US
FOREST SERVICE TO BURN ONE MILLION ACRES IN ARIZONA.
COMMENTS
DUE WEDNESDAY. Comments may be emailed
to
4fri_comments@fs.fed.us,
or posted here:
This
type of project is going on all over the country. The Four Forests Restoration
Initiative ("4FRI") is the largest yet proposed, totaling more
than two million acres in central and eastern Arizona. The first half
of the project is in an area around Flagstaff, in the Kaibab and Coconino
National Forests. The Forest Service
wants to replace the unbroken
forest with "a mosaic of interspaces and tree groups"; to eradicate
most of the Ponderosa pines, which it considers a "weed"; and to
do this by thinning and burning one million acres of Arizona forest, including
98% of protected habitat for the Mexican Spotted Owl. In order
to permanently alter the landscape, the Forest Service plans to burn
every area of the forest every five years, from now on. Before it burns
the first time, however, it will invite a logging company from Montana
down to harvest 300,000 acres of trees.
The
Draft Environmental Impact Statement is available here:
I
posted general information on Face book regarding the Forest Service’s attack
on our National Forests. Only one friend responded. I also posted the email
comment I sent to the Forest Service and still no comments. My comment to the
Forest Service follows:
“This project to burn over a million
acres of forest land after reaping benefits from selling 300 thousand acres to lumber companies is
one of the most incomprehensibly evil projects I've encountered in my lifetime.
Your 4FRI project is another of the "new" so called scholarly
environmental interventions designed to return the landscape to the way you
figure it was back at the turn of the century etc. What a bunch of bull crap. You redesigned the
waterways throughout the west with disastrous results. You redesigned the
grasslands of the Midwest and created the great dust bowl disaster and on and
on it goes. I'm certain you're aware of the catastrophic history of the Army Corp
of Engineers and others like the Forest Service. It's too, too unfortunate that
the pencil pushing engineers of this destruction won't be on the front lines of
the great burns, sucking up the poisonous smoke all the southwest will be
forced to endure. Too bad you have no regard for the wildlife population that
will suffer horribly through loss of habitat and smoke inhalation and for what.
This is supposed to be the people's land - we have not given our permission for
this horror to ensue, nor will we benefit from the $$$$ the government will
gain. I would rather die in the gutter than work for or be associated with an
organization so diabolically evil.”
The Forest Service policies
toward the people’s land is certainly in keeping with the general philosophy of the USDA which is
responsible for developing and executing U.S. government policy on
Farming, Forestry, Food and
Natural Resources. And Obama shows his
support of these philosophies in the signing of the Monsanto Protection Act
which requires the USDA to approve the growing, harvesting and selling of
genetically modified food. Meanwhile,
back at the “ranch”, Michelle is growing organic veggies on the White-house lawn. Don’t you love the
hypocrisy?
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