Wildfire Fights Prioritized: Reality of Forest Mismanagement Sinks In
It was only a matter of time before the federal government’s new policy of fighting forest fires wherever and whenever they broke out would break down. That’s what’s happened in California where there are too many fires to fight, not enough people, money or time to fight them all. But the redirection of nearly the entire national park management budget into fighting fires to protect the zillion-dollar luxury homes ill-advisedly built right next to our national parks now appears a clearly expensive, unsustainable and destructive policy. But we can’t blame Bush for it. We can just blame him for not doing anything about it when he had the chance.
What we need is a federal law that says if you build your fantasy home next to a national park, YOU’RE RESPONSIBLE for protecting your home, not Uncle Sam. Why did the US Forest Service become the national fire department?