US had fleet of 44 firefighting planes 10 yrs. ago, now down to 9, Obama has known this since Jan. 2009, even canceled air tanker contract in 2011

Update, 6/29/12, "Four additional military MAFFS air tankers activated," Wildfiretoday.com
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Update #2, 6/29/12, "US Carbon Output Forecasts Shrink Again," American Interest, Walter Russell Mead
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"On the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, where thinning is practiced, the tribal lands are in far better shape."

• 6/20/12, "How Obama Bureaucrats Fueled Western Wildfires," Michelle Malkin, Townhall.com, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"The smell of singed air here is inescapable. Less than 50 miles west of my neighborhood, the latest wildfire has spread across 1,100 acres. It's the fifth active blaze to erupt in our state over the past month. But ashes aren't the only things smoldering.

The Obama administration's neglect of the federal government's aerial tanker fleet raises acrid questions about its core public safety priorities. Bipartisan complaints goaded the White House into signing a Band-Aid fix last week. But it smacks more of election-year gesture politics:

• Too little, too late, too fake.

Ten years ago, the feds had a fleet of 44 firefighting planes. Today, the number is down to nine for the entire country. Last summer, Obama's National Forest Service canceled a key federal contract with Sacramento-based Aero Union just as last season's wildfires were raging. Aero Union had supplied eight vital air tankers to Washington's dwindling aerial firefighting fleet. Two weeks later, the company closed down, and 60 employees lost their jobs. Aero Union had been a leader in the business for a half-century.

Why were they grounded? National Forest Service bureaucrats and some media accounts cite "safety" concerns. But as California GOP Rep. Dan Lungren noted in a letter obtained by reporter Audrey Hudson of the conservative D.C. newspaper Human Events last year, a Federal Aviation Administration representative said it was a contractual/compliance matter, not safety, that doomed Aero Union's fleet.

"I am deeply troubled by the Forest Service's sudden action," Lungren warned, "particularly as California enters into the fire season. Our aerial firefighting fleet is already seriously undercapitalized." Both the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the Department of Agriculture's Inspector General have been critical of the Forest Service's handling of the matter. All of this has been known to the Obama administration

• since it took the reins in 2009.

Nine months after Lungren's warning, the deadly High Park fire in Larimer County, Colo., claimed a grandmother's life, destroyed 189 homes and scorched nearly 60,000 acres. Arizona, New Mexico, Washington and Wyoming also have battled infernos this summer.

After months of dire red flags from a diverse group of politicians ranging from Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry and Arizona GOP Sen. Jon Kyl to Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and New Mexico Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman, President Obama finally signed emergency legislation last week to expedite the contracting process. Obama will borrow planes from Canada and provide $24 million for new aerial tanker contracts.

But the money won't come until next year, and the dog-and-pony rescue moves will not result in any immediate relief. "It's nice, but this problem isn't fixed with a stroke of the pen," former Forest Service official and bomber pilot Tony Kern told the Denver Post this week. "You need to have the airplanes available now." Veteran wildland firefighter and blogger Bill Gabbert of WildfireToday.com adds: "The USFS should have awarded contracts for

• at least 20 additional air tankers, not 7."

Imagine if Obama's Forest Service had been a private company. White House eco-radicals would be rushing to place their "boots on the necks" of the bureaucrats who made the fateful decision to put an experienced aerial tanker firm out of business as wildfires raged and the available rescue fleet shrunk.

"The Obama administration is scrambling now to help ensure the Forest Service has the air assets it needs to fight the ongoing inferno," Colorado free-market environmental watchdog Sean Paige reported at MonkeyWrenchingAmerica.com last week. "But the crisis is bound to raise questions not just about whether the cancelled contract created additional weaknesses and vulnerabilities, but about what the administration has been doing over the past three summers to shore-up the service's air fleet."

Where there's smoke swirling over Team Obama there are usually flames of incompetence, cronyism and ideological zealotry at the source. The ultimate rescue mission? Evacuating Obama's wrecking crew from the White House permanently. November can't come soon enough."

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The federal government says "it can't afford to" do life-saving necessary thinning.

6/20/12, "Forest-thinning strategy credited for saving Alpine from 2011 fire," Arizona Republic, S. McKinnon

""Wallow (in 2011) showed us that thinning worked, but it also showed us we weren't thinning enough," said Ed Collins, district ranger in Lakeside for the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests. "In some places, fire killed the trees before it dropped to the ground. We need to thin more. But we're on the right path."...

The initiative is supported by a coalition of government agencies, environmental groups and businesses and will test whether private industry can pay for work the federal government readily admits it can't afford to do. The businesses, through a contract awarded last month, will cut down the trees, haul them to a processing plant near Winslow and use the wood to make furniture, doors, cabinets and other products. The companies keep the profits; the government gets the work done for just administrative and oversight costs.

