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The enviro-nazis have empowered so many ignorant, easily influenced bureaucrats who have enacted so much federal regulation and red-tape concerning our forests, that history, common sense, and science are out the window. Our forests have being forcibly neglected and ignored to the extent that they are at the point of self-destruction. Instead of clearing out underbrush – that not only takes soil nutrients and water away from the mature trees, and is the fuel for the extreme forest fires that destroy mature trees – our new government policies order us to keep our hands off of, and to keep our feet out of our forests, so that nature can do the “right” thing. But in 1998, an official from the General Accounting Office told Congress that in our western forests, “vegetation has accumulated, creating high levels of fuels for catastrophic wildfires and transforming much of the region into a tinderbox.” We are now reaping the bounty from bureaucratic bungling in the massive holocausts that once were the forests and rural neighborhoods of the American west. Many people like to remind us that the Native Americans knew how to keep this continent in tip-top shape (and indeed they did), and that we should practice their environmentally friendly ways of cohabitating with Mother Earth. These people ignore that fact that the Indians were actively involved in changing the natural environment to accommodate humans. When European settlers came to America they found huge tract of land that had been transformed by the Indians with fire. Where it was common to find 20 mature, healthy trees per acre you can now find up to 2,000 weak, spindly, sun and nutrient-starved, mini-trees jammed together per acre. The Indians of pre-America burned off the prairies to keep out sagebrush and to keep it grassland. The Indians of pre-America turned the state of California into a huge garden with free food just for the gathering up, by burning off the underbrush and just leaving the giant oak trees. They ate the acorns like we eat oatmeal. They knew just the right time of the year and at just the right temperature and amount of moisture to do the burning so the fires would not get out of control. If you go to California you can still see vast grasslands with an occasional ancient oak tree. I agree with the people who think we should take a page out of the Indian’s textbook on how to live in balance with our planet. |