FORESTS: GREENIES NEVER LEARN

Fires are the major destroyer of forests these days so it actually looks like Greenies hate forests. Their attacks on fire prevention activities caused great destruction at Yellowstone. But preventing anybody making a profit out of forests is a higher priority for Greenies than the forests themselves

Environmentalists sued the federal government Thursday over plans to log in central California's Giant Sequoia National Monument, home to two-thirds of the world's largest trees. The Sierra Club and four other environmental groups called the U.S. Forest Service's decision to include widespread logging in its plan for managing the 327,769-acre monument a scientifically suspect strategy meant to satisfy timber interests under the guise of wildfire prevention. "This plan opens up huge areas to logging and specifically targets trees big enough to sell, undermining the whole purpose of the monument," said Carla Cloer of the Tule River Conservancy, one of the organizations challenging the federal plan. The lawsuit filed Thursday in San Francisco federal court seeks to block the plan and have it vacated.

Forest Service spokesman Matt Mathes said the agency's plan to allow "thinning" of some trees in Sequoia was motivated by fire prevention goals and does not permit commercial logging. Only trees with diameters of up to 30 inches can be cut under the rules. The giant sequoia commonly grows to 30 feet in diameter, Mathes noted. Timber companies will pay the government for the right to remove some of the larger trees that fall within the 30-inch limit, which will provide money for removing brush and smaller trees that could pose a fire danger, he said.

President Clinton created the monument in April 2003. Logging interests, recreational groups and Tulare County unsuccessfully sued to eliminate the designation, contending Clinton exceeded his authority when he acted to protect 38 ancient groves of the giant trees within the 1.1 million-acre Sequoia National Forest. The groves account for about 20,000 acres, or roughly 6 percent, of the monument's total acreage.

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CONTEXT: PAST FOREST FIRES

Opposition to forest floor clean up, any type of clear cuts, and the let burn policies of the Sierra Club and other radical environmentalist groups are destroying our National Forests. Environmentalist and bureaucratic policies have rendered federal agencies ineffective in managing our wildland (all land under federal agencies). National forests in the West are in deplorable condition, and the advocacy of letting natural fires burn, or in some cases to correct decades of fire-fuel buildup with prescribed burns, is destroying our forestlands. Examples of the catastrophic damage done to our National Parks and National Forests from advocating these policies are the Yellowstone National Park forest fires of 1988, the Mesa Verde forest fire of 2000, both of which were caused by lightning, and the prescribed burn that resulted in the Cerro Grande forest fire near Los Alamos, New Mexico in 2000. And now, there is the Colorado Hayman Fire and the Oregon Biscuit Fire of 2002 followed by the California Forest Fires of 2003 and 2004. As long as some environmental and conservation groups fight every change in forest management policy or cleanup efforts this pattern will continue...as an example, three environmental groups have filed lawsuits to prevent removal of burned trees from the Oregon Biscuit Fire area....

Until observing the effectiveness of a clear cut strip in stopping a forest fire, I would have agreed that clear cut forest areas are bad, and still do, if the clear cut is a whole mountainside. However, one-fourth to one-half mile wide clear-cut bands, are beneficial to the forest and to wildlife. These clear-cut bands are the single most effective means of stopping a forest fire. Within a year after being clear cut, these clear cut areas have newly planted trees, grasses, abundant flowers, and are full of game signs. For several years after a forest fire there is nothing but black ground. Proper forest management, which includes prescribed burns and areas of strip clear cuts, increases the habitat for all types of wildlife, whereas hot burning forest fires sterilizes the soil and nothing grows, or lives there, for many years.

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THE NEW SHRILLER GLOBAL WARMING SCARE

There has been a lot of press lately reporting a big ratcheting up of the Greenie climate scare. Quite contrary to what they have been saying for years, they are now suddenly saying that we are in for big temperature rises soon. Australian earth scientist Warwick Hughes looks in great detail at the justifications for the new scare -- in particular the claim that an 11 degree temperature rise is indicated by the latest models. "Models" are of course all speculation anyway but Warwick finds that even their own models don't support the 11 degree claim. The claim is in other words driven by a hunger for publicity and nothing else. If you doubt it, Warwick goes into all the details.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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