“These are the times that try men's souls.” | Mace,
The problem is the environmentalists have effectively tied everything up in court. It's a money game with them, they learned how to milk the system by suing the federal government for any and everything they try to do in land management. It all starts with the EAJA act. Equal Access to Justice Act is a law that was put in place to help the little guy not get run over by the federal government, however the enviro's have used to sue BLM and FS for every little thing they try to do for land management. Government loses in court more than 50% of the time because they fail on not following their procedure in paperwork or land practices. Then when the government's attorneys come out of the DOJ(third string attorneys), well its a game set up for failure.
There has been no accountability of these EAJA funds paid out over the years to enviros, government could not account for all this money because there wasn't anything set up in their system to track this money paid out. If a BLM office lost in litigation to say Western Watersheds, they got paid and that money came out of that areas funds but nobody knew how much they were sucking from the Fed's. Plus it didn't help that the Judge in the 9th circuit supreme court is in bed with them.
These environmental groups are worse than mafia thugs, because they have learned to work the system to garner money out of Fed's on each and everything they try to do in land management. Then they have learned to go after big business as well. When the Ruby Pipeline came though the west a few years back they waited until just before the first shovel of dirt was going to me moved and they threated them with going to court and tying it up. They got 25 million to not litigate Ruby, all on the threat of the Sage Grouse. Very little is any of the pipeline had any Sage Grouse or habitat on it, but it sure got them the money they wanted to help further fund their coffers to keep going after frivolous lawsuits.
So throw out names of species like Sage Grouse, Spotted Owl, Slick Spot pepper grass, Pigmy Rabbit, Spotted Bat, Silky pocket mouse, Milkweed, etc. Real easy to get a lawsuit going in any direction or county or state. It brings federal government to their knees and ties them up doing NEPA documents until those people are ready to retire from their jobs.
So then the problem in fire plans is, fire is big business! Federal government is set up to fight fire, they have quite a cache of equipment and personal set up in fire teams. So there is a reason they want some fires to run and get big. It justifies their existence and budget. Used to be when I was a kid you had fire crews located in areas prone to fire, quick response to fires. They could knock them out in quick order and not let them get big. Also land managers actively grazed and harvested timber, cut fire breaks, planted grasses that helped control fire, or made it easier to fight. Most all land use plans called for fire to be used in rehab of lands, we used fire teams to run these controlled burns to reduce fuel loads. However that all stopped because government didn't want to get sued by enviro's. Lot easier to just let things burn all the time and increase fire budgets and spend more money.
But in the last 30-35 years BLM and FS pulled those fire teams out of areas located them areas they had to travel further to a fire. I used to have a government fire camp 3/4 of mile from our ranch housed BLM and FS pumpers and crews for summer seasonal fire fighters. They could be to a fire in less than 10-15 minutes if smoke was seen in valley or reported to them. However government pulled them out 25 years ago moved them 30 miles away. Now to get a government fire truck on site it's more than 2 hours.
It hard for people to grasp the concept of public lands in the west. The federal government owns 60-70% of the lands in western states, so lands are checker boarded with private and state lands as well. It makes it tough to mange lands, someone is always trying to trump someone on who has the power to mange these lands. So when fire starts BLM or FS will roll into the fire and kick private and county fire crews off and take over so they get paid and justify their budgets.
So much of this land needs a match throwed to it for controlled burns, but nobody wants to go to jail and loose your ranch over doing a controlled burn on 500-1000 acres. Just look what happened to the Hammonds in Oregon.
However their has been some money and policy come down from the Trump administration office that they are throwing some money at road maintaince, repairing fuel fire breaks. They just started in our area with some, I hope they can continue to do more in the way of water systems to distribute cattle to areas never grazed to help in fire mitigation. There is a lot of land that could be opened up for grazing and let new young operators into federal grazing permits if they would let it happen.
30-40 years ago we didn't have these big fires because of management plans. I grew up in California and Oregon as a kid. My father was BLM so I saw all the great work they did along with Cal Fire. It's sad to see what as happened.
As for global warming and melting of polar snow & ice packs, well where the heck does all this ash go from these big fires? It floats up lands on artic ice packs and helps melt things faster. Was a very good video documentary on National Geographic few years back they study done on this soot landing and melting ice pack. Control fires with grazing, logging, overall land use with recreation as well, you can solve a lot of these problems.
Can't have Washington D.C. driving and making land use plans out west. Most all of those people haven't been further than their local Starbucks for a cup of lava mocha latté. Pretty tough to write policy when all you know is pavement and big city lights and ride in Uber taxi's. |
Fire deniers
