Supreme Court Set for Ribbiting Property Rights Case
As the U.S. Supreme Court justices hand down the last of their high-profile decisions for the current term, property rights proponents are preparing for their fall term and a major case that could finally set boundaries on the currently unchecked power of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). National Center for ...
Time to Repeal the Antiquities Act of 1906, by R.J. Smith
With a stroke of his infamous pen, President Barack Obama celebrated the Centennial of the National Park Service (NPS) by using an antiquated federal law to designate 87,563 acres (137 square miles) of north central Maine forestland as the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. This designation turns formerly private ...
Obama’s Unilateral Maine Action Proves: Time to Repeal Antiquities Act of 1906
Antiquities Act Allows President to Designate Federal Lands Without Congressional or Local Approval Move Comes After White House Designates Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine Against Maine's Wishes Move Had Political Impacts, and Was Supported by Environmental Left Washington, D.C. - Two land rights experts with the National ...
This Absentee Landlord Neglects 600 Million Acres
How do you feel about an absentee landlord who accumulate acres and acres of productive land, then neglects it so it produces little and becomes so overgrown it’s a fire hazard to the neighbors? Not good, right? Well, that absentee landlord is you. As U.S. citizens, you now own over ...
Every Day is Arbor Day for Private Conservationists
From Casey Lartigue, Jr.: Do we want more trees or more moralizing about trees? Today, in Washington, D.C. and other parts of the country, Americans will plant a tree. Coming on the heels of the political brow-beating of earlier this week that has become synonymous with Earth Day, the Arbor ...
Environmental Groups, Lawsuits and Wildfires
Michelle Malkin has a good post up today on wildfires and environmental obstructionism. I recommend the whole thing. Michelle recommends our 2005 e-mail alert "Forest Reforms in the Crossfire" by Dana Joel Gattuso. Dana notes that certain high-litigious environmental organizations have made dangerous mega-wildfires more likely: On July 1, the ...
Congratulations to Ron Nehring
Congratulations to former National Center staff member Ron Nehring, who who has been appointed to the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Says a statement released by the governor's office: Ronald Nehring, 35, of El Cajon, has been appointed to the State Board of Forestry ...
Environmental Movement Has Lost Its Way
The National Center's Ryan Balis has suggested I recommended this Miami Herald op-ed by Patrick Moore to blog readers. Moore is a founder of the environmental group Greenpeace. In the op-ed, Moore explains why he left Greenpeace ("By the mid-1980s, the environmental movement had abandoned science and logic in favor ...
Only WE Can Prevent Forest Fires
Writing in the Washington Times June 1, Professor Tom Bonnicksen explains how we can do as Smokey Bear advised: We have only two basic choices for dealing with our wildfire crisis. First, we can acknowledge we need, live in and use our forests every day, and accept our responsibility to ...
Regulations keep Forest Fire Victims from Rebuilding
One of my stronger memories from 2003 is listening to talk show host Roger Hedgecock, who is based in San Diego, describe the enormity of the forest fires that took place in California last November. As luck would have it, Hedgecock guest-hosted the Rush Limbaugh program at the time, so ...
The Government Can’t Even Put Out a Fire
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. Then, when thousands of people those their homes and many ...
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 wildfires tragically have become as much a part of summer, ...
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 disagreements are over the number of acres to be exempt ...
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), introduced by Rep. Dennis Rehberg (R-MT) uses much of the ...
Wildfires Should Motivate a New Century of Forest Restoration, by Thomas M. Bonnicksen, Ph.D.
"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 forests and stop wasteful fires. His solution: Protect forests by ...
President Bush Offers Plan To Protect Homes and the Environment From More Catastrophic Wild Fires; Environmental Extremists Counter With Plans to Continue the Disasters
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 Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and a host of others ...
Environmental Groups Use Smokescreen to Dodge Responsibility for Wildfires, by Tom Randall
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. "Severe drought has caused an above average number of fires," ...
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 cut" policy. It wants to protect trees from loggers but ...
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 wildfires. With record-setting monster wildfires raging throughout the west and ...
Daschle Admits Logging Projects Can Help Prevent Forest Fires, by Christopher Burger
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 recently introduced a proposal that would prevent lawsuits and appeals ...
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