Just Ask Tom…

By Dan Owens, Chairman of the Board of the North Carolina Forestry Association.

By introducing his Healthy Forests, an Initiative for Wildfire Prevention and Stronger Communities, President George Bush wasn’t attempting to be politically correct, but then again, he wasn’t exactly re-inventing the wheel either. 

Just ask Senator Tom Daschle.   Daschle, a democrat from South Dakota, recently snuck a special provision for his state into a national defense-spending bill that authorized management activities to reduce wildfire threats to commence in the Black Hills without the threat of unnecessary delays resulting from lawsuits from anti-forestry groups.  The U.S. Forest Service estimates that some 190 million acres of public land are now at serious risk of catastrophic wildfires and Daschle’s move left the rest of Congress saying, “What’s good for Daschle should be good for my state too.”  This is the basis of President Bush’s initiative. 

It’s true that fire has always been one of nature’s ways of thinning the forest.  However, the distinction between the wildfires of colonial America and the catastrophic fires of today is comparable to the difference between a thunderstorm and a hurricane.  Today’s national forests have the fuel load and density to allow a fire to climb from tree to tree until it reaches the crowns of the tallest trees.  Once in the crown, the fire burns with amazing speed and intensity where even the largest trees will be consumed.  These fires can release the energy equivalent of an atomic bomb, sterilizing soils, damaging water quality and destroying wildlife habitat.  

President Bush’s initiative, which was adopted this spring by federal agencies and western governors in collaboration with county commissioners, state foresters and tribal officials, is a grassroots, common-sense approach that seeks to restore the health of our forests while reducing the fire risk in the West through active forest management in a timely manner.       

For those who have read this plan, it is clear that President Bush is not “turning over the keys” to our national forests to the forest products industry.  The anti-forestry groups working in conjunction with the previous administration successfully put countless hardworking, blue collar Americans out of business years ago by locking up these forestlands and those who are left standing have long since turned to private landowners for their main source of lumber.  Having auctioned off their old equipment in order to purchase machines designed for smaller trees, it is questionable if these surviving companies could even harvest and process “old growth” trees. The real question is whether or not there is even enough of a forest products industry left to fulfill the work necessary to make this initiative a reality.  Regardless, the goal will be to restore the health of the forests through active management, not to cherry-pick the biggest trees. 

Any forest landowner will tell you that active management is the key to maintaining healthy forests.  Just ask Tom.

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