Those same agencies are also hamstrung in budgeting by the politicians trying to make a land grab and sell of those lands. How? By continual rejections of proposals to have those catastrophic wildfires classified as "natural disasters" the way every other natural disaster is classified and funding to fight those fires coming out of budgets other than the management budget of the agencies. If the management budget is eaten up fighting fires each year, there's nothing left to manage the lands with and the politicians get to complain dishonestly about poor management.
As to the state mandates for management; that's a laugh. The state mandates are to manage for maximum economic benefit, including sale, and not for any other purpose.
All this^^
Dave Skinner,
Fires are necessary, healthy and have been occurring since the Pleistocene. Many (but not all) forests in the west are overgrown with trees with little market value. Indians in the west routinely set fires when they left the higher terrain for the lower winter ground.
There is evidence that between 800 AD and 1100 AD 60%-80% of all the Ponderosa pine forests in northern AZ, NM, and southern CO burned, and burned straight through several winters.
Many (but not all) species of wildlife benefit from fire.
We gotta ask ourselves how did these lands survive until modern Europeans showed up to play god..............
Casey
