Rep. Tom McClintock: Federal Forests & Land Usage

I am lucky enough to live in Representative Tom McClintock's Fornicalia area (District 4), which includes more rural areas of the state -- the upper northeastern portion of Fornicalia down to an area just south of Lake Tahoe -- inclusive of Butte, El Dorado, Lassen, Modoc, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sierra and (a portion of) Sacramento counties.

"All politics is local" as has been said, and so it is with my area and other areas affected by the federal government in terms of land, water and forest management. District 4 is not generally a high-density population zone; it is, however, an area utilized by vacationers, hikers, campers, rural residents (like myself) and those who have purposely determined to flee the crush of people, traffic and crime.


Those who know me, know that I still work for a major law enforcement agency in the Sacramento valley after 35+ years, but live in the Sierra Nevada Mountains at roughly the 4,000-foot elevation. I moved in 1993 because I was just tired of living in a social vise. A homicide next door had nothing to do with that movement -- whilst I was called by my own SWAT team in the dead of night to identify my young neighbor suspect, Brian Frye. And I cannot yet afford to retire primarily due to economic -- like the rest of you -- issues.

That said, my representative made a major, insightful and significant speech on September 20th before the subcommittee on national parks, forests and public lands:

By Tom McClintock on September 20, 2011

Gifford Pinchot, the founder of the U.S. Forest Service, gave a series of lectures at the Yale School of Forestry from 1910 to 1915, in which he propounded maxims for the (quote) “Behavior of Foresters in Public Office.” Among them:

• A public official is there to serve the public and not run them.
• Public support of acts affecting public rights is absolutely required.
• It is more trouble to consult the public than to ignore them, but that is what you are hired for.
• Find out in advance what the public will stand for. If it is right and they won’t stand for it, postpone action and educate them.
• Get rid of an attitude of personal arrogance or pride of attainment or superior knowledge.

Since taking office, I have been inundated with citizen complaints over conduct amounting to the very opposite of Pinchot’s maxims. I want to thank Chairman Bishop and the sub-committee for responding to these complaints and coming to Sacramento to hear firsthand from the people directly victimized.

We will hear about a multitude of exclusionary policies adopted by the current administration including:

• Imposing inflated fees that are forcing the abandonment of family cabins held for generations;
• Shutting down long-established community events upon which many small and struggling mountain towns depend for tourism;
• Expelling long-standing grazing operations on specious grounds – causing damage both to the local economy and the federal government’s revenues;
• Closing long-used roads, many of which are parts of county road systems essential to local residents and even obstructing county efforts to provide maintenance from local budgets to keep those roads open.
• Obstructing the sound management of our forests, creating both severe fire dangers and chronic unemployment. For example, the Forest Service has dramatically reduced its Timber Harvest Target and then boasts they’re going to achieve 90 percent of their reduced target.
  

During this hearing, we will also hear the usual excuses by activist political groups supporting these policies. It is important to understand the context of their assurances.

For example, after doing everything possible to discourage motorized access to our forests, the activists now cite decreased motorized use of our forests as evidence the public has lost interest and they are merely responding to changing demand.

After imposing punitive new conditions on routine events with the obvious intention of shutting them down, the activists tell us that they’re merely trying to assure the victims of these punitive conditions pay for them.

After driving out cabin owners and grazing operations with cost-prohibitive fees, we’re told they’re just trying to reflect market conditions, raising the question, if these are market rates, why aren’t the cabin sites and grazing lands being re-leased?

We’re told they have to shut down forest roads for lack of funds, yet as we will hear, their policies are to actively obstruct local communities seeking to use their own funds to maintain these vital roads.

Frankly, I believe the sophistries in the written testimonies submitted to this subcommittee by the administration and these so-called environmental advocacy groups border on intellectual dishonesty.

I do want to acknowledge that there have been some improvements over the last few months and I want to thank Randy Moore for what he has done to produce them.

For example, the Forest Service has removed inflammatory leftist anti-grazing propaganda from official Forest Service plaques within the Tahoe National Forest and local officials are reporting that consultation by the Forest Service has improved to a limited extent.

However, these are exceptions. The sum total of these policies clearly seems more in line with the radical leftist agenda to drastically limit any human presence from vast tracts of public land, an objective antithetical to the original aims of the U.S. Forest Service and hostile to the values and principles of any free society.

The preservation of our forests for future generations does not mean closing them to the current generation.

I believe that the vast timber, land and recreational assets administered by the U. S. Forest Service represent a limitless and renewable source of prosperity for our nation and for our local economies, a portion of which can then be redirected to assure the maintenance and preservation of the national forest lands for the use, enjoyment and prosperity of the American people in perpetuity. But, that will require a significant change in policy within the current administration.

I am subject to all the strictures of the county, state and federal governments in my area. And I can tell you from my own perspective that Mr McClintock is absolutely correct in his words.

You already know how scathingly non-responsive the federal government was in terms of Mr Obama's speech to farmers, as I wrote on August 20th. As in: dismissive, arrogant and uneducated.

For example, I have to keep my land groomed, cleaned and as fire-safe as possible, or I am subject to citation from CalFire. I spend roughly $1,000 each season in order to do this; $500 for labor and $500 for a 30-cubic-yard+ dumpster through Tahoe-Truckee.

The federal government, however, isn't subject to this stricture. There are 20+ years of tree and brush deadfall in the forests surrounding me and -- further -- this extremely seasoned deadfall cannot lawfully be removed. I can look at my next door neighbor's yard, for example, and see almost a half-foot's difference between my land's level and hers in terms of brush and needle depth.

Out in the surrounding forests when I hike or ride, I can show you areas where the land is rife with brush, fallen trees, at least a foot of squishy needles and detritus.

But no, one cannot clear that land or log those trees or harvest those pieces of fallen and broken timber for, if nothing else, valuable fire wood in winter.

And fires in summer set by accident, arsonists, campers or nature?

Oh my. What incredible tinder purposely exists in this state -- in the Sierra Nevada Mountains -- for a conflagration that could not remotely be stemmed due to (literally) years of neglect. Let me please repeat and emphasize this word: NEGLECT.

I cringe every summer and cannot wait for fall, then winter. Today is the "official" first day of fall.

Doesn't make any difference; my fire season is not yet over.

BZ

P.S.
I'll wager that the bulk of my reader's don't exist in high-density areas like New York or Chicago, Detroit or San Francisco. I'll wager that the bulk of my readers live in moderate-to-low density portions of the nation and know, inherently, that the federal regulations and federal mindsets do and will affect them as well.