SFNF continues burns despite pushback from timber industry, local gadfly

Trees growing on public land are not agriculture any more than wild salmon are aquaculture so pre-emptive burns and managed lightning-struck fires are essential to restoring balance in western ecosystems. 

Fire managers have climate change guns to their heads so it’s usually damned if you do and damned if you don’t conduct prescriptive burns but it’s probably a straight line from the previous administration’s Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and crashes in morale within the US Forest Service to current conditions on the Santa Fe National Forest. 

The Forest Service-caused Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire consumed some 341,000 acres of ponderosa pine and understory but also reduced thousands of acres of flammable grasses. The SFNF has closed roads into the burn area until at least the end of the year to reduce impact on soils and is conducting pile burns. A memorandum of understanding or MOU has been signed between the Forest and Kewa Pueblo to partner on recovery efforts and on a firefighter program.

Frank Carroll is a timber industry toady who uses loaded language like “blowtorch forestry” and likes Bobby Kennedy, Jr. But when he lived in the Black Hills he called the 2015 Cold Brook Fire in Wind Cave National Park a "roaring success." Why? Because it was conducted by the Park Service and not the Forest Service even though it burned beyond what was prescribed and six times better for Wind Cave National Park than fire managers had expected.

Sarah Hyden runs an anti-government website with emphasis on the SFNF. They've teamed up to bind the Forest Service's hands in controlling forest overgrowth with managed fire.