Two, three, many Lahainas!

A U.S. Forest Service project aims to thin what officials call an overgrown forest, although the plan is being met with resistance by several environmental groups.

“The problem is that the approach the Forest Service is taking,” said Chad Hanson with the John Muir Project. “Using big machines to cut down tens of thousands of trees out in the remote wildlands, as opposed to focusing on the homes themselves and the zone immediately around the homes.

“That makes all the difference in terms of whether homes survive or not.”

The John Muir Project, as well as the nonprofit group Friends of the Big Bear Valley and the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society, has filed a federal lawsuit hoping to stop the project.

…But Forest Service documentation about the plan, known as the North Big Bear Landscape Restoration Project, claims “Over 100 years of fire suppression activities on the San Bernardino National Forest have excluded fire from much of the landscape, resulting in a departure from the natural range of variation and the pre-settlement fire return interval… Fires that burn in stands with high amounts of surface fuels ignite ladder fuels, which allows fire to reach tree crowns, resulting in increased flame lengths and fire behavior intensity.

So, the forest or wildfire climate scam goes like this: politicians erect hurdles that tie up the ability of the U.S. Forest Service to conduct controlled burns that help reduce the likelihood of forest fires; environmentalist groups sue to stop forest thinning that reduces dead trees and shrubbery that can fuel forest fires; and when forest or wild fires break out, media talking heads and academics (whose homes and transportation modes are powered by fossil fuels) can blame it all on climate change while scolding people for the abundant or comfortable lives they live.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay