Roadless "Backsliding"

Recall that yesterday we commented that Taylor West gave Politicker a laundry list of the reasons that Mark Udall just couldn't be concerned about left wing attacks on military recruiters in Berkeley and Times Square:

"Mark Udall believes Congress has much more important work to do – on everything from the lagging economy, to skyrocketing oil prices, to getting our kids covered with health care, to ending the war in Iraq in a responsible way – than micromanaging the budgets of cities for the sake of political gamesmanship," [ Taylor ] West said in the statement.

What is the biggest potential problem facing Colorado, and is it on this list? How about 1.5 million acres of dead and dying trees? If those trees catch fire, mountain homes and towns could burn, the watershed would be badly damaged, if not destroyed, tourism would die, and hunting and fishing ruined for our lifetime.

Why is that problem not on the list? Did Taylor West just forget, or is her boss, Mark Udall, telling her to ignore it? To fix the problem, to the degree that it can be fixed would require building forest roads to allow fire breaks to be built.

They are apparently doing that in Idaho but the environmentalists are none too happy:

“Back off. Just drop the whole mess,” says Craig Gehrke, regional director of The Wilderness Society in Idaho. “Just stick with the 2001 rule. This whole fight for roadless areas is needless.”

Idaho’s petition cuts out about 500,000 roadless acres, but the state promised to keep protections in place for the remainder of 9 million acres. [ Craig ] Gehrke worries wildfire provisions weaken the proposal, though, by giving the state more “wiggle room” to blaze roads.

“They’re backsliding on it,” he says.

Idaho is trying to do the smart thing, but the environmentalists on Bill Ritter's staff are trying to keep Colorado roadless and vulnerable:

A similar battle is taking place in Colorado. Environmentalists are pressing [ Bill ] Ritter, who has spoken in favor of roadless protections, to stick with the federal rule...

Colorado’s former Gov. Bill Owens, R, submitted a roadless plan that was praised for protecting most areas. Environmentalists blasted his successor, Bill Ritter, D, though, accusing him of weakening roadless protections when he decided to largely stick with that plan...

And, where is Mark Udall on this issue. He opposes roads, and collects hefty donations from roadless advocates. Care to guess why Taylor West left this Colorado centic issue off of the list of important things that Congress had to do?

A Campaign Quote Raises Questions

Mark Udall was quoted in the Cherry Creek News:

Speaking about the coming campaign and the issues to define it, Udall said “the outlines are clear- Iraq, the economy, immigration.” Udall said that undocumented immigrants must “travel the path to citizenship— pay a fine (for being in the U.S. illegally), speak English, have committed no crimes.” “We must address... the health care system where families are one illness away from bankruptcy.”

Udall, a westerner, said that Colorado issues would play a key role in the Senate race: water, transportation and creating more transit options. He also emphasized that Colorado’s position for renewable energy and the jobs it could create was strong, given our resources and the presence of the National Renewable Energy lab in Golden.

Someday we must remember to ask if Mark Udall considers it acceptable for (as he says) an undocumented immigrant to gain his citizenship if he went through Bill Ritter's agricultural trespass plea bargain mill.

Note that Mark Udall is not all that interested in talking about his part in the bark beetle crisis, his refusal to allow either clear cutting of fire breaks to reduce the size of a probable forest fire or the harvesting of dying trees by lumber companies.

We wonder if Mark Udall will be willing to talk about his part in his staff's railroading of Caroline Bninski into a one year jail term.

Is Mark Udall proud to be associated with Daily Kos to the point that they were setting up his own personal blog on that site?

So many questions and so few answers. Oh, and our favorite, the Department of Peace?

Clear Cutting

It is hard to understand why the environmentalists oppose clear cutting dead forests to establish fire breaks to stop or slow down a massive forest fire.

If forest fires are contained by creating hasty fire breaks in its path, and environmentalists like Mark Udall's Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society do not object to that, why would they oppose well planned deliberate fire breaks.

This opposition makes no sense. It needlessly puts firefighter's lives at risk because the fires will be fought, and they will be fought with fire breaks.

Perhaps Mark Udall will take time from his busy schedule to explain why he opposes deliberate fire breaks and does not oppose hasty fire breaks.

Udall: Sounding the Alarm to Subsidize Art While Letting our Forests Burn

We already pointed out that Boulder liberal Rep. Mark Udall is trying to cover his tracks on his poor record of wildfire prevention. As was pointed out, he told the Rocky Mountain News:

"I have been sounding the alarm on the beetle and wildfire risk problem for our forests since my first year in Congress," Udall said Wednesday evening.

