One slight spin off your comments: Oregon foresters are not embarrassed; we are heart-broken and angry as hell. Oregon foresters did not initiate this crisis of forest destruction, eastern urban twits are responsible.

Oregon foresters do not staff the USFS, not even in Oregon, nor do Oregon foresters have any say in Federal forest policy. Ditto the entire citizenry of the state, who are excluded from our own local landscapes.

Local leadership is needed, yes, but local awareness of local conditions is a prerequisite. The residents need to catch a clue and find some spine: the courage to demand responsible change from the absentee landlords, or to do the job overselves, or both.

Technically, the Black Crater Fire is just another named sub-set of the B&B Complex, which began to take shape shortly after the turn of the century, due largely to beetle-killed conifers, lightning, people, and relatively recent federal passive forest and fire management policies (”litigation opportunities”). Think of the “six-year-jinx” of Tillamook Fires from 1933 to 1951 or the Yaquina Fires of 1849 and 1868 as examples: temporally different wildfire events within the same spatial boundaries. The B&B Burn just got bigger. As clearly and vocally predicted, again.

You are right. This stuff is so preventable and should be/should have been prevented. And at a profit to Oregon schools, rural communities, forest aesthetics, clean air, freshwater, recreational opportunities, and native wildlife (those with spines or vascular cells, anyway) populations. And without the need for forced evacuations of homes, businesses, and yuppie ski cabins every two or three years. And saving however much they’re sending to Mexico or spending on BAER culverts a day that could have gone to local schools or jobs instead.

Wilderness areas have become the nation’s tombs for big, dead, rotting trees. This is sad. Oregon has a lot of costly Wilderness areas — more land than most other States have in total government ownership, in fact; including every single Eastern State. Fortunately our nation’s forest scientists are hard at work solving our forest’s current “Top Priority” problems with “Resiliency” and “Climate Change.” You can look it up. They must have got “Sustainability” hammered or funding must have dried up.

What a waste of resources. What an ugly, dangerous, blatantly mismanaged landscape. This is not what we were given only a generation ago, and not what our grandparents or parents were given, either. Our children and grandchildren deserve better. Oregon foresters should be embarassed that our federal policies are a proven failure. We have the dead trees and broken families and communities to prove it. We need leadership at the local level to stop this nonsense from going any further.

Bob Zybach