We Need More Wildfires

Nothing can be more riveting than wildfire/forest policy (okay, so I'm joking...). But the recent spate of wildfires over drought stricken Oklahoma and Texas (today the fire threat is again "extreme"), I've thought once-again about fire policy. Each year, the western United States is faced with forest and wildfire problems. The reason: that's how God designed the process of resource renewal to work--dead undergrowth must be regularly burned away. Before urban sprawl turned America's forests into bustling neighborhoods, the undergrowth was removed with ease. Lightning would strike, a tree would burn, hundreds of acres would be cleansed, and new growth would thrive. Today, this natural process is not allowed to occur because homes and towns would be burned. If a fire is burning, the forest service works to put the fire out causing no dead growth to remain. Of course, this creates a problem. America's forests and grasslands are filled with the decades of dead trees and grass. Consequently, we see the devastating fires that have occurred regularly for decades.

America needs to develop an aggressive controlled burn and logging program to ensure that naturally occurring forest fires are not fueled by tons of undergrowth creating extreme forest fires. If we don't want naturally occurring fires to burn, then we must make certain that we exercise strategic controlled burns. I don't mean to imply that we don't have controlled burns. We do. The key is to ramp up the burns...making sure we are burning more and more acres. Logging will help thin the overgrown forests. Despite what environmentalists say, the our forests are overgrown due to government restriction on logging and the effort to stop forest fires. Are you beginning to see the problem? We are not allowing healthy fires to occur and we can't compensate for that by logging because the enviros won't let us. Therefore, our forests are overgrown and unhealthy. This aggressive policy will not wipe out fire season, and homes will still be burned. However, it will help lessen the extent of the devastation. You may ask, "if this will help lessen the devastation, why don't we do?" The answer is simple, money and special interests.

It's not as if America doesn't have the money. In fact, we do. The problem is that Congress has other priorites (some good, some not so good). While this is a costly program, it is one that can be funded. The other problem are the special interest groups, particularly the environmentalists. The greenies protest this agressive policy. They don't want species endangered and trees burned. This type of thinking is not healthy. Contrary to what the left will tell you, they (not the right) are responsible for damaging the environment. We must begin exercising more controlled burns and heavier logging to thin our forests and get rid of dead undergrowth. THAT is earth-friendly policy.