The Costs of Roadless Wilderness

The Colorado Index is suggesting that Boulder Liberal Mark Udall is creating the potential for ever larger forest fires by closing the roads. The author observes that closing the roads makes it difficult or impossible to thin forests and notes that the Lake Tahoe residents who were burned out are complaining about the Sierra Club's interference in the thinning process.

Closing the roads also might cause the deaths of fire fighters and a huge infestation of beetles with the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of acres of forest.

The essays are here, here, here, and here.