It is sad that the rhetoric of protecting our forests & leaving them better than we found them is backed up with actions which will continue to harm them as well as our economy.

Rivers of Mud remove topsoil from once forested mountains after preventable Unnatural Wildlfires

After decades of following the Sierra Clubs hands off management programs all we have to show for it are matchstick forests & billions of dollars wasted fighting fires.

More than 1,700 wildfires have burned or are still burning our overgrown forests across the state of California. A total of 667,863 acres have been burned in roughly one month during part of June & July 2008, destroying 81 homes while threatening more than 13,000. The costs are estimated to be greater than $500 million for this one month in one state.

Thankfully the rains came to help extinguish these massive unnatural wildfires, but the godsend of rain caused massive flooding. The denuded topsoil of our precious forests wash in torrents down the mountains turning rivers into mud, killing most remaining wildlife & devastating the watershed.

If we had actively managed our forests by thinning we could have been promoting forest health & reducing the huge releases of so called “Greenhouse gases” in these unnatural wildfires, creating jobs, producing a renewable product, not to mention stopping the hemorrhaging of our tax dollars in fighting preventable fires. Sadly huge old growth trees & beautiful forested areas have been incinerated along with much of the wildlife, including the endangered & threatened species. They are unlikely to return in our lifetime or our children’s lifetime.

Where are the outraged “enviros” such as the Sequoia ForestKeepers & Sierra Club who could not allow the minimal erosion from 10 acre logging projects? They are silent because their lawsuits blocking much needed fuel reduction projects have caused the destruction of our watershed/forests/wildlife & homes.

Where is the political leadership demanding that our forest be actively managed? What we get are more platitudes about protection & legislation that really only promotes more destruction.

Perhaps the public will speak out & demand we actively manage our forests while we can still save them. Otherwise expect more of what we are getting now.

Chris Horgan
Executive Director
Stewards of the Sequoia

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