{"id":10086,"date":"2017-08-29T12:30:14","date_gmt":"2017-08-29T19:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/?p=10086"},"modified":"2018-09-07T10:51:18","modified_gmt":"2018-09-07T17:51:18","slug":"watching-oregon-go-up-in-smoke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/watching-oregon-go-up-in-smoke\/","title":{"rendered":"Watching Oregon go up in Smoke"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Watching Oregon go up in Smoke<\/strong><\/h1>\n

By Scott Michael Rohter, August 2017 Updated September 2018<\/p>\n

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Every year between the months of July and November millions of Oregonians\u00a0watch\u00a0helplessly as the federal government\u00a0allows our state to go up in smoke.<\/p>\n

There is an old saying that too much of anything is not good.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0The federal government\u00a0owns too much land.\u00a0 700 million acres is too much land for Congress to control,\u00a0and even if it wanted to it\u00a0which it absolutely does not… Congress doesn’t know how to\u00a0manage\u00a0it properly.\u00a0Neither does the Forest Service or the BLM. To put it bluntly the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management are\u00a0completely incapable and unwilling to change\u00a0their public land management\u00a0policies\u00a0to cope with wildfires,\u00a0and our fearful State Legislators\u00a0in Salem together with\u00a0over two decades\u00a0of incompetent Democratic Governors\u00a0refuse to take the necessary steps to put an end to this annual destruction of our State forests, the heritage of every Oregonian.\u00a0Our forests\u00a0are just being allowed to burn to the ground every summer because there is no economic incentive\u00a0to\u00a0save them. Change is necessary. That is obvious,\u00a0and it\u00a0all starts with\u00a0an honest admission of\u00a0failure.<\/p>\n

Depending on when you started counting last year there were\u00a0somewhere between 25 and 40 wildfires\u00a0raging across Oregon which\u00a0turned\u00a0the air\u00a0last summer into a rather murky mixture of smoke and pollutants over vast swaths of our state.\u00a0\u00a0It is almost as bad this year. It isn\u2019t safe to go outside or\u00a0even to breathe\u00a0in\u00a0some parts of the State right now. The largest wildfire\u00a0last year was\u00a0the Chetko Bar Fire which burned out of control for months near the\u00a0coastal\u00a0community of Brookings\u2026 It\u00a0consumed over 3oo,000 acres of valuable timberland not to mention\u00a0all the animals that were killed and the precious wildlife habitat that was destroyed. It laid waste an area\u00a0almost 50 square miles wide.\u00a0The residents of Brookings were put on notice to evacuate if\u00a0and when it became necessary.<\/p>\n

Last year in Lane County there were at least two fires raging out of control\u2026 The\u00a0 Jones Fire burned over 6,000 acres near Fall Creek, and the\u00a0Separation Fire near Cougar Reservoir burned over 4,000 acres. There were at least six other fires burning\u00a0in or around \u00a0Lane County last year \u2026 the Horse Creek Fire, the Box Canyon Fire, the Roney Fire, the Pete Fire, the Avenue Fire, and the\u00a0Rebel Fire\u2026 All together these fires\u00a0consumed a total of at least 12,500 acres of Oregon’s natural resources. They\u00a0all just went up in smoke… the trees\u00a0as well as\u00a0the animals\u00a0sacrificed on the alter of ignorance. This year the destruction is just as bad.\u00a0 The names have changed, but the destruction is the same.\u00a0 Instead of the Separation Fire\u00a0it is now called the\u00a0Terwilliger Fire\u00a0and it is burning whatever wasn’t consumed last year\u00a0near\u00a0Cougar Reservoir. It\u00a0has already destroyed over 8,000 acres and the smoke from it is filling the McKenzie Valley\u00a0over twenty miles away.<\/p>\n

\"\"The smoke is so thick that you can\u00a0stare directly at the noon day Sun\u00a0without any protection for your eyes. That is all the proof that I need to convince me that the federal government should not be in control of 51% of Oregon.<\/p>\n

