The Forest Arsonist Agenda

The B and B Burn images below are courtesy SOS Forests and the Oregon Websites and Watersheds Project, Inc.

The words are the discourtesy of Cascadia Summer, a Eugene “environmental” organization affiliated with Earth First! and the Oregon Natural Resource Council. In their own words:

Last week [one week before the pictured B and B Fire was ignited] Cascadians paid a visit to the Clark Fire which burned 5,000 acres near Fall Creek earlier this summer. The area is still off-limits to the public, but we wanted to get a first-hand account of just how bad it was… so we quietly hiked in after crossing the stream a ways before the road-block.

The B and B Burn in winter [Click here for larger image, 325 KB]

The forest looked amazingly beautiful… stark contrast to the lush green forests we were used to seeing along Fall Creek, but beautiful nonetheless. Ferns had already begun sprouting back up through the ash. Scorched Doug Firs and cedars sparkled in the sunlight.

Sparkling contrasts, “amazingly beautiful” [Here, 245 KB]

Many trees were not burned at all, others were lightly blackened by the flames. Some had obviously been swallowed up by the flames, but appeared to be alive. Insects and birds were thriving in the disturbance.

Delayed mortality, two-and-a-half years after the fire. More “survivor” tree deaths are expected from the growing mountain pine beetle infestation [Here, 271 KB]

Afterwards we chose a serene spot in the burn next to the creek and spoke of the energy we received from the forest. Then we jumped into the creek and promised the forest that we would use that energy to defend it at all costs from the greedy timber companies now drooling over the opporunity presented to them by this natural disturbance.

Anybody up for an “energy” swim? [Here, 241 KB]

The trip to Clark seemed all the more appropriate with Bush coming to Oregon to ram his “healthy forest initiative” agenda down our throats. With a fire “spontaneously” occurring near Camp Sherman, where Bush was going to have a fundraiser and push his deforestation agenda, one has to wonder if this isn’t the future … Many recent controversial “salvage” timber sales have officially been declared unsolved arsons.

We have been called to task for referring to these jerks as arsonists. How about self-described felons, pagans, Communists, and forest necrophiliacs, the Karl Marx/Ted Kaczynski/Charles Manson Wing of the environmental movement?