And Still There Will Be No Roads

In an article that the Gazette did not put on the Internet it reported:

Every large, mature lodgepole pine forest in Colorado and Southern Wyoming will be dead within three to five years...

In an effort to dodge blame, Mark Udall and his wild eyed allies in the environmentalist movement have claimed that this is a natural event, happening every 150 years. The US Forest Service disagrees:

Rick Cables, the US Forest service's regional supervisor described the die-off as "a huge, unprecedented event with major social and economic implications.

Perhaps most at stake are the state's water supplies. A lack of soil cover and the potential for forest fires as the dying trees dry out could leave reservoirs and rivers clogged with sediment more likely to pour off the landscape.

It is time for Mark Udall and his Sierra Club allies to recognize that this disaster needs to be managed, and that it cannot be managed without a reasonable access to the trees. That means roads. They supposedly love wilderness but don't much care if it is green or brown.

Mark Udall, A Practiced Liar

It should make people outside Colorado angry when they read a statement like the one Mark Udall recently issued promoting his very limited bill to thin Colorado forests:

“As quickly as the beetle epidemic is spreading throughout Colorado, the needs related to forest health and fuel reduction in our national forests are vast and urgent. These funds are critically important for the health and safety of our forests and communities--and ultimately the west, as Colorado stands at the source of life giving rivers that can be impacted by our unbalanced forest condition," said Rep. Mark Udall.

That statement is very impressive until one realizes that Udall's bill does nothing to promote fuel reduction in "our national forests" except close in to mountain towns. In fact, he and the Sierra Club strongly oppose "promoting forest health and fuel reduction" in our national forests

Colorado, as Udall correctly states, is at the source of rivers that can be impacted by "our unbalanced forest condition." Neither Mark Udall nor his environmentalist extremists give a whit about those rivers or the 17 downriver states they irrigate. Instead of allowing the management of the forests in a way that would protect those rivers, Udall wants to make the forests into wilderness areas that cannot, by law, be managed.

Udall's bill does allow and fund very limited fuel reduction near Colorado ski towns and some very local watersheds. No roads are to be built. His goal is to get elected US Senator. Having ski areas burned out before the election wouldn't help. That is why he is so willing to give the Sierra club what it wants while publicly pretending his bill does something it doesn't do.