Decades of Federal Mismanagement Increased Forest Fire Hazard, Says NCPA 7/7/2004
From: Sean Tuffnell of the National Center for Policy Analysis, 800-859-1154 or stuffnell@ncpa.org DALLAS, July 7 -- Arizona once-again is spending its summer fighting wildfires. National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett says federal mismanagement of our national forests is to blame for the annual toll that wildfires have wreaked upon the nation. "Decades of mismanagement of our national forests have left them in decline and like a tinderbox, ready to explode," said Burnett. "With the recent enactment of the president's "Healthy Forests" initiative, the government is now finally rushing to do what they should have been doing all along." Currently, fires have prompted the evacuation of the Mount Graham International Observatory and about 90 cabins in Turkey Flat and another community. In addition to traditional fire fighting techniques, government officials are scrambling to log around the observatory and the town in order to reduce the threat. The U.S. Forest Service estimates that more than 190 million acres of public land is at risk of catastrophic fires. Fully 60 percent of national forest land is unhealthy and faces an abnormal fire hazard. Too many trees and too much brush combined with bureaucratic regulations and lawsuits filed by environmental extremists have hampered the ability of professional foresters to manage the forests properly for the multiple goals of wildlife habitat, recreation and timber production. For instance: -- Timber harvests have plunged more than 75 percent from 12 billion board feet per year to less than 4 billion board feet per year. -- Road building has declined from 2,000 miles per year in the 1980s to less than 500 miles in the late 1990s. -- As a result, historically large ponderosa pines which grew in strands of 20-55 trees per acre now grow (and burn) in densities of 300-900 trees per acre. -- This has resulted in an increase in wildfires, from 25 per year in 1984 to more than 80 a year in recent years. "The dangerous conditions that we find the national forests in took decades to create and will take years to fix, but this is a good first step," said Burnett. For more information or to schedule an interview with Dr. Burnett, contact the NCPA's E-Team at 800-859-1154. ------ The NCPA is an internationally known nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute with offices in Dallas and Washington, D. C. that advocates private solutions to public policy problems. We depend on the contributions of individuals, corporations and foundations that share our mission. The NCPA accepts no government grants. |