...these criminals understand the concept of "property" only where it's private.

McCain has long opposed the Clinton administration's roadless rule, arguing that decisions about public lands should be made by locals.  During his 2000 run for the presidency, before President Clinton had even finalized the rule, McCain was campaigning to repeal it: "The idea that Washington knows best and that local residents cannot be trusted to do what's right in their own backyard is the epitome of federal arrogance."

It seems he's too stupid to understand the concept of public property, and that the "local" yahoos have no more prerogative regarding it than anyone else anywhere in America.

Fine - let's apply the Mccain standard to all those houses he claims to "own". Let his beloved locals decide what's best for that property. Surely they shouldn't be hamstrung "in their own backyard" by his absentee "arrogance".

Most old growth forests were managed into that state

You have your definitions mixed up.

An old growth forest is old growth because the plants and tress are naturally adapted to long life cycles with little regenration, and what regeneration there is will often be a slow process.

When a naturally regenerative system (like a forest that historically had fire every few years) is allowed to overgrow, that is not an old-growth forest.

Most of the trees and plants are adapted to fire and regeneration and when regenration does not occur, most of the trees die by a certain age and are left to rot, rather to be burned and regenerated.  

They won't live much longer than they would even if there had been burnin'.  Trees in regenerative systems have evolved with shorter life spans than old-growth forests.  Takin' away the fire doesn't usually lengthen the trees' life spans in general, it just allows a far greater buildup of dead materials.

To reinterate: Old groth forests DO NOT NEED regeneration.  The trees, plants, and animals in old groth forests have evolved in a system where regeneration is rare.  To introduce unnatural levels of regeneration into old growth system screws up the natural ecology of the forest.

Only areas that have historically had regenerative systems (i.e.fire) should be considered for regenerative management principles.

Backcut, you appear to be attacking strawmen with sweeping generalizations.  Most mainstream environmental organizations either have scientists on staff, or consult with academia, in
order to guide policy.  Nobody wants catastrophic fires any more than than they want clearcuts.

Now, back to the topic...

The Roadless Rule was the most-commented proposed action that USFS ever put forth.  It generated over a million public comments, 95 percent of them in favor of the rule.  The reasons for the
rule were and still are scientifically sound.  Completely aside from logging, roads bring invasive species, increased fire danger, and habitat fragmentation to a forest.  It would be wise policy, for either presidential candidate, to leave the Roadless Rule intact.

The hope that "nature" will somehow balance out a hopelessly unbalanced system is the utmost of religious lunacy and dogma.

Not so. Nature will certainly balance out the system in due course, however unbalanced it may currently be. That's what nature does: the only meaningful definition of the term in this context is that which reaches its own balance over time absent deliberate input from intelligent actors such as ourselves. That balance is probably not the one that Backcut seeks, subscribing as he does to the noble savage view on forest management, but balance it will certainly be.

Of course nature takes its own good time to achieve such an end state, often many human generations. Are we prepared to wait that long for the healing of our forests, and would we be satisfied with the result? These are sensible questions, and many of us would prefer a transition within our lifetimes to some particular, reasonably sustainable state for which interventions of the sort Backcut promotes might well be required. However I believe there are many here who would listen more sympathetically to his case if he would not attack his supposed opponents with accusations of "religious lunacy and dogma".

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

Can we afford to lose topsoil vaporized in catastrophic wildfires?

The fact that you think topsoil can be "vaporized" by wildfire shows just how much you understand about the subject.

"Soil" isn't burn't in wilfires.  Growth on top of the soil is burnt, yes, but not the soil itself.

Soil generally isn't even flammable.

Go out and find some really dry soil and try to burn it...it won't.

Roots in the topsoil aren't burnt by wildfires either.  In fact, it's the health and liveness of the roots that allows plants with burned top-growth to come back after a fire.

If a wildfire "vaporized" the topsoil, then the plants would come back, as the roots wouldn't even exist.

Do you know even how hot a fire has to be to "vaporize" soil?  Even if it was hot enough, the soil (especially sandy and clay soils) would turn into a slag-like material long before it reached a temperature where it could be vaporized.