Well, apparently the alarm was drowned out by his concern for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) budget. In 2006, Udall voted No on a bill amendment that would have cut $30 million from the NEA budget and committed most of those funds "to the United States Forest Service to reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfires."

Is Udall really concerned about the "wildfire risk problem" Colorado faces? Maybe, he'll think about it after making sure your tax dollars have sufficiently subsidized artwork, including many controversial pieces that you may recall in recent memory.

Lest you think this vote was an isolated incident, Udall opposed similar amendments in 2002 and 2003 and 2004, choosing to fund postmodern sculptures and other outside-the-mainstream art projects rather than ensuring Colorado was adequately protected from wildfires.

Udall's campaign probably hasn't counted on their candidate's weak record on forest conservation being highlighted. But we are glad to perform the public service.

Skewing the Scoreboard

Our friend at Liberal and Loving It decided to try play games with our scoreboard today. His attempt elicited a belly laugh:

Ok, the schaffer v udall blog is tracking the number of times Mark Udall has been called conservative (presently 0). So here you go - Mark Udall is a very conservative congressman. I base this on his tireless work to conserve the environment and his extensive opposition to change (in our climate).

We make the rules, and we try to keep them rational. Just as we won't count a conservative blog calling Mark Udall a liberal, we won't count a liberal blog trying to claim that he is a conservative or even a moderate.

If you folks want to rack up some "conservative" or even "moderate" hits on the Mark Udall is not a moderate scoreboard, go find a conservative blog to call him conservative. And no, we won't count a faux conservative blog that lacks history.

As for the claim that Udall is a conservative because he claims to be a conservationalist, we think that Mark Udall's biggest vulnerability is his environmental record. Coloradoans who go to the polls this fall need only, as Mark Udall himself said, "picture dead forests in their mind's eye." If there is a big fire and if people die in it, Udall and John Salazar will and should bear a good deal of the blame.

As for opposition to climate change, the environmentalists never seem to be willing to count burned forests as contributing to the atmospheric carbon dioxide load. The left's carbon footprint is enormous, but they pretend it doesn't exist. We had three forest fires in excess of 500,000 acres each last year. Udall's answer as of today: Lets do a study, but lets not build forest roads or clear cut fire breaks.

You folks on the left have painted yourself into a corner and it is going to take one heck of a long time for the paint to dry. The sad thing is that you don't appear smart enough to realize it.

Cleaning Up The Forests

Mark Udall is opposed to cleaning up the forests. It would require building forest roads. Heaven forbid!

Today, the Rocky Mountain News made a proposal to remove dead timber that will never be allowed to happen, and it admits as much:

But these productive solutions are possible on a large scale only if federal and state lawmakers act quickly to provide the economic assistance and regulatory relief needed to develop viable commercial applications of significant scope.

As unpopular as it may be with some groups, [ and politicians like Mark Udall, John Salazar, Bill Ritter, and Ken Salazar ] relaxing certain zoning and environmental restrictions is as critical as finding funds for new machinery or other start-up costs. Removing barriers to quick production is essential because of the natural timetable at work in Colorado's forests.

The Rocky didn't go far enough. Forest access roads must be built and maintained. Clear cuts must be established as fire breaks. Environmentalist terrorists like Mark Udall and his Sierra Club must be put on notice that their foot dragging won't be tolerated. Does anyone have the courage to do that? Not likely, unless it is the voters.

On No One's Top Ten Lists

The AP has it's top ten Colorado list out. It is a bit lame. Well, it is more than a bit lame. We thought we could do better with a list of things that didn't make the top ten in Colorado, in no particular order. They didn't make the top ten because they didn't happen. Oh, well!

1. Despite much wishful hoping on the left, the Colorado US Senate race is not a Mark Udall runaway.
2. Caroline Bninski spent Christmas with friends and family, not in jail where Mark Udall and his staff tried to put her for a year. How inconvenient!
3. Neither Mark Udall nor his staff seem to have lied to the public or members of Congress in the last week, setting a new record if not for truthfulness, at least for silence.
4. Rush Limbaugh wasn't humiliated by Mark Udall's Congressional resolution which was written in a way to be an unsophisticated falsehood. No member of the Colorado delegation co-sponsored Udall's anti-Limbaugh resolution.
5. The US didn't cut and run when Harry Reid pontificated "This War is Lost." Nor did Udall object when Nancy Pelosi held useless vote after vote to defund the war.
6. Mark Udall didn't convince Bill Ritter to nix gas drilling on the Roan Plateau.
7. Mark Udall didn't cosponsor the loon in the attic's Department of Peace bill this year, and it is reported that Mark Udall also didn't see a UFO.
8. The Gazette hasn't called Mark Udall an "extremist" for six months, but many of his liberal friends have made certain that he can't claim to be a centrist.
9. Colorado didn't have a roadless wilderness mega forest fire in 2007, but there is still time for one to occur in 2008.
10. The Denver Post hasn't made it's obligatory election year claim that Mark Udall is a "moderate" or "centrist."

