Here BEEF, In their own words;
According to their "forest health" rhetoric, fire suppression has caused excessive numbers of small trees. Stressed by unnatural levels of competition, these tress are more vulnerable to mistletoe and bark beetles. Older trees are threatened by hot fires which use the thickets as "ladders" to leap up into the canopy. Finally, high tree densities create unnatural shade conditions, allowing firs to encroach upon, and eventually replace, ponderosa pine forests.
This is only a partial truth because it focuses too narrowly on tree "health" as it relates to lumber production. It does not consider the myriad problems identified by decades of scientific research: the decline of ponderosa pine old-growth; habitat fragmentation; replacement of native grasses by weedy annuals and shrubs' widespread fish, amphibian, and songbird declines; loss of soil productivity; water pollution; predator control; erosion; and wetland loss.
A recent timber industry proposal to manage the Southwest's National Forests is a good indicator of what it means by "forest health." The Forest Service judged the massive logging proposal to be the best "forest health" option, even though it was also judged the worst choice for wildlife and sensitive species. A competing proposal by state game and fish agencies to protect old-growth and sensitive species, on the other hand, was ranked lower on the "forest health" scale by the Forest Service.
The reason for this discrepancy is that to the timber industry "forest health" means a regulated tree farm, rather than a naturally functioning forest.
The General Accounting Office, research arm of Congress, has over the past two years issued several reports regarding the ability of the Forest Service to implement the National Fire Plan. Two of these reports include critiques of the agency's use of the Fire Plan funding, and a failure to fully implement the Fire Plan. There is also an analysis that shows that environmentalists have appealed only about 1% of Forest Service fuels reduction projects under the National Fire Plan.
As we can see by AZ, NM, and CO. The CBD are fools and this is who we cave into :| :moon: