William Janklow: “This healthy forest initiative is an initiative that is incredibly important. It is not very often that we deal with…”

“This healthy forest initiative is an initiative that is incredibly important. It is not very often that we deal with things of that much substance. This is one of those opportunities. For too long we have made the forests into political issues where people fight with each other. The reality of the situation is every time we get that strong of emotions on all sides, usually we end up with a bad result. That is what we have here. There is no one, there is no one, who says these forests are healthy, and when I say forests, I am talking about a couple hundred million acres of land in America, virtually the entire part of many of our States. In my State it is the Black Hills, which is the westernmost portion of the State. But there is no one who says these forests are being properly managed. There is no one who says we have been doing the right thing. The arguments are what do we do to fix the problem, or do we just let God burn them down? It is okay to let God burn them down, but we are burning up people in the process. We are burning up people's homes in the process. We are destroying people's lives. We are shortening the lives of people. We are making it incredibly unhealthy for human beings. We are contributing to the wiping out of endangered species, be they plant life or be they animal life. So what we need to do is something different. This is a reasonable approach that involves input from all corners of the philosophies.”