Dear editor:
He was and still is the icon of the forest. A beloved image to every baby boomer and child that has ever visited the mountains. Unfortunately, his original creed of ‘Only you can prevent forest fires’ got lost somewhere in the failed policies of the US Forest Service over the last 50 years.
My wife and I owned 58 acres of forest land in the Wind River range of western Wyoming at an elevation of 8,000 feet, west of Dubois. Over the years we spent tens of thousands of dollars removing dead trees and clearing underbrush, at the suggestion of the local Firewise service manager. We both agreed it was the right and prudent thing to do.
Our property was boarded on 3 sides by the national forest. After 15 years of cleaning up our property, we invited the local US Forest Service office out to inspect as well as to question them on what they were going to do about the dead trees on the forest property that were falling on our fences, and to mitigate any potential fires.
There answer was stunning: Nothing.
I listened carefully as they explained that they required a bid from private companies to pay for the right to come into the forest to retrieve the lumber .
That is the way it works, they said.
So, instead of the Forest Service cleaning up the dead fall and dead standing trees, thinning the forest and the underbrush, they wait for a private contractor to ‘bid’ on doing the work, but it seldom happens. In the past, lumber mills were allowed to go in and harvest the wood. That kept the forests cleaner.
Unfortunately, that no longer happens, and forests are left to “grow naturally, and die naturally”, leaving huge areas of time bombs to ignite into massive, mega fires.
Last summer 90,000 acres burned in the forest next to our property in the Pack Trail Fire. Tens of millions of tax dollars were spent trying to control the fire, and hundreds of man hours used, resulting in another environmental disaster and leaving a scarred landscape for miles.
Smokey needs to be given a new mission and replace his shovel with an axe.
Sincerely,
Brandon Baker
Jackson, Wyoming
