WILDFIRE CRISIS

Global warming is real and urgent, and is primarily caused by the burning of carbon-based fuels

The second half

We bring you this letter by rancher Dave Daley that tells of his harrowing experience last summer when the Bear Fire struck his property and destroyed his land and cattle. We ask you read this and remember just what is at stake each day our forests go unmanaged. This letter has been split into two parts

Tom Vilsack is back in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He is almost a cult hero among midwestern farm, ethanol and biotech lobbies.

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.

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?

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.

The U.S. House of Representatives has belatedly fixed the fire borrowing mess that has for several years forced the Forest Service to borrow taxpayer money from its forest restoration budgets to pay its ever- increasing fire-fighting bills.

Just when I thought I'd said all that need be said for now about the cancerous risks of wildfire smoke, a friend sent me a copy of the “Montana/Idaho Wildfire Carbon Emissions Inventory for 2013-2017."