Political Quotes

“Let me now discuss one of the concerns that has cropped up during the discussions about the kind of legislation we want. There are those organizations in the environmental movement that understand there is too much public opinion in favor of doing something to manage our forests now because of this wildfire season, this catastrophic fire season. They understand they have to make some concessions. They have concluded that the best thing to be for is what they call urban/wild interface management. What that is supposed to mean is that you can go in and thin the areas right around communities and right around people's expensive million-dollar summer homes, and the like, but you cannot go out into the forests themselves. We will put up the chart that shows the class 3 lands. The problem is, first of all, it treats very few acres. This will illustrate the point. We don't have very many communities in these forests. There are five or six little towns in this whole area here. To do urban/wild interface management alone, by going out a half mile around the city limits of those little towns, is going to do nothing to enhance the environment in the rest of the forest. It will do nothing to protect the habitat of the endangered species out there. Actually, it does very little to protect the communities themselves.”