The US Forest Service’s lazy and dangerous deliberate or so called “prescribed” burns that are taking place all over Western NC overlook the damage of these attacks on the understory of our forests to ground dwelling creatures, vertebrates and invertebrates alike.  Currently the US Forest is mandated to extract forest products, even if below cost and at great cost to the environment and taxpayers.  The US Forest Service should change their mandate to preservation and recognize the damage they do with managing the forests for the maximized profits of the 1%.

This uninvestigated US Forest Service propaganda puff piece fails to disclose that there are far safer methods of clearing brush from the forests than deliberate burns that frequently get out of control and “do” burn private property.  In Caldwell County reportedly twice as much area was burned as was intended.  Deliberate burns get out of control so often that some states have banned them.  Alternatively some areas are hiring veterans, who desperately need jobs, to clean brush and fire fuel from danger areas.

The real fuel for burning thousands of acres of public forest land in this area is the half million dollars specifically designated for deliberate burns and provided by the United States Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) who is over the United States Forest Service (USFS).  So funding is available for destructive deliberate burns but the USDA fails to fund emergency housing assistance for the three county area of McDowell, Burke, and Rutherford despite the fact that deliberate burns will inevitably increase our health costs as well as reducing income from tourism due to environmental degradation.

A very important reason to ban deliberate burns is because of the known harm that wood smoke poses for infants and children.  http://www.madmothersofamerica.com/
Wood smoke is far more dangerous than cigarettes as the particles are far smaller and go deep into lungs and pass into the bloodstream damaging other organs.  The USFS and United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) are well aware of this and continue to promote what amounts to premeditated random homicide, as they know some children will die, just not specifically which ones.  Adults, pets, wild birds, farm animals all suffer from toxic wood smoke that contains over 4,000 toxic chemicals.

The benefits of deliberate burns are highly debatable.

Fire will have serious and unknown effects on the soil, burning organic matter, killing necessary beneficial insects such as beetles, worms, fungi, causing soil erosion and pollution after the burn.  This also causes loss of the duff layer, which buffers erosion during rains, creating sedimentation in the streams, killing trout and other fish through oxygen depletion and further depletion of shade previously provided by rhododendrons and laurels, which given the almost total loss of our hemlocks is significant. Did the USFS neglect the hemlocks destruction because hemlocks are not a commercial tree for logging?

Habitat alteration and changes in species from deliberate burns can be significant ranging from actual fatalities and decreased reproductive ability caused by fire to salamanders, ground dwelling reptiles, small mammals and ground nesting birds.

Old growth forest areas should be determined and protected as they may be damaged or killed.  Rhododendron and Mt. Laurel are tourist attractions and provide shelter for ground dwelling and shade loving plants and animals and should be protected, not cleared for monoculture logging purposes.

Our forests are being taken over by and for the 1% at the expense of the 99% for extraction purposes such as logging, fracking, drilling, (all sources of pollution and destruction) hunting (which was previously not allowed on national forests and public land where it endangers and excludes other public land users), and grazing.  All of these activities are highly subsidized by the public tax payer and monopolize and destroy our public lands.  Our objective today should be the preservation of our vanishing forests for the benefit of all, not the unfair taking by the privileged few. 

As far as the need to increase bear populations, there are already 17 bear sanctuaries in NC and baiting is legal.  It is simply untrue that wildlife would starve if it were not for hunters.  Wildlife will not overbreed when left to nature as the natural food supply will determine their numbers.  It takes no imagination and little empathy to imagine the terror to wildlife of having their homes burned.

Deliberate burning increases Global Warming from increased smoke emissions and loss of trees which serve as a carbon sinks.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

We need to preserve our forests not burn them.  Public land should be for everyone, not just the 1%. 

