Environmentalists have won; hooray?

Hooray, hooray. The environmentalists have won.

We once had healthy managed forest, with timber harvest and slash disposal, and wildfires were suppressed. Even the mighty Sundance Fire, which occurred in even more severe burning conditions than today, was controlled in a matter of weeks. But now that the environmental community has effectively shut down harvest activities for decades, heavy fuel build-ups and uncontrollable wildfires are raging throughout the West. Contrary to what some college professors are saying, it’s not the exclusion of wildfires that has created fuel loading in the forest; it’s the dead and decayed fuel from unmanaged forests.

LARRY STONE

Sandpoint

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