Dedicating the Wallow Fire to the Bunnyhuggers

[RickVincent]

I dedicate this fire to the bunnyhuggers [-X and anti-logging lobbies :yuck: that have pressured politicians :guilty: into allowing the national forests to fuel up with overgrowth over the last 20 to 30 years. How do you think those burrowing owls and other critters you thought you were protecting are doing in their new crispy habitat?

[PaleoRob]

I'm sure it was CBD (Center for Biological Diversity).

[Jeffshadows]

I'm sure it was CBD (Center for Biological Diversity).

Isn't that ironic. I'm sure Jim can correct me on the facts, here; but, isn't one of the biggest threats to biodiversity in a forest realized when the small, normal fires are NOT allowed to burn??

[JimmyLyding]

Size of Arizona's fires blamed on environmentalists http://azstarnet.com/news/science/envir ... 8b2e5.html

I'd like to see copies of these so-called lawsuits and who filed them.

Liberal politicians weren't the ones who gutted the Forest Service's funding.

[Jeffshadows]

Size of Arizona's fires blamed on environmentalists http://azstarnet.com/news/science/envir ... 8b2e5.html

I'd like to see copies of these so-called lawsuits and who filed them.

Liberal politicians weren't the ones who gutted the Forest Service's funding.

I'm not so much worried about funding the Forest Service as I am about converting more of the property they control over to NPS. FS is interested in "selling" the resources, NPS is just there to protect them. If I could cook up some reason to claim that the entire Coronado NF needed to be a national park, I'd propose it tomorrow!! ;)

[azbackpackr]

Why do you like National Parks so much? All the little metal signs everywhere and restrooms and overlooks and No Parking signs and entrance fees and "Camp only in campgrounds" and "Hike only on trails" and all that great stuff?

[nonot]

The National Forest Service was founded generally for the purposes of getting money for the use of national land. The most obvious consumers are the timber industry, but they also cater to the mining industry. Only occasionally, if they think they can get money, will they involve the hiking industry. This generally means TH fees and useless parking areas with a picnic table. The forest service is not the hiker's best friend.

National Parks have the restrictions you speak of near the visitors centers. Just get to the less visited areas of the park and you can do what you want. It does suck that National Parks have such high entrance fees.

[Jeffshadows]

Nonot summed it up well! NPS has armed LEOs running around actually enforcing the park's laws and regulations, too; unlike the FS who tend to rely upon agreements with local law enforcement or just ignore enforcement all together...

[chumley]

The ASNF website has an interesting and well-illustrated PDF on how forest thinning projects helped protect homes in Alpine and Greer. (Perhaps it's intended to be a "sales brochure" for more funding?) Either way I found it to be interesting, and I'd be happy to hear what Jim thinks...

[Jim]

I agree. It looked like a propaganda tool to convince people the treatments were worth it. Strictly from the standpoint of the USFS protecting private property built on private land inholdings, the treatments, which ran roughly $700/ acre to complete in the Flagstaff area in 2006, were a success. That figure used rates that were relying on some sales to a mill in Phoenix owned by Southwest Forest Products, so being farther away, these may have been far costlier. I'm sure the insurance companies feel these treatments were a success. Subsidized insurance protection, if you will. We do that a lot, though.

Looking at the photos, it is obviously crown scorch in the thinned areas was high, and therefore with the dry winter there is a very high probability of most trees being killed out right. You have to ask if a near to total clear-cut fire mitigation technique would have been just as effective and cheaper. Around towns, these treatments had only one goal, as far as I am concerned, and that was and is defensible space. Given that, a very low density boundary that, over the span of a mile, blended back in to a more pre-settlement forest density, may have been more cost effective and intelligent. The "locals" would undoubtedly not have felt the same. That said, they probably are happy things worked out as they did, given the alternative. I take issue with the FS being in the business of private fire protection, though a large part of wildland suppression is just that. I would have rathered they had managed larger areas of pine more effectively and had more fires like the Kaibab did and does. I don't know what 99% of the Wallow looked like the day before it burned, but I have a feeling is was not as well managed as even some of the Coconino adjacent stand on the Kaibab.

[Jim]

Worth skimming through again.