NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS
HOME DONATE ONE LEVEL UP ABOUT NCPA ... CONTACT
Banning Roads, Burning Forests View as PDF
Get Adobe Reader
Brief Analysis No. 336
Wednesday, August 30, 2000
By Jeff Edgens The fires that swept through Los Alamos National Laboratory during June 2000 illustrate much of what is wrong with federal land management. A series of bad decisions the United States Forest Service made concerning a prescribed burn (a fire set to reduce undergrowth and prevent future wildfires) at Bandelier National Monument resulted in a fire that raged out of control. As high winds combined with an overabundance of dead and dying wood, the fire incinerated everything in its path, including 400 homes. Active forest management in the region, including the logging of dead trees, would have reduced the chances of an uncontrolled fire. Excessive forest litter creates a virtual tinder box. The hotter fires that result cause great ecological and economic damage. Recently, President Clinton ordered the Forest Service to halt road construction on approximately 50 million acres of national forests. However, government reports indicate that federal forests are suffering from current federal policies, and adding 50 million acres of "quasi-wilderness" will only exacerbate the problems. Background on Forests and Roads The 192 million-acre National Forest system contains over 383,000 miles of roads - eight times the mileage of the interstate highway system. Most of the forest road network was built to facilitate timber harvesting. However, recreational forest users quickly adopted the roads as did the forest service itself for fire prevention and wildlife management. Recreational users alone make some 850 million visits per year to the national forests to camp, motorbike, ride horse back, hunt and hike. | |
|
