Wildfires issue of our time

Uncontrollable wildfires due to the lack of forest management is the conservation issue of our time.

Saw log forestry on the Sequoia National Forest basically ended with the passage of the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960. It directed the Secretary of Agriculture to develop and administer the renewable resources of timber, range, water, recreation and wildlife of National Forests for multiple use and sustained yield of products and services.

This Act created public debate between two different philosophies: forest management or preservation. Congress finally came down on the side of preservation. National Forests were to become living museums citizens could see but not use.

The 1981 Consent Decree mandated the Forest Service to increase the number of female employees by 43 percent in five years. Its No. 1 priority was to become a socially-corrected agency. It has taken the next 49 years to finally understand neither sex or race is viable criteria for conducting forest management.

Ten years later, Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of Interior, ruled the U.S. Forest Service would abandon its mission to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of the nation’s forests. The new mission became change landscape back to the theoretical time before white men began to graze cattle, mine hillsides, clear cut forests or dam streams.

The Sequoia National Forest is owned by 330 million citizens who are currently engrossed in their own in their own immediate well-being. In reality this same forest is an actual part of Tulare and Kern Counties and it means we, the users, are its only caretakers.

When we leave the forest to nature as the Forest Service is currently doing, we get whatever nature serves up, which can be devastating at times. However, with proper forest management we have options and a degree of predictability not found in nature.

There’s no such thing as leaving nature alone. People are part of nature. We don’t have the option of choosing not to be stewards of the land. We must master the art of good stewardship.

Environmentalists and current Forest Service employees don’t seem to understand the only way to preserve nature is to manage nature.

We have the knowledge and skill-sets necessary to reduce the size, frequency and destructive power of these devastating wildfires but as the forest users we lack the political will to act in a meaningful manner. We’re literally burning our future to the ground.

Waiting until you know how to do something right before you do anything isn’t the solution.