Maggie's Farm

Hey guys--can't get my comment accepted. Something about span. Can you fix this please ?

Here in MT, we are fortunate to have recently elected a Republican governor who understands that "letting" miles of timber burn is just one more hippie-era solution to a complex problem.

What is stomach wrenching to me is the huge number of educated liberals who have repeated Bill Clinton's idealized plan--"let it burn" (baby) for nearly 30 years! It is the first best example of the power of the Democratic Party's successful indoctrination skills. Convincing so many government employees that burning timber down was better for the forest than selectively managing it is as classic an example of the power of one man's words as was Jim Jones in Jonestown!
Schools of forestry all over the world have studied and refined forestry management skills in the past 30 years. Perhaps it is true that those years of forced loss have taught the big timber companies the evils of clear cutting--I believe that to be true, but what I don't understand is why it has taken so long to re-educate those lifelong government employees! Selecting an area to harvest timber, and then burning that area once it has been cut has the same effect--the same outcome as if a wildfire had been allowed to come through and ravage extra thousands and thousands of areas of timber. Good forest management preserves more standing timber and allows the sale of some responsibly harvested timber. Some liberal scientists have tried to claim that the temperature of burning out logged areas does not reach the same temperature as a wildfire--that may be true. However, the negative impact is so minimal it is laughable.

Continued from above comment:
I remember in the years before Clinton it was impossible to force timber companies and the Forest Service to stop "clear cutting"! I remember that very well, and at the time of Bill Clinton's mandate, I was grateful for an effort to stop clear-cutting. But, over the years of living close to timber ranges and wildfires, I came to understand that we were losing a lot more timber than was necessary, and burning areas that have already been selectively logged has the same effect of cleaning up the area as a heat of a wildfire would have.

Of course, Canada cannot selectively harvest its many thousands of miles of timber, but it can focus on more carefully managing those areas most vulnerable to attack from people--intentional or not.

The real problem with the hippie generation was their arrogance that refused to give slow, careful, thoughtful, in-depth consideration of a problem. They did then and have since taught their children and grandchildren to make social choices in the same mode and with the same level of in-depth consideration as if they were shopping at Nordstrom's: "Oooh here's a new one--let's try this idea".