PERSPECTIVES

As of this September 19 writing, the lightning-caused fire - which started September 10, is still burning out of control. Containment is not expected until October 10, which seems like an eternity to me given its small size in relation to the 963,000-acre Dixie Fire or the 219,000-acre Caldor Fire.

There is nothing new, normal, natural, or inevitable about what we are witnessing... What we are witnessing is not “the new normal.” Nor is it a direct result of “climate change.” It is the downstream result of congressional/federal failure to control three decades of uninterrupted tree growth in national forests that hold too many trees for the natural carrying capacity of the land.

More than half the nation's federal forest estate – some 100 million acres – is either dying, dead or has already burned. About 73 million acres have burned over the last 10 years – most of it in western national forests. 9.6 million acres this year.

This is Part 2 of our series "It's Time to Declare War on Wildfire." This section begins with Rob Freres describing the impacts of wildfire on private lands due to the incompetence of the Forest Service managing public lands.

The 2020 wildfire season was the worst since 1910. How much more can we tolerate? Its time to declare war on wildfire.

“Once you learn how to work you can do anything you put your mind to.”

How about assigning electoral votes by federal acreage within each state, not by population? That is 640 electoral votes - split between 50 states.

The immediate need is to rebuild the forestry side of the Forest Service. This means that Republicans and Democrats in the next Congress need to find an extra $5 billion in Fiscal 2021. Funds must be specifically allocated for forestry staffing and forest management – not wildfire.

In his heyday, Jim Hurst epitomized all that was good and decent and honorable about a vanishing breed of men who owned and operated small sawmills in hundreds of remote western towns.

I have been writing about the wildfire crisis in our national forests for 30-plus years – long enough to have developed a solid understanding of it underlying causes.

Our national forests belong to all Americans. Our forests - the legacy to the next generation - are not political pawns to be bought and sold.

The time has come for society to consider alternatives to fires so large that they escape suppression efforts, often with deadly consequences. If we don't like the fire trajectory we are on – and I don’t - shouldn’t we try something different?

Our forests, our public lands belong to all 331 million of us – not the high-minded few who are driving narratives and making decisions about places where they've never been

The “Enlightened Forest” is based on the writings of James D. Petersen, founder and editor of Evergreen Magazine, a forestry journal published by The Evergreen Foundation.

When will Congress address every pandemic with the same concern?

Now that Congress has resolved the fire funding mess – at least temporarily - Interim Forest Service Chief, Vicki Christiansen, has had much to say about how she intends to more aggressively attack these fires and their primary underlying cause.

Does anyone know how many outdoor tourism activities were cancelled in August and September in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana? I don't, but it surely runs into the hundreds. This year will be worse.

Do I think the U.S. Senate has declared war on the citizens of the 11 western states? A friend asked me this very question earlier today. After some hesitation, I replied, “Yes, I do, in a manner of speaking.”

Musk's “flamethrower,” which sells for $500 and looks a lot like an assault rifle [probably intentionally] has already attracted the unwanted attention of U.S. Customs officials, prompting Musk to Twitter that a “rebranding” effort may be needed. No kidding.

Marijuana growers have been practicing their trade in remote National Forests in southern Oregon and northern California since the early 1970s.

If we have the sense of a goose, we will stick by one another, no matter what.

We can learn much from our nation's forest priorities, policies and practices, which have always tracked with our country’s ever-shifting felt necessities. But the blame game is a useless and unhelpful exercise. What would be helpful is a more constructive rural-urban dialogue about the losses we are all suffering, and what we can do collectively [politically] to mitigate them.

When we leave forests to Nature, as so many people today seem to want to do, we get whatever Nature serves up, which can be pretty devastating at times. But with forestry we have options, and a degree of predictability not found in Nature.

Stakeholder collaboration, applied science, technology and political will are closing in on a solultion to one of federal forestry's most vexing problems.

The 1967 Sundance Fire will be remembered in four ceremonies marking the fiftieth anniversary of the tragic northern Idaho conflagration.

Timber and tourism have prospered side by side in Northern Idaho for decades.

We are bankrupting our future in Colorado's National Forests In riveting testimony, Lyle Laverty explains why.

The U.S. Forest Service estimates that 90 million acres of the nation's federal forest estate are in Condition Class 3 or 2 – a fire ecologists’ rating system that attempts to account for the ecological damage a wildfire might do to a forest. Class 3 forests are said to be “ready to burn,” while Class 2 forests soon will be.

Editor Jim Petersen discusses the Idaho court's decision to allow the responsibility of teaching climate change to fall back to the state's teachers.

Jim Petersen, editor of Evergreen Magazine, addresses the Trump administration's rumored federal lands giveaway.

I invite you to get to know America's loggers – perhaps for the first time in your life. I believe that you will enjoy their under-appreciated story.

Forest restoration in the Southwest is where it is today because of the idea that the region's economic and environmental necessities are one in the same.

There are clear signs that the policy of “letting nature take its course” in the West's federal forests is a prescription for environmental disaster.