Don's Tuesday Column

          THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   9/12/2017

             More logging equals safer forests

The proliferation of wild fires in national forests seems to be a particularly widespread disaster in the western states this summer. The toll has been quite dramatic: few lives lost but many thousands of lives irreparably changed for the worst due to loss of homes, property, belongings and nearby natural beauty; many communities impacted negatively by the loss of tourist and visitor dollars as hotel rooms and campgrounds empty due to suffocating, declining air quality; outdoor events and festivals (the 22-year long run of folk music in Sisters, OR, cancelled 2 days before their Friday start) that bring millions of dollars into towns that depend on summer for their yearly budgets and economies.

Not the least is the fact that forest and timber harvesting in burned over areas (approaching a million acres by rough estimate from wild fire maps) has been vastly reduced. I mentioned the century-long impact of fire suppression that has deprived forests of what used to be routine, ground-level, creeping burning of under story bushes and young trees. As a result, the slightest spark--a lightning strike, a hot muffler or catalytic converter or (many would find particularly outrageous) an errant bit of fireworks set off by a 15-year old as happened in the Columbia Gorge to spark the Elk Creek fire--quickly becomes an uncontrollable "crown fire."

An Oregon state representative--from the sensible, conservative Republican, Trump-voting area of south central Oregon--has decried and condemned the logging cutbacks over the last decades. While no one who enjoys nature's beauty is pleased to see clear cuts, it is indisputable that a spreading fire is nearly incapable of jumping clear cut hillsides of stumps and new growth. The fanatical environmentalist lobbies have intimidated many otherwise reasonable center-right public officials and policy makers into opposing virtually any logging anywhere--even to the ludicrous extent of letting scorched but otherwise usable logs rot on the forest floor.

They have even disingenuously argued before judges that forests should just be allowed to grow and burn unrestricted, that people should simply not be allowed to live in such areas, and that those impacted by fires should just move. Such radical thought has, behind the scenes and within their legal briefs and biological policies, used the fact that tremendous portions--up to half in some states and approaching 80+ percent in others--of what used to be state, local and privately-owned forest was essentially seized by the federal government in the early 1900s. That made possible top-down, one-size-fits-all rules from Washington and federal judges.

Now, certainly not all stewardship of natural resources like forests, by non-federal entities, is historically benign; however, we should all be willing to admit that federal management has been driven by at least a somewhat "preservationist," as opposed to conservationist, ideology. The false dichotomy--either the forests will all be clear cut, or they will be left to endlessly grow and burn--has been recognized, but too late. Forest managers that bought into the preservationist bent have obviously realized the fallacy, although they are reluctant to admit their misplaced priorities. So now they belatedly allow fires to burn that cannot but turn into conflagrations as has happened with numerous "controlled" burns over the years.

And yet, you will still find little recognition of the valuable role that logging has traditionally played, even as 20 and 30 year old logged sections seemingly miraculously grow 20- and 30-foot tall replacement forests. Native Americans routinely set fires as they left the high country; they knew that regular clearing by fire created open, park-like meadows and under story areas for game to forage, providing a sure source of hunting for plentiful meat for their tribes. By making fire and logging into "enemies" in federal forest management, we have devastation.

Tom Clancy's "Op-Center" showed up on a shelf at a second-hand store in Rexburg, Idaho, and became one of a dozen good, cheap books I acquired. Interestingly, the North Korean terrorist and national security threat provides the suspense in Clancy's 1990s fiction. The ultimate resolution of his story is unknown until I reach the end; the resolution of the current standoff with "the Norks," or the DPRK (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea), is likewise unknowable.

No one can believe nuclear-tipped ICBMs in K. J. Ung's possession can be tolerated. Ironically, the president in the 1990s that was in the best position to use force to stifle North Korea's nuke program, Bill Clinton, forged policies--and lied to Americans about their likely efficacy--falsely assuring the world of a nuclear-weapons-free enemy in the north. More recently, we had similar hollow assurances and promises from Barack Obama, to absolutely no effect. While Trump Derangement Syndrome drives news coverage to irrational obsession over perceived faults and made-up controversies and corruption, all Americans should set that aside in hoping President Trump pursues toughness, persuasion and wisdom in resolving this crisis.

While finding solid Internet in Newport, OR, has allowed for catching up on Trump-centric media follies, I will put off refuting the now-evident stable of lies to provide more of "A Better War--The unexamined victories and final tragedy of America's last years in Vietnam." Among the few marginally successful operations conducted by South Vietnamese forces with only airborne assistance by American military (meaning no U.S. ground troops or armor), the "Lam Son 719" cross-border incursion into Laos, in early 1971, was lambasted in the news media and American political circles, even at the highest levels.

Suffice it to say that, while the operation exposed numerous flaws and weaknesses in our ally's military capabilities, even the NVA's own internal communications revealed that the North had accumulated massive armaments and supplies in Laos for the purpose of attacks on the South. Moreover, the combination of South Vietnamese ground forces, armor and air power with American air support still delivered devastation and destruction that proved victory was possible.