"Congressman Wants Probe of Logging Study"

[GreenPartyVoter]

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) - Accusing the Bush administration of manipulating science for political ends, a congressman is calling for an investigation into why federal funding was suspended for a study that did not support White House calls for more logging after wildfires.

Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., asked the Interior Department's inspector general to examine whether the U.S. Bureau of Land Management was punishing researchers from Oregon State University for their findings.

"It's very apparent to most neutral observers that under this administration in a variety of ways that the scientific process has been corrupted by political influence," Inslee said Tuesday. He added: "It goes back to Galileo being punished for his views."

The Bush administration has argued that logging a national forest after a blaze can clear debris and reduce the risk of further wildfires. But the OSU study found that salvage logging killed seedlings and increased, in the short term, the amount of fuel on the ground to feed more fires.

http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20060208/D8FL3F2O0.html

[XemaSab]

1. I did bird research on the Biscuit fire in Oregon

and here's what I saw: the old, healthy forests for the most part had low-intensity ground fires, some of the second growth was torched and some looked pretty good, but the stuff that was JUST NUKED was the regenerating clearcuts. Even the naturally brushy sites had some solid regrowth of manzanita and other shrubs, but the clearcuts, there was NOTHING left.

Forest thinning can prevent large fires, but clearcutting CREATES large fires.

[flashdebadge]

2. Has anyone seen the program on PBS about the environmental logger? This

guy uses horses to pull the tree out of the forest once he has cut it down. He does however use a chain saw but due to the fact that he is using horses he doesn't need to cut a road through the forest. I wonder what his political leanings are?

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Welcome to DU. That's pretty cool. I still favor hemp farming over

logging but that's cool. :)

[flashdebadge]

4. Me too. There are so many good reasons but big brother wont go for it.

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. Other places in the world are going for it, so that's some small

consolation.

[Lefty48197]

7. I think they would have called him a Yankee back in the day

That's the way it was done in the olden days. It was only the logging capitalists who used roads, because it increased their profits. Meanwhile, we lost almost all of our old growth forests in Michigan, and they got rich. Some of them even got buildings, roads, and parks named after themselves.

[Lefty48197]

6. Nothing creates more fuel for fire than loggers.

Yeah they clean up a lot better than they did 125 years ago, but they still leave enough scrub on the ground to provide plenty of fuel for a fire.