McDowell Democratic Convention
April 14, 2012
(A state and national resolution)

Resolution banning Prescriptive Burns in publicly owned state and federal forests

WHEREAS, Colorado Gov. Hickenlooper has recently banned prescribed burns which frequently burn out of control, and

WHEREAS, In March of 2012 in Colorado several people died and dozens of homes were destroyed as a result of one prescribed burn, and

WHEREAS, Studies show that prescribed burn smoke exposure can prevent the proper development of an unborn fetus, prevent the proper development of internal organs in infant children, depress the immune system, damage the nervous system, damage the brain, damage the layer of cells in the child’s lungs that protect and cleanse the airways, and cause unexpected infant mortality, and

WHEREAS, in vulnerable populations, such as elderly people, people with asthma, chronic respiratory disease and those with high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, prescribed burn smoke exposure is particularly harmful, even short exposures can prove fatal. The American Lung Association recently published an annotated bibliography of recent studies of the health effects of air pollution linking wood smoke and air pollution with lung cancer, breast cancer, heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure, congenital heart defects, asthma, and brain damage. They identify the elderly, diabetics, asthma patients, those with congestive heart failure being at increased risk, and

WHEREAS, prescribed burns have adverse effects on and sometimes kill old growth forests by charring and altering soil chemistry, and consume organic matter, killing nutrient cyclers such as soil beetles and other insects, worms, fungi, leading to nutrient runoff from the soil, which leads to less fertile/productive soils and water pollution once rail follows the burn, and

WHEREAS, prescribed burning strips the soil of the duff layer, which serves as a buffer to erosion when it rains, so not only are more compounds available to run off into streams after combustion, there is also little to interfere with rainfall carrying the soil itself away into streams, leading to erosion of soils and sedimentation of streams especially in steep and mountainous areas, and

WHEREAS, the changes in species composition after burning alters vegetation cover and can alter habitat for other insects and animals that live there, and

WHEREAS,  prescribed burns cause direct fatalities and decreased reproductive success in salamanders, ground dwelling reptiles, small mammals and ground nesting birds as well as killing fish from sedimentation runoff, and

WHEREAS, alternative hand clearing would create many local jobs, eliminate the health risks from smoke and the potential for renegade fires from out of control burns, as is current FS policy in Joyce Kilmer national forest,

WHEREAS, financial savings would result from lack of need for overtime for fighting the renegade burns,

WHEREAS, prescribed burns adversely affect tourism by charring vast areas and killing vegetation, wildlife, and fish.

Therefore be it resolved that all prescribed burns in public owned state and federal forests are to be banned.

A website (www.SaveLGW.org) was established to involve citizens and develop grass roots activism to prevent the US Forest Service to burn the Linvile Gorge Wilderness.  The website is intended to be informative about the USFS plan and provides an online petition that delivers the petitioners comments to the designated USFS recipient via email.

I want to thank Danial Boone for his comment and i think he is pretty much on target.  Folks, i think the US Forest Service has just gone crazy .  Since the year 2000 there have been four major burns within the Linville Gorge Wilderness area and only one of them was natural, caused by lightening.  Now the USFS plans to reburn the whole Wilderness again.. WHY?.  How much is enough?  I can certainly understand the need to protect private property.  After all since Wilderness area is protected by Law from loging, the trees and wildlife are valueless— a liabillty .  If you subtract al the pseudo-environmental hoop-la about ‘fire dependent species’ what remains is an end-run on the public to do a preemptive burn so that the NEXT fire to come along will not have so much fuel.  This becomes the only credible point in qbout 50 pages of fine print.  Does it really protect?  Well, if you look at the remains of the Dobson knob fire area a few years ago you see a forest of standing dry rododendrons now more flamable than ever!  So the USFS has to burn the wilderness over and over again and keep on burning every few years ——forever.  This is what they call ‘management’. It feeds an industry.  The harsh reality is this: the US Forest Service has sold out and no longer protects the forest nor your interests.  We now must fight to protect the Wilderness from them.  I now see an agency that appears to have lost all touch with reality and is hell-bent on destroying its own credibility.  Even if we stop them on this particular effort, something has gone so very wrong on the higher decision making levels that congressional investigation is needed.  Bob Underwood