This is a great piece of true journalism.
I have friends in Europe who pay handsomely to fish just a few days a year on rivers which have been devastated by private land management. Their stories make my blood cold. If you ask them, we live in a fishing paradise but not for much longer.
If the current tide on political thievery goes unchecked our public lands, now the finest in the world, will no longer be ours to fish and hunt. Don’t believe me?
Read this great story in Hatch Magazine.
Exposing the effort to seize America’s public lands
Louis Cahill
Gink & Gasoline www.ginkandgasoline.com hookups@ginkandgasoline.com Sign Up For Our Weekly Newsletter!
Our system of management for wilderness areas does need to be overhauled.
Just one example of many:
On the 4th of July 1999 a deracho hit the BWCA, taking down millions of trees.
Various groups from local professional loggers to locals citizens who wanted to cut firewood offered to go in and clean up some of the mess. Various proposals to minimize environmental impact, from use of winter ice roads and low impact forwarders to draft animals were proposed.
All were denied.
That wood sat and seasoned for 6 years until the first fire happened.
There have been 5 fires since, three of which were major, one the most extensive fire in Minnesota in the last 90yrs.
And those fires have barely made a dent in the fuel load.
And when these fires do happen they get so big and burn so hot they sterilize the soil. They crown and kill trees that are otherwise resistant to the quick flash fires that are natural to the area. In order to control these big fires, heavy equipment is brought in that leaves scars which will take generations to heal.
And this is only one area. 100 years of mismanagement by the USFS has built up a tinder box in our forests nation wide just waiting for a spark. Fires will be bigger, more intense and more frequent. Instead of controlled logging that maintains riperian zones these fires burn across wide swaths of land. Then rains wash ash and dirt into streams. The ash changes the stream chemistry, bad for insect life, bad for fish.
Our public lands must be protected for the future generations to enjoy. For our eco system to work properly. If our beautiful protected lands are given to individual states to protect and their leaders are corrupt, big business will buy our beautiful lands and tear them apart for their own profit and leave America the Beautiful no more.