The Center for Biological Diversity -- an offshoot of the violent radical group Earth First!, -- has been systematically using the Endangered Species Act to shut down jobs in the timber, mining, and other industries that once were major job suppliers in Western States. Worse, federal judges have been going along with this unwarranted taking of property and income for decades. It is time that this stops.
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.