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It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way
Sponsored by CrisDental Eugene
Many of us are awakening to smoke filled skies, irritated eyes, scratchy throats all because of mismanagement of our public lands.
I spent the last five days in Southern Oregon looking at the health of our forests.
We maintain our cars, we maintain our health and we take care of our yards. Why in gods name have we thrown in the towel when it comes to the health of our public forests?
Oregon and Montana are on fire right now.
A big part of the problem is we allow courts, lawyers, judges and anti-timber groups the job of managing our forests, not the experts like foresters.
The BLM has a plan to mitigate the risk of fire but part of that plan is thinning. When you say thinning to anti-timber groups, they recoil.
I saw with my own eyes thousands of acres of forest with fuels (downed trees and brush) just begging Mother Nature to strike with lightening.
That’s what happens when you don’t maintain the health of a forest.
There are those who say let mother nature do it naturally. What they fail to understand is man, yeh you and me, have been maintaining the forests for hundreds of years. These forests are far too complicated of an ecosystem to suddenly go with a hands off mentality. You can see where that’s getting us right now.
Public lands belong to you and me. We should have a say in how they are managed. But instead we leave it up to anti-timber groups and judges to decide.
It has to stop.
I find it ironic the anti-timber groups act so concerned about carbon and the climate but create a mess where each Summer they don’t seem to care if we burn our forests and grasslands dumping tons and tons of carbon into the air.
Consistency is important and we are lacking in that area greatly.
We need a new plan. Actually we just need to follow the science and listen to the experts.
Perhaps it’s time to find out who these groups really are and determine why the courts and the experts allow them to determine how our forests are managed.
We’ll be sharing much more in the coming months in our series two of the Truth About Timber.
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