"We will end up a fire department, not a Forest Service"...

I see the FS rangers as being a lot more pro-active than the Fire Department. I thoroughly appreciate all that first-responders and other public servants do. Hard work that's rarely appreciated.

"FS rangers as being a lot more pro-active than the Fire Department"

The paperwork to perform a prescribed burn of housing is probably rather daunting.

It is a very hard time for our public land management agencies right now. We are fighting in the Bighorn National Forest (BNF) an estimated cut from 2011 to FY 2017 of 35% in our recreation budget, nearly 16% below what is necessary to have a viable program. We are trying to engage out County Commissions, Chambers of Commerce, Economic development and finally the public to set right the eniquities as other NFis in USDA-FS Region 2 are only seeing a 7% reduction, and those with ski development increases in funding since '11. 
I will put a shameless plug in for us; Council for the Bighorn Range <www.councilbighornrange.org> to let you know there is work that can be done. Our BNF staff has done incredible work to do what they can but DC and Region 2 is really mucking stuff up.

Johnny Ray says it best: "I thought the purpose of the forest service was road building." Ha ha ha. And logging. And accommodating rolling couch potatoes so Americans can get their nature fix without expending any calories.

So Tarol, I'm all for closing campgrounds (a funny word used by the 40 foot RV crowd for parking lots to camp---while RV enthusiasts call what they do "Camping"). I wish to god we had no budgets for roads because our forest roads in the mountains of TN and NC ARE NOT going back to nature. There are too many roads. I can't go more than 2 or 3 miles from a road access.

You got that right. We have a wilderness area in North Carolina called the Slickrock/Joyce Kilmer wilderness. What's a designated wilderness? A place protected from most everything, and a place where man leaves no sign of his passing. Yeah, right.

There's a place in the Slickrock called Hangover Mt at 5,000 feet and it's atop a knife ridge remote from everything. Well, in November 2007 a small forest fire broke out TWO MILES away and 3,000 feet below the Hangover mountaintop. What did the forest service do? They dropped off firefighters to the top of the mountain who used chainsaws and clearcut an acre of wilderness to land a helicopter. Why?? No good reason. I guess because they said they could, or perhaps used the effort as a sort of training mission for future events.

Problem is, the clearcut happened in a designated wilderness area. Protected, right? Nope. I was pulling a trip that November and saw the fire smoke miles away and way below the peak and so I took the pertinent rape pictures and emailed them to a Sierra Club lawyer in Knoxville and he did the rest.


Your forest service in action---clearcutting an acre of wilderness in North Carolina.

Thanks for helpful link, Tarol. I doubt Graham County NC ranger district where this clearcut occurred received this PDF file or had it anywhere near their desks in 2007. I think they just ran phone lines into the office last week Ha ha ha SOB.

Looks ugly for sure and I get it. I myself was very saddened to see an area of the San Gorgonio Wilderness that burned very hot and intense in the Lake Fire this year, which was human caused. The Aspen Grove burned and it is very special to me and a lot of other people. It's a rare remnant grove, the southernmost grove of Aspen in the state, and beautiful as anything else we have on this forest. I hiked there with my husband on one of our anniversaries, hiked there when I was pregnant, hiked there a year later with my baby. I know they cleared helispots in the wilderness and cut line trying to stop the fire from getting there in the first place. Which is worse? Well, hard to say, but they go hand in hand, unless your wilderness is so big that managers can "let it burn." And if it was a naturally caused fire - human caused fires are always suppressed. Anyway, I try and see the big picture of the whole ecosystem. Not as familiar with your ecosystem out there, but out here that helispot area would grow back fairly quickly, first with forbs and shrubs and later the trees. It will probably not look the same in your lifetime, but maybe your children's. And it's actually good to have openings in forests, creates and supports diversity and habitat. Aspen themselves thrive in such openings, and without them would actually go away completely. Wildlife biologists get excited because animals like deer and bighorn sheep often move into these areas quickly to take advantage of the new growth.  

Anyway, if you have a wilderness association you may touch base with them and see if there are ways to restore that helispot. Or, again, contact the local forest, make an appointment to sit down with that District Ranger or the Forest Supervisor, see if they have a plan.  Re-habbing helispots and fire line is something that happens even as the fire ashes are still cooling, and is often contained in a BAER report (Burned area emergency rehabilitation).  A whole bunch of resource specialists come together on a BAER team to make determinations on what needs to happen where.  And long term restoration is one of the FS's goals.  Many of our Eastern National Forests wouldn't even exist if it weren't for the Weeks Act.  Areas that were clear cut by private industry were made National Forests and then allowed to recover and grow back.  


www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/Policy/WeeksAct/LandsNobody.aspx