Burning Arizona
by Kathy Gibson-Boatman

As the thunderstorms echo across Arizona many of us are thankful for the rain. But rural communities also silently dread the next lightening sparked fire.

In 2003 the community of Summerhaven went up in a wall of red-hot flames. In 2002 the communities of Heber, Overgaard, Pinedale, Linden and Timberland Acres suffered devastation in the largest fire to ever affect Arizona as over 460,000 acres burned in the Rodeo Chediski fire. Prescott was threatened when and the fire came roaring towards the community. Residents narrowly escaped disaster.

The safety of these communities has languished as environmental groups have used the courts to obstruct progress. The answer was the Healthy Forest Initiative proposed by President Bush and passed October 2003 with bi-partisan support in both the house and senate.

Yet the environmentalists are back with another legal challenge to forest health and safety. The Prescott Courier reported this week that the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club's Yavapai and Grand Canyon Chapters, and the Southwest Forest Alliance have announced their intentions to interfere in the proposed Boundary project scheduled to log 8,119 acres and scheduled to treat over 18,000 acres with brush crushing and prescribed burning.

The Kerry-Edwards website boasts that their forest plan "recognizes that forest management can benefit our nation's economy while protecting our watersheds and natural resources." Where have these two Senators been for the last two years while the Bush administration and Western citizens have fought for our forest health and the safety of our communities? They were not in attendance when their fellow Senators voted on the bill, and passed it with a vote of 80-14. Our safety and security were not a priority to them in 2003.

Their website also states, "They realize that forest products play an important role in our economy -- especially in America's suffering rural communities -- and they support logging and fuel reduction activities required to sustain the timber industry and protect communities from devastating forest fires."

I find it amazing that the Kerry camp pledges support for rural communities yet announce they intend to take $100 million from so-called "government subsidies to the timber industry and invest it in a new Forest Restoration Corps." To put this in layman's terms, the Kerry plan would take $100 million dollars that is used for projects coordinated with private industries and the Forest Service and divert it to a new giant government program borrowed from the business plan of socialism. The Kerry plan ignores the fact that government without private industry has been unable to cure the problems of beetle infestation, over zealous litigation and a plethora of regulations that have contributed to the current conditions in our forests.

While John Kerry and John Edwards pledge to protect our nation's remaining wild forests, who will protect Western citizens from this attempt to undo the Healthy Forest Initiative?

James L. Connaughton, chairman of the US Council on Environmental Quality recently toured part of the area affected by the Rodeo Chediski fire. He has worked at a national level on environmental issues for many years. Jo Baeza of the White Mountain Independent reported, "He said he has been impressed with President Bush's support of regional forest health efforts and his genuine concern for people." He said, "The first question he (Bush) asks when I tell him about a project is, 'How is it going to affect people in the area?' "

On August 9, 2004 the Forest Service announced the recipients of the largest stewardship contract awarded to date. Future ForestsLLC, an Arizona based company in the White Mountains near the area devastated by the Rodeo Chediski fire was the private contractor selected. Harv Forsgren, regional forester of the Southwestern Region supports this contract. Forsgren and others have hopes that the stewardship contracts will help return the forests to their historic density. Arizona pine forests were characterized as having 20-60 trees per acre near the turn of the century. These same forests have grown to approximately 300-400 trees per acre and in some areas trees have increased to 3,000 trees per acre. This is a situation inviting dangerous fires in the future. This tragedy can only be averted by supporting the Bush forest initiatives.

Kathy Gibson-Boatman writes about western natural resource issues from her home in Chandler, Arizona, where she owns and operates an errand and personal assistant service with expertise in the insurance field.