Forestryworks,
The quote you use in your sig is total BS. Seems like you're trying to establish credibility by bashing environmentalists. If that's what floats your boat, man. The argument in the quote is a lot of hogwash.
"Environmentalists can no longer escape the fact that their policies of inaction have ended up denuding many forests by increasing the risk and severity of forest fires." - Prof. Robert H. Nelson
A. It's USFS' policy of ACTION not inaction that is at fault. Specifically, it's their policy of suppression of all fires that is to blame for the increased risk and severity of wildfires. they should be lighting more fires and letting more fires burn rather than suppressing everything.
B. The USFS created the policy after a number of catastrophic wildfires in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. This was done not to mollify "environmentalists" but to protect the interests of the logging, mining and ranching companies. The policy was entrenched long before the environmentalists had any kind of foothold.
C. The USFS is not nor has it ever been an "environmental" organization. They are a tool (I mean that in the worse sense) of the aforementioned industries. They are a bureaucracy that feeds off of the cycle of suppression leading to more and worse fires leading to more suppression.
D. The whole Smokey the Bear thing came up during WWII when the Japanese were sending over incendiary balloons to burn our forests so that we'd have to use manpower to fight forest fires thereby diluting the war effort.
E. Robert H. Nelson is nothing more than an industry shill. He wants to do away with the USFS not because they've made bad decisions but because they get in the way of big business. (they get in the way of a lot of other stuff too but that's another topic) This is evidenced by the fact that Nelson promotes only logging as a way of thinning forests to the exclusion of prescribed fire and WFU (wildland fire use for resource benefit). A clear cut denudes the forest as surely as a wildfire. Some would argue that a clearcut does more damage than a fire.
F. Guess who since the 1920s has been promoting prescribed fire, WFU and responsible logging as a means of fuel reduction? "Environmentalists"!
Just like there are good and bad loggers there are good and bad environmentalists. I consider myself both a good logger and a good environmentalist. The two are not mutually exclusive.
I grew up in Wisconsin, a part of the country that was logged to the greatest extent possible by robber barons. It was their irresponsible, greedy behavior that contributed to the denuding of the forests of MI, WI and MN. It was their slash that caused the Peshtigo fire in 1871,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshtigo_Fire. Forests in the lake states are now nothing more than pulp farms. Do you really think that the industry would behave any better if it wasn't for the states and USFS making them toe the line?
& gave it a toss, to avoid the fallout? 
