CFACT policy advisor Larry Bell reports on the disastrous mismanagement of America’s Western forests by federal officials and the tremendous cost in human and plant and animal life and quality of life these policies have fostered. As Rep. Tom McClintock says, “These laws have not only failed to improve our forest environment, but they are literally killing our forests.”
CFACT Senior Policy Advisor Paul Driessen reports on positive changes in forest management at two federal agencies — Interior under Ron Zinke and Agriculture under Sonny Perdue. New policies will go a long way at reducing deaths of humans, animals, and plants from forest fires, and dramatically lower the costs of forest management while increasing the amount of forest land available for recreation and harvesting. As Driessen says, cleaning out dead, diseased, burned, overgrown trees would bring countless benefits — and make our forests healthy again.
Greg Walcher, a former secretary of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, argues that forests provide the world’s greatest resource for cleaning CO2 out of the atmosphere. Rotting and fires themselves emit greenhouse gases, but atmospheric CO2 makes all plants grow faster and better and with improved tolerance to drought. Thus, it is vital that the U.S. must reverse policies that oppose logging, tree thinning, and other management necessary for healthy forests.
The United Nations global warming deal could make another five million people homeless in the world’s poorest countries, for the express purpose of setting forest land aside to slow global warming through conservation.
It is hard to blame Dominion Resources for trying to find another way to generate energy, thanks to the Obama war against coal. But placing wind turbines on top of beautiful mountains would ruin the entire area for tourism, say local residents whose livelihoods have already been tarnished by the White House.
While the UN’s latest global warming report rightfully lowers alarm about the link between climate change and extreme weather events, it does warn of increased risk of wildfires. But according to Dr. David Evans, a statistician and climate policy expert in Australia, it is fuel loads of combustible trees that pose the much greater risk.
What do crabs, shrimp, and pine trees have in common? Well not much, except that they all play a roll in the battle to stop an eco-villian known as the bark beetle.
Our National Parks are beautiful areas that many enjoy visiting. But did you know some are privately managed? Laura Huggins of the group PERC believes such private management is a good thing, and here explains why. . .
While Al Gore and UN climate chief Christina Figueres insist that Austalia’s repeal of its oppressive carbon tax is somehow linked to recent forest fires there, the truth — as documented by CFACT Advisor Dr. David Evans — is that UN-style forest management policies have left heavy fuel load (fallen trees and brush traditionally harvested by locals — a practice now forbidden) is the major contributor to these fires being hotter and lasting longer.
One of the saddest environmental stories has been the fungal blight that destroyed millions of American chestnut trees in the first half of the 20th Century. But now, according to the New York Times, two research groups may be closing in on a long-sought solution.
There is no doubt that fires burn in both managed and unmanaged forests, the difference is that in managed areas the timbering itself creates natural fire breaks, creates man-made access to the outbreak making it easier to fight, and the forestry practice itself is designed to protect the maximum number of trees from fire. The disaster of a fire ravaging a forest becomes doubly acute for a company that owns the rights to cut timber. For a timber company, a devastating forest fire is not only an environmental disaster, but also an economic one that destroys the product that they plan to harvest to provide the wood the world needs to build homes, furniture and other structures.
Every year, catastrophic wildfires in the dry forests of our western states destroy hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness and cause millions of dollars of property damage.
What has benefited nature more, ecology and environmentalism or economics and the free market? Believe it or not, Matt Ridley from PERC, says economics.
Pine bark beetles continue to kill millions of acres of trees in Western states. But now, a new study shows the epidemic in Colorado could lead to the contamination of drinking water supplies, as well.
Could global warming destroy the Amazon rainforest? Well according to the World Climate Report, recent studies in leading scientific journals spell trouble for such global warming alarmism.
Millions of Americans watched their evening news in horrified fascination. The Colorado Springs wildfire had doubled in size overnight, to 24 square miles – half the size of San Francisco – as 50-mph gusts carried fiery branches from exploding treetops across fire breaks, down Waldo Canyon and into fresh stands of drought-dried timber.
The African country of Niger has long been viewed as a dry wasteland that’s steadily decaying into desert. But now, more than 7 million acres are covered with new trees . . .
