucks in Washington,
D.C., but from where I sit amidst the burning forests of
Colorado, it is not just insane, it is inhumane.
If you would like to help support Mountain States Legal
Foundation, click below. MSLF's sole source of
support is the tax-deductible contributions it receives from
people like you.
https://www.ifr-ors.com/wpr.cfm?wp=14&A=768
<A href = "https://www.ifr-ors.com/wpr.cfm?wp=14&A=768"
>AOL Users Click Here</A>