The apparent success of forest treatments around Alpine and Nutrioso restoked debate over the premise of the Four Forest project, that only small-diameter trees should be removed,

• leaving older trees to help sustain the forest ecosystem.

"When we talk about logging, that's very different than talking about thinning," said NAU's Covington. "Logging traditionally is removal of the larger and commercially valuable trees. Thinning is focusing on trees that you want to remove for natural-resource objectives."

The older, larger-diameter trees are more valuable to timber companies, which complain that the market for small-diameter trees, typically 16 inches or less, is limited....

But although some timber industry supporters would like to see more access to larger-diameter trees, the mills and other infrastructure that supported the business in the 1960s and 1970s

• shut when endangered-species lawsuits
• ended most woodcutting during the 1990s....

Gov. Jan Brewer, who is Republican, was on hand to announce the Four Forest contractor at a news conference in May, and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., often a critic of federal government management of natural resources, has also endorsed the thinning proposal, while

• calling for streamlining of the environmental reviews needed to start work.

With the first contract in place, thinning work could begin within six months. (Marcus) Selig, of the Grand Canyon Trust, said,..."We're getting ready to have a very different kind of forest than most people have seen before," Selig said. "Right after it's done, they may not like it. But it recovers and, in the end,

• green forests are better than black forests."" via Planet Gore
  

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8 million acres in the western US were set aside to protect the Mexican spotted owl.

1/7/12, "Court halts tree-cutting projects in NM, Arizona," AP, via KTAR, New Mexico

"A federal judge has halted three tree-cutting projects in Arizona and New Mexico that environmentalists contend could harm the Mexican spotted owl.

WildEarth Guardians sued the U.S. Forest Service in 2010, claiming the agency ignored its responsibility to track the owl's numbers in the two states. The judge's decision Thursday to grant a preliminary injunction means the projects cannot move forward until the Forest Service consults with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the impacts to the owls.

"The bottom line is we need to know whether the spotted owl is doing well or is declining," said Bryan Bird, the director of WildEarth Guardians' wild places program. "And we don't know that right now because the Forest Service has failed — and they've admitted it — to collect that information."

The owl found on national forest lands, from steep wooded canyons to dense forests, was first listed as threatened in 1993. More than 8 million acres in four Western states — Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado — have been set aside by Fish and Wildlife as critical habitat for the bird.

Federal biologists have said the biggest threat to the owls is destruction and modification of their nesting habitat.

Forest Service spokeswoman Cathie Schmidlin said Friday that the agency is contacting contractors and power companies to let them know of the court's order. One of the projects is for fuel reduction in southern New Mexico's Lincoln National Forest, while a utility maintenance project stretches across a handful of Arizona forests.

Schmidlin said logging activities on the Upper Beaver Creek Project on northern Arizona's Coconino National Forest already have stopped.

U.S. District Judge David Bury in Tucson initially denied a request from WildEarth Guardians to put a stop to the projects but reconsidered at the group's request. Bury wrote in his order Thursday that the injunction aligns with a decision in a companion case that was more broad but

• also cited concerns over the Mexican spotted owl.
  

The lawsuit claims the Forest Service continues to approve logging, grazing and other activities on the Southwest region's 11 forests that could potentially harm the bird. It asked the court to keep the agency from approving or implementing any permits or projects on forest land in Arizona and New Mexico until the agency also prepares a biological assessment.

Bird said his group focused on the three projects out of dozens because it determined those had the most immediate impact to the owl that now will "get the attention it deserves."

Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., who has sponsored legislation to revitalize the Southwest's timber industry and set aside parcels of forest land as sanctuaries for the owl, backed what he called a common sense approach to management by the Forest Service.

He said he's heard from the Mescalero Apaches, whose reservation is surrounded by the Lincoln National Forest, that the owls appear to be thriving as a result of logging.

Overgrown forests are fire hazards that endanger people's homes and threaten wildlife habitat, he said.*

"While I agree that the spotted owl and other endangered species must be protected, we cannot do so at the cost of public safety and we cannot afford to do so without a legitimate reason," he said." via Planet Gore

(*Ed. note: Makes too much sense.)

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6/5/12, "Politician should check her research," Las Vegas Sun, Letter to the Editor, Sanford Cohen, Prescott, Ariz.

"On the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, where thinning is practiced, the tribal lands are in far better shape."

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Ed. note: Billionaire funded so-called environmentalist groups would much rather have fires. The facts make it impossible to think otherwise. Fires help them scare people with a barrage of propaganda via the media. The average person may not be aware they're being flooded with lies. Credit also to decades of sell-out politicians.

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Ed. note #2: Please excuse bright white background behind the third article in this post. This is vandalism done by criminal hackers.

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