List making is so much fun. We're wondering if we are on Bill Ritter's enemies list, yet. We're doing our best.

More Poorly Thought Out Udall Legislation

The Denver Post is reporting that Mark Udall dropped more bills in the hopper just before the end of the session:

"You can never start soon enough," said Alan Salazar, chief of staff to Rep. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs. With the presidential election next year, he said, passing bills could become difficult.

"So the sooner you get things done, the easier it is," Salazar said...

Udall also offered one to match a bill from Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. That one would require Interior Department agencies and the Forest Service to give Congress an annual report on firefighter safety practices, training programs and actions to prevent fires, including prescribed burnings.

On the one hand, Mark Udall champions all of the Sierra Club policies (no road building, no thinning, no firebreaks) which promote huge, hot forest fires and make it hard to do any forest management. Now, he wants a firefighter safety report!

Udall's comprehensive forest fire fighting philosophy makes as much sense as choosing to arm a battalion of soldiers with pistols and then requiring the battalion commander to report how many of his men were killed by rifle fire.

Gazette's Comments on the Fires

With luck, the California fires may lead to more rational land management than Mark Udall and his "environmentalist" allies are currently willing to tolerate. The Gazette devoted an editorial to the subject this morning. Here is only a part of what it had to say:

Markets have less influence over government-owned land, however, which is managed based on political considerations, mostly under the influence of special interest groups. Fire risks seem higher in areas of high public (meaning, government) land ownership; lower (with a few exceptions) in places where much of the land is privately owned, mostly due to the strong incentives people have to maintain and protect their property.

When property is owned collectively, there’s less incentive to manage it wisely. Environmental rules and restrictions have leaned in recent times toward non-management, or a policy of benign neglect, under pressure from those who think human meddling in these landscapes is unnatural and wrong. That’s left more fuel to burn when lightning, a fallen power line or an arsonist ignites a fire.

We’d argue for a land management approach that puts humans and human habitats first, whenever practical, and embraces the idea that we can manage these landscapes not just for economic, aesthetic and ecological benefits, but with an eye toward safeguarding public safety as well. We shouldn’t allow the real and rhetorical smoke generated by California’s wildfires to cloud our judgements about the nature of the problem.

Topic of the Day: Forest Fires - Part 2

Anyone who watched the national news today on any channel would know that the lead story is the out of control fires in California. They don't know how many multi-million dollar homes have been burned, but they estimate that it will be the worst fire in California history.

California has asked for fire crew help from its neighboring states. 250,000 people were forced to flee the fire.

At some point enough people will be burned out or be at risk of being burned out by forest fire after forest fire that people will begin to question the wisdom (if that is the right word) of the environmentalist left and their congressional shills like Mark Udall, John Salazar, and Diana DeGette.

It may not happen this year, or even next, but hopefully these words will still be in some internet archive when it does happen.

Topic of the Day: Forest Fires-Part 1

Last night, 60 minutes had a story about the rise in intensity of forest fires in the US in the last decade. Missing from the story was any mention of the part that the Sierra Club and other organizations that claim to be interested in the environment have played in this disaster.

No mention was made of any of those organization's efforts to convert as many acres of forest as possible to roadless wilderness where fire fighting and insect mitigation are difficult to impossible.

No mention was made of the part politicians like Mark Udall have played in an effort to ensure that the forest service can not easily approve thinning even in areas that can be managed. His support, along with Diana DeGette, and John Salazar of roadless wilderness areas that can't be managed in any way wasn't mentioned, either.

In short, unlike most stories where 60 minutes is quick to assign blame, these forest fires are a natural phenomena that can be blamed on "global warming." The environmentalist extremists are blameless.

The largest fire this year was 600,000 acres. That is 1000 square miles. Another this year was 500,000 acres. Fires of 200,000 acres, once rare, are now commonplace.

