I was raised in the mountains of northern Montana and went to school in Libby, a town that is prominent in environmental news these days. My old man was a Fire Dispatcher, GS7, so I am very well informed on logging and timber management issues.

The destruction of the logging industry in the nothwest is one of my pet crusades, but I won't elaborate on that now.

Fire policy, however, has become a prominant issue of late. In my dad's day the USFS maintained well trained fire crews, locals, in every national forest. My father would load up the mules every spring with chow and gear and spend weeks clearing the fire trails fo the summer.

I remember sitting in our hay loft during the lighting storms and listening to dad talk to the lookouts.

One of the effective fire management policies thay had then was selling off salvage sales to "gypo loggers", small teo or three man operations with self-loaders (trucks with a boom installed). These men went in and harvested down trees, bucked them into manageable lengths, and hauled them to the paper mill in Moyer Springs, Id.

One stipulation of their contract was that they also doze out the ground cover, heavy brush and trash trees we called "dog hair", a tree called a jack pine that only grows 8 to 10 feet high. You may knos these trees as scotch pine. They sell them as christmas trees.

Anyway, salvage sales kept the timber clear of the fuel that a fire feeds on, thus eliminating most bad fires before they get up steam. When there is abundant flamable fuel the fire gains strength until it begins "topping". At that point it reaches the canopy, the green needles of the old growth and taller trees, and it's out of control. It doesn't even need ground fuel any longer.

The greenies have long ago siezed control of our national agencies, USDA, USDI, USFS...and they eliminated the salvage sale concept, which in turn deprived them of much of the funds that paid for fire crews and a full time dispatcher.

To manage slavage now they actually start fires on purpose, called "prescribed burns", obviously a dangerous and unpredictable method of controlling dead fall and brush. The huge fire in Oregon right now is two "prescribed burns" that got out of control.

Hopefully, the diasterous loss of private property and life this year will force the USFS to reinstate the old fire management policies.

An article by Henry Lamb spells out the situation very clearly...

Henry Lamb

Dick