Sensible conservation was always the right approach, but we got enviro-extremism that locked up huge tracts of land to grow forests too weak and old to fight the pine beetles, provide the fuel for enormous fires, etc. Now we pay the price for unintended consequences.
Fires bolster political support for forest thinning
With Arizona’s worst fire season in history still roaring, oft-delayed plans to use a resurrected timber industry to thin millions of acres of badly overgrown Arizona forests have suddenly gained broad support.
In a flurry of developments last week, the Department Agriculture announced $3.5 million in new funding for the 4-Forests Restoration Initiative, the Forest Service released ground rules for contractors and assorted politicians promised their support.
Environmentalists, scientists, loggers and forest managers have worked for years to create The 4-Forests Restoration Initiative (4-FRI), which hopes to convince a revived logging industry to spend millions on new sawmills and power plants that could turn a profit on the small trees now choking millions of acres of forests.
The group that proposed the effort agreed on a plan to thin millions of acres by leaving most of the remaining big trees and focusing on the trees smaller than 16 inches in diameter, which now form tree thickets across millions of acres.
