From The Daily Caller
Trump Takes Steps To Prevent Catastrophic Forest Fires, Including More Logging
7:22 AM 12/24/2018 | Energy
Michael Bastasch | Energy Editor
- President Trump issued an executive order allowing agencies to do more to prevent massive wildfires.
- The order came one day after Trump signed GOP-backed wildfire legislation.
- Wildfires have burned more than 8.5 million acres this year.
President Donald Trump moved forward with policies aimed at preventing catastrophic wildfires while the media breathlessly covered the government funding battle.
Trump issued an executive order Friday to allow for active management of forest and rangelands, including thinning and removing debris from millions of acres of federal lands.
The order also calls on federal officials to streamline regulations and permitting processes to allow the harvest of at least 3.8 billion board feet from U.S. Forest Service lands and 600 million board feet from Bureau of Land Management lands.
That represents a massive increase in timber sales from federal lands. For example, loggers harvested 2.9 billion board feet from Forest Service lands in 2017, according to federal figures. But even Trump’s increased allowance for loggers is still about one-quarter of what was harvested in 1973.
Trump also asked federal officials to do more to maintain roads into hard-to-reach areas where fires can spread. (RELATED: The Government Shut Down, But Trump Will Keep National Parks Open)
Western Republicans welcomed Trump’s order. GOP lawmakers said that a change in policies was sorely needed after the devastating 2018 wildfire season, which saw more than 8.5 million acres burned.
“While litigation activists thwarted forest management reforms, the Senate also failed to pass legislation to help minimize forest fires,” Utah GOP Rep. Rob Bishop, chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, said in a statement.
“As a result, parts of the West were left in ashes. We cannot ignore these systemic issues any longer,” Bishop said.
Trump issued the order one day after signing the $867 million farm bill that included provisions allowing foresters to more quickly remove dead and diseased trees that increased fire risks.
Environmentalists railed against Trump’s executive order, characterizing it as a “gift” to the logging industry that would do little to prevent wildfires.
“It won’t work, and we know that,” Denise Boggs with the group Conservation Congress told The Sacramento Bee. “All the fire ecologists are saying the same thing: You can’t log your way out of this situation.”
“Logging in the back country is just a gift to the timber industry,” said Boggs, adding the order didn’t mention global warming or thinning around communities in wildfire-prone areas.
Democrats and environmentalists tend to blame global warming for the increasingly massive western wildfires. Republicans, however, argue more active management of forests through thinning, clearing of dead and dying trees and logging is needed to prevent wildfires from getting out of control.
“This executive order will save lives and communities throughout the West!” the Congressional Western Caucus tweeted Friday.
Thank you @realDonaldTrump for ensuring that necessary fuel load reduction and forest management policies are implemented that will mitigate the frequency and intensity of wildfires. This executive order will save lives and communities throughout the West! https://t.co/QcXz29FkqR
— Western Caucus (@westerncaucus) December 21, 2018
Wildfire management, usually not a national issue, became a hot topic against after the Camp Fire became the deadliest in California’s history, killing 88 people and destroying thousands of buildings.
Outgoing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke blamed environmentalists for the increasingly devastating fires in the western U.S. — environmentalists often sue to keep federal officials from removing trees or conducting prescribed burns.
“However, this issue will only be fixed through congressional action,” Bishop said.
“The House and Senate must work to implement statutes that protect our environment and the many communities across the country who live every day with the threat of wildfire,” Bishop said.
Bishop is reportedly one of several candidates being considered to replace Zinke. Zinke will resign by the end of the year.
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In Australia the Aborigines burnt the Bush regularly as an environment control, and they were a Stone Age race. Even they knew you can’t burn it twice.
For much of our forest land, it comes down to a simple choice: Let it be logged, or let it all burn.
As usual the greenies pick the wrong course of action and protest solutions that benefit both the forest and the private sector.
+10!
You also need to understand the risks living next to bushland and be prepared and on high fire risk days you might simply have to find safer alternative accommodation for a few days-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/what-a-century-of-bushfire-data-teaches-us-about-how-to-save-lives-this-summer/ar-BBRsK2u
There is no global warming signal there but a cluster of fatalities as people with poor understanding of the fire risk get complacent wanting to live among the trees. Nevertheless controlled burning to reduce fuel load is a useful adjunct to prevent catastrophic bushfires but there’s been similar tensions with Greens and treechangers with that even though many Australian natives need fire to germinate their seeds.
Now get ready for the “bait and switch”. Environmentalists will reluctantly concede that fewer trees and controlled burns will reduce wildfires. However they will argue that controlled burns should only be done with a consideration of “appropriate safeguards”.
Firstly of course, you must consider if the area has any “vulnerable species”, so an ecological botanist and biologist should be there to over see the fire. Then you should consider if any native American sacred sites or artefacts may be in danger and so representatives of the appropriate department should be on hand. And so on and so on.
