Interesting commentary from Robert Bidinotto
The first spark of the California fire season ignited unseen, 'way back in 1988, when its kangaroo rat was declared an "endangered species." Since then, compliance with the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 has forced California communities, and countless more across the nation, to develop species and habitat "conservation plans" that severely limit human activities in "protected" areas.
"Protected," that is, from everything except wildfires--especially on the vast tracts of government lands and forests in the West. "Species protections" and "wilderness" designations have erected formidable legal barriers to common-sense forestry management measures such as cutting new roads through forests for fire-fighting equipment, bulldozing "firebreaks," and clearing away dead branches, underbrush, and sage scrub--fuels which send fires leaping to the crowns of trees and raging out of control.
The General Accounting Office warned in 1999 of the dangerous accumulation of fuel, but environmentalist pressures continued to prevent humans from managing environments that greens preferred to keep "pristine." In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Robert H. Nelson surveyed the resulting damages and body counts. In 2000, 8.4 million acres went up in smoke. In 2002, 6.9 million more acres were reduced to ashes, as were 800 homes, in firestorms that also took the lives of 23 more firefighters, and cost $1.7 billion. Now, three-quarters of a million acres of California are gone, and with them, over 3,500 homes, $2 billion, and 22 more human lives. And all this doesn't count the impact on critters, either. These conflagrations destroyed many of the very "endangered species" and habitats that environments claimed they wish to protect.
He gives a bunch of links to back up his ideas - well worth thinking about...