It bewilders us how anyone can look at the devastation caused by wildfires in Oregon the last couple years and not support a plan to reduce fuels that support such tragedies.
We ventured past the remains of the B and B fire twice last week enroute to and home from our annual elk camping trip to Ukiah. (Note the term elk camping–not hunting.)
It’s a pitiful sight.
We understand the reasons that understory fires are good for the forest but no one can make us believe that fire of the magnitude of the B and B or last summer’s Biscuit Fire in southern Oregon can be good for any living thing.
And yet, radical preservationist groups continue to fight President Bush’s healthy forest initiative or even the compromise plan co-sponsored by Sen. Ron Wyden.
Every day the charred remains of the Biscuit fire lay on the ground is another day of waste. One study says it would make economic and forest health sense to log as much of the remains as possible. Another says it wouldn’t be feasible.
Perhaps the reason it wouldn’t be feasible is that the government has developed so many layers of bureaucracy to eliminate selling a timber sale, even a salvage sale, that it strips profit from the picture.
No one is calling for a wholesaling of the forest but it’s ridiculous to not try to salvage as much of the viable wood fiber as possible and then utilize modern silviculture techniques to mitigate any long term damage caused by the fires.
We have the know how, we have the people to get the job done, let’s push political rhetoric aside and get the job done to the benefit of the forest and timber communities that depend on them.
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Economic recovery…A month or so ago, while listening to a news cast on the radio, the announcer said that the Dow Jones Industrial Average had “plummeted” 20 points.
My jaw about hit the steering wheel of my pickup.
The Dow “plummeted” 20 points.
I wouldn’t call a 20 point drop plummeting, especially since it has gained more than 2,500 points in recent months and at times, flirts with the 10,000 mark.
Things need to be kept in perspective, so it was nice to see a newspaper article this week that noted nationwide the economy is on a “sprint”.
From July through September, the gross domestic product grew 7.2 percent more than twice the previous three months’ rate.
It means consumer confidence is coming back and the public is spending money on things such as clothing and cars.
Media doom and gloom has helped hold down the economy in the last two years, although it definitely needed a correction with money hooked to “dot com” hoaxes and corporate managers gone wild with greed.
Perhaps, the country has learned a lesson that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Corporate crimes should also alert the members of corporate boards that they aren’t in place to be figure heads or to enjoy the perks of celebrity, they have a job to do and that’s to oversee company management and direction.
They owe it to stockholders both legally and morally.
We’re still waiting for more corporate thieves to spend some time in the gray bar hotel. They ruined thousands of lives just as if they had pointed a gun at someone and robbed them of their life savings at close range.
That may be the ultimate deterrant to what transpired in the 1990s.