Posted: 10/27/2003
Senate Fiddles While California Burns
NCPA’s Burnett Says People’s Lives Should be Put Before Radical Environmentalists Interests
DALLAS, TX (October 27, 2003) – While the U.S. Senate continues to delay a vote on a proposal to prevent or at least lessen the toll of wildfires, catastrophic fires near San Diego have destroyed more than 800 homes and taken 13 lives. According to National Center for Policy Analysis Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett, “Some Senators are putting the support of radical environmentalists ahead of the health of forests and countless lives.”
The Healthy Forest initiative has stalled in the Senate due to claims by some groups from the environmental left that a few old growth trees may be logged in the process of logging overgrown, diseased and burnt-out areas. Yet according to the U.S. Forest Service, more than 190 million acres of public land is at risk of catastrophic fires. Fully 60 percent of national forest land is unhealthy and faces an abnormal fire hazard.
“Too many trees and too much brush combined with bureaucratic regulations and lawsuits filed by environmental extremists have hampered the ability of professional foresters to manage the forests properly for the multiple goals of wildlife habitat, recreation and timber production,’ said Burnett. For instance:
- Timber harvests have plunged more than 75 percent from 12 billion board feet per year to less than 4 billion board feet per year.
- Road building has declined from 2,000 miles per year in the 1980s to less than 500 miles in the late 1990s.
- As a result, historically large ponderosa pines which grew in strands of 20-55 trees per acre now grow (and burn) in densities of 300-900 trees per acre.
- This has resulted in an increase in wildfires, from 25 per year in 1984 to more than 80 a year in recent years.
“The San Diego fire, where there is an urban/forest interface, is a perfect example of why the we need a more sensible forest policy,” said Burnett. “We have no shortage of old growth timber and a few trees seem to be a small price to pay to prevent the loss of life and property caused by catastrophic wildfires. Sound forest management should not be held hostage to the ideology of a green religion which believes that nature untouched by human hands is more important than human lives.”
To speak with Dr. Burnett, contact the NCPA’s E-Team at 800-859-1154. Fore more information on this and other energy and environment topics, visit the E-Team website.