So Ray Ring wants us to stand back and let the
forests burn (HCN, 5/26/03: A losing battle)?
Get real,
dude.
Even if fires of the past were truly catastrophic,
huge, epic or whatever, and are therefore ecologically desirable
today (I disagree), the fact remains that there is a modern
civilization now in place in the United States, indeed, across most
of the world.
Modern civilization likes clear air, but at
the same time, reasonably priced resources, responsibly
produced.
Letting forests go up in Pompeiian blasts is
dirty, dangerous, expensive, and flat-out irresponsible. Given the
spectaculars of the past few years and seeing the end results (and
paying for them, too), there has to be a better way — logging
in mosaic patterns with afterburning.
Sell enough trees to
pay for the work; design it using science, not ideology; use best
practices, then burn afterwards to trigger the cycle — and
you’ll get a fire-ready forest in which fires burn, but only big
enough to achieve habitat improvement — not
annihilation.
Given the choice between (a) five
10,000-acre fires over five seasons, separated by defensible zones,
burning only enough timber that could then go to the mill each
year, and (b) a 50,000-acre nuclearization that leaves way too much
good timber to rot, dumps way too much crud in the air and water,
and zaps way too much habitat all at once … Well, to reasonable
people, there isn’t any choice.
Dave Skinner
Whitefish, Montana
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Ray Ring’s Wrong.
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