Mark Udall Must Have Been Last In Line For Brains

It took the Wilderness Society less than 24 hours to attack Mark Udall's legislation, even while admitting that they hadn't read it:

Such waivers, known as categorical exclusions, have been misused in the past for widespread tree cutting, said Michael Francis, director of the national forest program for the Wilderness Society.

But isn't that the point? We want the dead trees cut down now, not after years of courtroom wrangling.

It turns out that Mark Udall remains intent on preventing the establishment of clear cut fire breaks. He told the Wilderness Society:

"These lands that fit in the categorical-exclusion category have to be very close to a community, and they have to be part of a community's wildfire-protection plan," Udall said.

The Udall bill allows the exclusions for land within 1.5 miles of an affected area. The Wilderness Society supports only a half-mile limit, Francis said.

"When you start going out, you're not getting any protection, and you're spending an awful lot of the taxpayers' money," Francis said.

We think that a failure to have clear cut fire breaks at the Hayman fire area has cost the taxpayers in excess of a quarter of a billion dollars so far. Michael Francis has no interest in protecting the taxpayers when he can protect dead trees by claiming to protect the taxpayers.

Udall admits that his bill won't allow for either fire breaks more than 7000 feet from a community or the roads that would support them:

The bill keeps in place protections for land in wilderness areas, where new roads can't be built or where the land is fragile, Udall said.

Colorado voters will be well rid of Mark Udall. He totally lacks common sense. Fragile land that is encrusted by a hot forest fire doesn't support any kind of life. Ask the folks who live near the Hayman burn area.

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.