Wildfire Expert – Time to Brainstorm to Prevent Future Firestorms
Friday, August 17, 2007
A wildfire expert is calling for some creative thinking to prevent repeat fire seasons like the one Montana is seeing now. Global Forest Science president Dr. Reese Halter says healthy forest practices have to change as climate changes. He even suggests tapping into the prison population to do forest health work.
"Since 1986, the number of fires across the West has quadrupled, the acreage has grown six-fold and more than half the Forest Service budget is going to fighting fires."
Halter wants clearing out small diameter trees and beetle-killed trees to be a priority. And he argues that the old way of thinking that logging will pay for fire risk reduction, and reduce forest fuels, is wrong since logging takes all the naturally fire-resistant trees. He adds there have been some good plans to reduce fire risk in Montana, but federal funding hasn’t arrived to get the projects done.
Halter understands that reducing forest fire risk will be expensive, although he thinks costs can be reduced.
"In my opinion, get prison inmates out there and helping on the land, bringing these trees down."
More information about Global Forest Science is available online at www.globalforestscience.org/about_us.html.
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