Last Tuesday, the Board of
Supervisors passed the following Resolution. I suggest you clip this article and send it
to your legislators with a letter expressing your concern over the unmanaged state of our
local National Forests and the fire threat they pose to our local communities.
RESOLUTION DIRECTING ABATEMENT OF A PUBLIC NUISANCE
WHEREAS,
approximately 63% of Siskiyou County’s 6,600 square mile land base is retained as
federally managed lands; and
WHEREAS, on
August 17, 2001, the Federal Register Vol. 66, number 160, listed the Siskiyou County
communities of Big Springs, Callahan, Dorris, Dunsmuir, Etna, Fort Jones, Gazelle, Happy
Camp, Hornbrook, Horse Creek, Klamath River, Macdoel, McCloud, Mt. Shasta, Quartz Valley,
Sawyers Bar, Scott Bar, Seiad Valley, Somes Bar, Tennant, Weed and Yreka as “Urban Wildland Interface
Communities Within the Vicinity of Federal Lands That Are at High Risk From Wildfire”;
and
WHEREAS, the Klamath
National Forest – a typical Forest located in Siskiyou County, has a standing
inventory of 13.5 billion board feet of timber and grows an additional 654 million board
feet (MMBF) of timber each year; and
WHEREAS, compared with the year 1989 where 320 MMBF of timber were
harvested from the Klamath National Forest, the Northwest Forest Plan reduced the
Allowable Sales Quantity on the Klamath to only 440 MMBF over a 10 year period - or
approximately 44 MMBF a year; and
WHEREAS, only about 15 MMBF is currently being harvested netting 639
MMBF of additional biomass being added to the Forest each year creating unhealthy forest
densities that stress trees, making them more susceptible to pests and disease and
aggravating an already dangerously high fuel load; and
WHEREAS, large wildfires have resulted such as in 2006 when the
Titus, Hancock, Uncles Complex and Rush fires burned 28,000 acres in Siskiyou County,
threatening local communities and costing the federal government more than $12 million to
try and contain them until the fall rains and snow could extinguish them; and
WHEREAS, in 2006 more than 16,000 acres burned in the Six Rivers
National Forest on the Western edge of Siskiyou County and another 51,000 acres on the
Shasta Trinity, south of Siskiyou County;
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Siskiyou County
Board of Supervisors finds that the current situation of heavy fuel loading in the
Klamath, Shasta-Trinity, Six Rivers, Rogue River-Siskiyou, and Modoc National Forests
constitutes a dangerous public nuisance posing a genuine threat to the public safety of
communities throughout Siskiyou County; and
THAT THE SISKIYOU COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVIORS DIRECTS
the U.S. Department of Agriculture to commence immediate and accelerated efforts to abate
this nuisance through comprehensive and widespread hazardous fuel reduction on National
Forests throughout Siskiyou County.
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