This means that for purely logical and non emotional reasons you will need to co-ordinate a dozen “experts” from 6 or 7 departments to ALL be available for several days before the burn can proceed. As this is borderline impossible, the burns do not happen and another wildfire ensues. The environmentalists then hold their hands up and say “But we support controlled burns. with the proper safeguards of course. So it’s not our fault”.
That is the Australian lesson. Do not let them do the same thing to America.
Apparently the man is everywhere influencing everybody which is quite a feat for those who think he’s a bit of a joke-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/expert-says-trump-influenced-japanese-commercial-whale-hunt/ar-BBRtCbG
Makes you wonder who the joke’s really on.
President Trump stated November 19th
In just over a month he delivered policies that can alleviate the worst consequences of future wild fires, whatever the cause.
The who state that increasing severity of wild fires is down to climate change cannot deliver even in the unlikely the event of them being right. That is because, after over two decades of trying, they do not have the power to control global emissions. There are lessens for policy-makers in what can be controlled and what cannot. Despite not being Trump’s greatest fan, the President has shown far greater wisdom than the liberal climate alarmists.
https://manicbeancounter.com/2018/12/27/camp-fire-california-lessons-in-the-limits-harms-of-political-action/
Kevin,
But he slashed forestry funding. It’s easy to say, “Follow good forest management policies” to get people’s support and praise, but it’s meaningless is you don’t fund the policies you want in place. Almost half a billion cut from this year’s budget to the next.
You’re a beancounter…take a look at the kinds of things he cut.
https://www.fs.fed.us/sites/default/files/usfs-fy19-budget-justification.pdf
No, he slashed waste in Forestry Service and has directed that accounting for spending be tightened, something he is pushing across the board on all USG agencies. No more politically driven crap, Forestry Service has been ordered to do their actual job, overseeing use of and maintaining infrastructure within forested Federal Lands. That includes, but is not restricted to, mitigating wildfire risk on Federal lands(Parks, Reserves etc etc). They get less money? They better spend what they get correctly. That is what you are against, accountability.
2hotel9,
Nice try, but you don’t know me, and you know very little about forestry, you are simply making rotten assumptions. I’m against ignorance, bias and propaganda.
“Forestry Service has been ordered to do their actual job, overseeing use of and maintaining infrastructure within forested Federal Lands.”
This is just one job. The funds for this job were proportionally cut more than anything else, with the idea that what was left ($94 million) would go to passenger roads. This doesn’t help logging, forest management, or fire fighting. It’s completely antithetical to the policies set forth in the EO. Foolish.
No. That is the job. Making vegan dips feel as if their lives have meaning is NOT the job. Forest Fire Mitigation is the job environwackadoddles like you stand in the way of being done. Proud of yourself?
2hotel9,
What’s your problem? Why do you make such idiotic comments about me? You think I’m standing in the way of forest fire mitigation? Why? How strange. Even the Nature Conservancy advocates prescriptive burning.
Logging is a good thing, a sustainable source of revenue. It has to be done wisely, though, or it ends up being more costly than it’s worth.
First you said infrastructure was the job of forestry, now it’s fire mitigation. You’ve got two down…maybe you can think of the others if you insult me enough. If that’s what helps you think, go to it. Whatever works. Or you could educate yourself, and read the budget I posted a link to, though even that doesn’t give a thorough picture.
You’re right that making vegan dips feel like their lives have meaning is not the job, I’ll give you that one. I’d argue that it’s not the job to make steak-eaters happy, either. Or even milk-drinkers, for that matter. Or bottle collectors, or sanitary workers, or hippos. But that all seems a little irrelevant.
The Forestry Service knows what works. You want to stop them from doing what works while you “study” the “issue”. And yes, maintenance of infrastructure on Forestry Service controlled lands is part of the job, it is also part of the “wildfire fighting” job they are directly tasked with. First thing involved in fighting a fire? Access. Can’t get there? Can’t do anything about it.. Mitigation, reducing what can create runaway wildfires. The green movement, in its various forms, has been putting in regulatory roadblocks, at municipal, county, state and Federal levels, for decades. Please take California, among several other states, where you can get dragged in front of a judge for the crime of clearing deadwood and brush on your own property. Districts are not allowed to cross line to help with a neighboring district because someone 1000 miles away is worried about their office budget. Please.
We know what works. Just do it. Spend the tax dollars where it actually helps people.
Despite having obstacles thrown in his path from all sides DJT continues to get things done that both sides of the political aisle have claimed for years they wanted to get done, and yet never did. THAT is precisely why establishment politicians hate him so much. The Criminal Justice Reform Bill is yet another example, this issue being a primary plank of the Democrat Party since the 1960s. And here DJT is the one that said do it and it got done. Makes one wonder, why didn’t Obama do it? And why did Clinton push through a bill that made the whole situation worse?
The Indian communities near where I live did control burns often to manage the forest for maximum large game production, which had the bonus of reducing forest floor fuels and avoiding or limiting catastrophic fires. Why would anyone believe anything that the radical enviro lobby has to say about forest management? They don’t give a shit about fires, nor are they any sort of experts on forest management. They simply don’t want logging, end of story, and they will tell any lie necessary to achieve that end.
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