Over fifty thousand square miles of\u00a0my State\u00a0is\u00a0administered by Congress\u00a0through the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.\u00a0This land was entrusted to Congress to\u00a0administer properly, and\u00a0Congress\u00a0delegated the actual\u00a0responsibility\u00a0of managing the land to the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, but trust really has nothing\u00a0at all\u00a0to do with it.\u00a0The USFS and the BLM are responsible for preventing and controlling wildfires which break out on\u00a0public land\u00a0 every summer. \u00a0Some of these wildfires are caused by lightning, but others are caused by careless campers who don\u2019t put out their campfires or toss a ligted cigarette out the window of their car window. Regardless of how the fires start every year they\u00a0still burn\u00a0valuable timber and destroy precious wildlife habitat. It is the responsibility of the U.S. Forest Service and the BLM to put these fires out, not just wait for the winter rains to do that for them.\u00a0 Even better would be a strategy of preventing these fires from getting out of control in the first place.<\/p>\n

Fifty thousand square miles is a total of thirty million acres of land which rightfully belongs to the people of Oregon. The United States Forest Service and the BLM couldn\u2019t possibly do a worse job of preventing and controlling wildfires if they tried. More and more land is just going up in smoke every year and the federal government doesn\u2019t even care.\u00a0 More and more of Oregon\u2019s\u00a0precious natural resources are being lost to incompetent penny pinching\u00a0government bureaucrats working hand in glove with environmental groups to allow our State forests go up in smoke. You would think that these environmentalists who love the forests so much that they don’t even want a single tree to be cut down would also want to keep these forests from burning to the ground, but they don’t.<\/p>\n

There are ways to prevent Oregon’s forests from being destroyed. The first thing we need to do is remove control from Congress. We need to overturn the Federal Land Policy Management Act of 1976. The Oregon Legislature needs to petition Congress to turn over\u00a0the management of\u00a0Oregon public land to Oregon control.\u00a0 Oregonians\u00a0can do a\u00a0better job of caring for our\u00a0land than some federal bureaucrats in Washington D.C…\u00a0We certainly couldn\u2019t do any worse, could we?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Next Oregon should purchase a small fleet of\u00a0inexpensive two foot wide drones equipped with highly sensitive infra red cameras that could spot a cigarette burning on the ground at 1,000 feet \u00a0to fly surveillance over every square inch of our public lands commencing at the beginning of every fire season in order to spot\u00a0wildfires before they get out of control\u2026 An ounce of prevention is\u00a0 worth a pound of cure. We should spare no effort to keep these wildfires from happening in the first place.. It is absolutely crazy to take the\u00a0position that the ground is too steep or the area is too remote to save these forests\u2026 or that we can afford to just let them burn to the ground every year. \u00a0That is the\u00a0current position \u00a0of the United States Department of Forestry.<\/p>\n

There is a 747 jumbo jet outfitted\u00a0with special equipment to fight forest fires. It is\u00a0stationed right here in Oregon. It isn’t\u00a0even being used most of the time.\u00a0\u00a0The Federal government shouldn’t be in the real\u00a0estate management business. \u00a0It is time to turn\u00a0the administration of our\u00a0public lands over to State control, not just here in Oregon but in all twelve western States.\u00a0\u00a0 Whatever Congress is doing\u00a0with\u00a0our public lands they are doing it\u00a0all wrong, and they are doing it all without\u00a0constitutional authority,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Corroborating Source Material<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.oregon.gov\/ODF\/Fire\/pages\/FireStats.aspx<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

Every year between the months of July and November millions of Oregonians watch helplessly as the United States government just allows the our state to go up in smoke. My grandmother use to have a saying\u2026 Too much of anything is not good. Maybe the federal government owns too much land and they take it for granted or maybe they just plain don\u2019t care, but our shortsighted and dysfunctional State legislature and a series of incompetent Democratic governors in Salem refuse to take the necessary steps that could put an end to this annual destruction of our State\u2019s forests once and for all and protect what is left of Oregon\u2019s precious natural resources…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,20,6],"tags":[846,844,871],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10086"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10086"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10645,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10086\/revisions\/10645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}