Enviros down in flames

The inferno continues in Tucson as I write. It’s one of at least eight wildfires in Arizona and the fire season’s just beginning. With the heat, wind and drought, it’ll be a long, hot, dangerous summer.

It also sets the scene for more battles between the Bush administration and environmentalists.

By the time you read this, who knows what this fire toll will be. Right now, there’s zero containment of the fire at Mount Lemmon, 7,000 acres burned and no estimate for containment or control.

In other words, all bets are off with residents and firefighters at the mercy of 60-mph winds, parched brush, piles of dead wood and nature.

Residents of Summerhaven were evacuated shortly after the fire broke out last Tuesday and by Friday night, at least 250 homes had been destroyed with others threatened.

At the 6,000-foot level, Summerhaven has hundreds of vacation cabins as well as the homes of some 100 year-round families.

The area is wooded with ponderosa pines providing respite from Tucson’s desert heat. It’s beautiful country with spectacular views but with the beauty, there’s also a constant, deadly threat – fire.

Fire was always a threat here. Western history is filled with terrifying descriptions of devastating prairie fires devouring everything in their paths. Forest and brushfires were no less destructive. Whether the blazes were deliberately set, an accident or just nature – think lightening – the damage to everything in their path, was stunning.

For humans – natives or settlers – fires were regular torments, destroying lives and livelihoods. For animals, it was a horrible and frightening end. There’s never an accurate toll of wildlife lost in such blazes.

For nature, such fires are devastating, healing and nurturing.

Trees and underbrush are burned but it’s not a death knell. Only dead wood is lost – healthy trees survive and become stronger. For some plants, the fire helps seeds to germinate and stimulates new, healthy growth.

In fact, wildfires are nature’s way of “cleaning house,” burning out the debris on the forest floor and allowing life to continue.

But nature’s plan doesn’t include people and people don’t like fire. We don’t want forests and fields to burn. We especially don’t want homes, possessions and businesses turned to ashes. We don’t want animals killed – any animals.

So we’ve spent the last 30-plus years “preventing forest fires.” Overall we’ve done a pretty good job – for years, the number of fires decreased.

We’ve also – at the instigation of environmentalists – spent the last 30-years plus protecting the forests, putting thousands of acres under government control and making new laws and regulations to limit what can and can’t be done with the trees and underbrush.

In fact, if enviros had their way, nothing would be done with the forests. They came closest to that during the Clinton administration, gaining passage of laws to support a roadless policy: no more roads in wilderness areas and eliminating use of existing roads whether fire roads or those used for recreation or logging. Don’t build new ones and eliminate old ones.

Their ideal scenario is lots and lots of wild country untouched by humans; preferably, land not visited by humans at all.

Unfortunately idealistic dreams of virgin forests don’t include common sense. “Preventing” fires meant clean up didn’t happen; dead debris piled up. Then enviros decided we shouldn’t clean up the forests at all. In other words, if insects killed trees, the dead wood was left untouched. If branches dropped, leave them there along with the needles and leaves that piled more than several feet thick.

As a result, when there are fires, they’re so hot they’ll actually kill live trees. What might have been a “normal” forest fire becomes an inferno beyond nature’s intent.

That’s what’s facing the more than 1,000 firefighters on the line in Arizona. According to an Associated Press report, “The blaze consumed pine trees ravaged by years of drought and an infestation of tree-killing bark beetles.” Thank the enviros for that.

If natural fires had been allowed to burn or if loggers had been allowed to haul out the insect-ridden trees before they died, this fire wouldn’t have the enormous fuel it has.

Estimates are that hundreds of thousands of acres will burn before it’s out.

Barely two weeks ago, the Bush administration reversed the roadless policy hoping to prevent scenarios like this.

Naturally, the enviros screamed foul. They don’t care about people or even common sense. That’s what makes them so dangerous.

The battle lines are drawn and the flames are high. Let’s see who wins.