There will be NO forest jobs!

Vilsack's talk about forests is just that. The call for collaboration and consensus has fallen on deaf ears. The litigating public is licking their chops at their new "forest industry" that "extracts" money from National Forests through lawsuits. All a lawyer has to do is to win on just one point of a complexity of scientific and bureaucratic tangle of rules, laws and policies. Even a sounding board like this one just doesn't even WANT to talk about forest policy, happy with having loggers locked out and mills closing. Despite science, the courts have spoken. Despite science, vast newly planned wilderness areas, and wilderness-like areas will be allowed to burn in the tens of millions of acres. It IS inevitable!

There will also be no tourist jobs on our forests, as wildfires are still "free range" and people are avoiding burned over and smoky landscapes. Fishermen and hunters will also be locked out when National Forests ban access due to catastrophic wildfire.

Vilsack was purposely vague on specific talk about managing forests, consensus and collaboration. Basically, he is asking America to simply trust the Obama Administration while they come up with "Healthy Forests, the Sequel". The original "Healthy Forests" was an almost unanimous bi-partisan bill, re-written by Democrats, that was dropped like a hot potato right after it was passed.

I ask, why do we need consensus when we ALREADY have a law on the books, passed earlier this year in the Omnibus Amendment? You didn't know?!?! Neither did Congress and Vilsack, apparently!!!! Why does Congress pass laws without reading them that won't hold up in court?? Sounds like a big circle jerk, to me!

You're opposed to more wilderness?

If loggers would stay the hell out of the Old Growth and stop clear cutting, progress on logging could be made. Most fires are not nuke zones, they just clean out the undergrowth. Constantly painting the picture of scorched forests is half the problem. Forests are not your personal income portfolio.

That RW rant is so 1992.

since people know what they think they know and don't want to know no more, I'll stop trying to educate people. However, if PHD's, other scientists, a current Democratic Secretary of Agriculture, 5 Chiefs of the Forest Service and my own 20 years of working on salvage sales cannot convince anyone of ongoing forest disaster, it IS time for me to give up trying to save forests.

It looks like the Democrats have adopted the irrational town hall screaming tactics of the Repugs, and who can compete with THAT?!?!

I may or may not come back to taunt you guys as more of our forests are lost. BTW, we're now at 5.7 million acres burned, probably close to a half billion in suppression costs, 60 million tons of GHG's spewed into the atmosphere and close to 10 BILLION in mitigation damages for this year!

Welcome to "1984", where John Muir is spinning in his grave!

Extremists are already calling him an "idiot" and are promising resistance of all kinds.

And the wildfires still rage!

Does anyone really think that eco-groups, like the Sierra Club and the CBD, will stop suing to stop eco-forestry projects? It's entirely too profitable to stop suing and resisting. Bad for fundraising!! Vilsack knows his plans won't make it through the courts. Do you think the Sierra Club is going to drop its demands to end logging on public lands?!?!

Try http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Omnibus_Public_Land_Management_Act_of_2009/Title_IV to see what Congress has already passed.

Yes, this IS "Healthy Forests, Part Deux"