Category: Forest Policy

The Government Can’t Even Put Out a Fire

ConservativeBlog.org /
There's a good bit of idiocy in this piece, which tries to tie forest fires to global warming. Environmentalists have a lot of gall. They oppose forest thinning and sensible management programs to reduce the chance of monster forest fires ...

Signs of New Growth in the Forest Fire Debate? by Dana Joel Gattuso

"If we had done all the thinning we wanted to over the years, we could have kept this fire from exploding, and we could have saved the towns it burned through." - Kate Klein, Forest Ranger, Smithsonian, August 2003 Catastrophic ...

Senate Continues to Bicker Over Forest Health Amendment, by Gretchen Randall

BACKGROUND: Democrats and Republicans in the Senate continue to disagree on details of an amendment to the Department of Interior appropriations bill that would allow thinning of forests in insect-infested trees and in areas near homes and communities. The main ...

Congress Considers Expanding Daschle’s South Dakota Forest Provisions to Nation, by Gretchen Randall

BACKGROUND: The U.S. House Resources Committee will hold a hearing Thursday, September 5, 2002 to consider several bills that would permit thinning of forests nationwide without interruption from environmental lawsuits. One bill, The National Forest Fire Prevention Act (H.R. 5214), ...

Wildfires Should Motivate a New Century of Forest Restoration, by Thomas M. Bonnicksen, Ph.D.

National Policy Analysis #434 /
"The most reprehensible waste is that of destruction, as in forest fires," President Theodore Roosevelt said nearly a century ago. His comment is as true today as it was then. Teddy Roosevelt founded the "forest conservation" movement to restore America's ...

President Bush Offers Plan To Protect Homes and the Environment From More Catastrophic Wild Fires; Environmental Extremists Counter With Plans to Continue the Disasters

Ten Second Response /
BACKGROUND: President Bush, on Thursday, August 22, 2002, issued his initiative to prevent catastrophic wildfires by returning to the sound forest management practices the environmental movement has successfully eliminated. Stung by criticism that the policies set forth by the Sierra ...

Environmental Groups Use Smokescreen to Dodge Responsibility for Wildfires, by Tom Randall

Ten Second Response /
BACKGROUND: As President Bush travels to Oregon for a major address on wildfires to be delivered on this date, the Wilderness Society and other environmental groups are distorting the truth to escape responsibility for policies that have exacerbated the wildfires ...

Tree-Huggers or Fire-Huggers?: The Environmental Movement’s Confused Forest Policy, by Thomas M. Bonnicksen, Ph.D.

The drumbeat for prescribed fire has never been louder. The Sierra Club and other environmentalists say this is the way to solve the wildfire crisis: fire is natural and therefore good for forests. Yet, the Sierra Club has a "zero ...

Daschle’s Election Year Ploy May Open Door for Return of Sound Forest Management Policies, by Tom Randall

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) and environmental groups such as the Sierra Club may accidentally have opened the door for the return to sound forest management in the United States, and the eventual return to policies preventing catastrophic ...

Daschle Admits Logging Projects Can Help Prevent Forest Fires, by Christopher Burger

Ten Second Response /
BACKGROUND: The Sierra Club is vehemently against logging in our national forests, but has declined to condemn Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) for supporting logging projects in the Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota. The most powerful Democrat in Congress ...

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