If "global warming" is causing these fires and greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are causing global warming, one wonders why 60 minutes couldn't make the connection between the megatons of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere by these fires and the environmentalist extremist communities' refusal to allow reasonable forest management.

60 minutes did report one fact that was new to this author: Half of the area burned was so badly damaged that it won't be reforested in the foreseeable future. That will have a serious impact on water supplies.

Nice Job, Mark! Keep those campaign checks coming from the Sierra Club and its allies.

Thinking the Implications All the Way Through

The environmentalist left, personified by the Sierra Club and it's poster boy, Mark Udall, has adopted a strategy of allowing forest fires to burn, not only burn, but burn hot.

He and they don't want there to be forest roads which might be used to thin forests to prevent severe burn overs that put a crust on the soil. Crusted soil, like that in the Hayman burn area make it difficult to reforest the area. Estimates are that it will take 700 years before that area is fully restored.

Yes, Udall has sponsored a bill to thin near mountain communities. That is a half measure intended to protect him from criticism should there be the large scale property loss that would accompany a fire near one of those communities. He was careful to assure the environmentalist left that the thinning would be very limited.

Now, his allies at Colorado Confidential are reporting that forest fires release large amounts of mercury into the atmosphere:

"The mercury in the forest is not harming anything,. But when a fire releases it from the vegetation and the soils, it comes down again, precipitated in rain or snow, where it may end up in a body of water. There it gets converted in methyl mercury. That's what we're concerned about. The more fires we have, the more mercury will end up in the waterways," [ NCAR scientist Hans Friedli ] says."

This is one more argument for forest thinning. It demonstrates once again that the Sierra Club, Mark Udall, and the rest of the environmentalist left can't seem to think the policies they want to impose on the rest of us all of the way, or even part of the way through.

Fire on Pikes Peak

It looks like Mark Udall can claim his own carbon footprint in El Paso County. We have a fire on Pikes Peak today. He needs to hope that it gets put out before it gets really ugly.

Quote of the Day

It is no secret that we blame people like Mark Udall, Ken Salizar, and their environmentalist left allies like the Sierra Club for their mindless refusal to allow the forests to be managed responsibly. In the next post down, the Gazette comments on their casual attitude toward the damage caused by improper forest management

Also, today, the Gazette describes the revegitation of one burned over area, the 2005 Mason Gulch 12,000 acre (20 square mile) fire.

Regrowth is where it should be two years after a fire, said Paul Crespin, district ranger for San Isabel National Forest.

Forest Service officials have reseeded 85 percent of the area, and are treating it for noxious weeds. They have been collecting pine cones from the area, and hope to plant ponderosa pine seedlings by the spring of 2009.

“In our lifetime, we won’t see those trees come back in the way they were,” Crespin said.

But, the Quote of the Day was by Dave Van Manen, director of the nearby Mountain Park Environmental Center:

“In a way, now this is safe from a catastrophic fire," he said.

The quote sounds like something Bill Ritter, Ken Salizar, or Mark Udall would say.

Blame Mark Udall and the Environmentalist Left

Today's Colorado Springs Gazette had a stinging editorial about Governor Bill Ritter's casual attitude toward the destruction of Colorado's Forests:

Half a year after taking the job, Gov. Bill Ritter last week apparently woke to the fact that Colorado is confronting a forest health crisis of massive proportions, with potentially catastrophic aesthetic and economic consequences. But rather than responding with an action plan, and demanding that state and federal agencies do more to save what forests they can, Ritter seemed to shrug it off as an unavoidable natural calamity.

“(Ritter) said the epidemic can’t be stopped, only managed to reduce the risk of wildfires,” reported The Associated Press. “It’s part of a natural cycle that our kids and grandkids will probably experience,” Ritter said...

This natural disaster is man-made, and a scandal that for some reason hasn’t been recognized as such. Blaming it all on natural forces, and writing it off as inevitable, is a sly way of skirting blame for what’s happening and avoiding the responsibility to respond. And that simply won’t do.

The devastation might still be contained if Ritter and other politicians [ Mark Udall ] would stop wringing their hands and take action. It’s rather pathetic for Ritter to be focusing on how thousands of acres of dead trees might fit into his pie-in-the-sky renewable energy plans, instead of preventing more trees from dying.

This is an appeal by the Gazette to Governor Ritter for common sense. Ritter is simply following the path that Mark Udall has blazed with a roadless policy that promotes large scale forest fire after large scale forest fire.

We and others have written about this elsewhere.