...meant to say the plants would NOT come back if the soil was vaporized by a wildfire, since the root systems would be vaporized as well.

...we need edit buttons already!

A shocking new study that shows soils do vaporize and go into our atmosphere. This is THE newest and most solid science available from the Biscuit Fire.

READ THE ARTICLE CAREFULLY PLEASE.

It has nothing to do with "vaporization" of soil.

The words "vaporization" or "vaporize" or "vapor" don't even appear once in the article.

does it really matter if I called it "vaporized" or "thermo-mechanically lifted", or even "cataclysmically-driven"?

Yes, it does.

Because they mean different things.

Vaporization of an element or compound is a phase transition from the liquid (or sometimes solid) phase to gas phase. There are two types of vaporization: evaporation and boiling.

I'm curious, Backcut, as to how you suggest the forests be maintained.  You offer no suggestions.

Fire is a regular part of a forest's cycle, as much as you hate to admit it, and controlled burns rarely turn into wildfire.  Northern Colorado has been regularly doing them in the Roosevelt, Arapahoe NF with great success.

I suspect though, that you do not live in the west and do not have experience watching areas affected by fire and how they regenerate.

The fact of the matter is, out here growth is slow, whether hit by wildfire or ground fire.

As for wildfire itself, there is debate as to whether or not sterilization of the soil actually occurs, and there is evidence of plants that benefit from huge, intense fires.  I witnessed a fire out here with 300 foot flames, easily within your definition of wildfire, and the very next spring the area was covered with fireweed as far as the eye could see.  Certainly no "vaporized" ground and the soil could still support life.

What would you do with the huge amounts of deadfall and understory brush that have resulted from years of instant fire suppression?   Going in there and physically removing it is impossible, and trusting logging companies to handle is ridiculous, even if they could get to all the terrain.  Natural fire is the only answer.

And, by the way, areas hit by wildfire do not look apocalyptic 20 or even 10 years after the event.  If you watched Yellowstone at all you knew that 5 years after the fire pines were taking root again.

...on most of your points.  (haven't read your prior posts yet but I will at work tomorrow ;)

But what, then, are you actually suggesting be done?

Fire has to be a part of the ecosystem.  No way around that.  In the Poudre Canyon here in northern Colorado I would say the forest service does an excellent job with controlled burns, but these are in areas that are not covered in deadfall and choked with understory.

Surely wildfires need to be contained to some extent...but they are simply going to HAVE to happen in many cases.  There is too much deadfall.  Having hiked in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana for many years I can say that physically removing deadfall in MOST areas will be impossible.  And think about how vast this area is.  Terrain is steep and remote; there would be no feasible way to get machinery in to handle the job, no roads, no manpower to do it in any reasonable time, no funds, etc.

Yes wildfires are not aesthetically pleasing to us and scar the landscape for many years....but these scars do not last generations. We have to deal with this but if we handle it right future generations won't see these huge fires happening.

Better management of the urban-wildland interface and allowing burns to occur is simply going to have to happen.

...of that link you posted.

Again though, I ask what alternatives there are, for the majority of our forested land, to having fire clean them up.

It seems we either have a fire or go into these forests, trim the brush and thick stands, and physically remove that as well as the deadfall.

What I don't see, and maybe I need to research this more, is anyone projecting the costs for doing this to the entirety of the western forests.  

The fact is there is too much terrain.  It is impossible.

Look at our Colorado pine beetle epidemic.  It is possible to protect trees from the ground with pesticides and prevent the beetles from killing them.  This requires a yearly spray, from the ground.  Less work than trimming, removing small trees, removing deadfall and brush, etc., and yet it was determined that such a project was far too labor and material intensive to be feasible.

If we can't do that how can we possibly go into ALL of our forests and physically manage them?

Wildfire is inevitable, and as we are seeing, continuing to suppress any and all fires simply leads to bigger fires that we cannot control.

I agree that the best scenario is do physically manage all the forest we can, and then let natural ground fires keep things clean the way they are supposed to.  What I don't see is anyone addressing the amount of resources it would take to do this to all of our forest land.

Backcut is quite right about this. We have a wide range of tools to throw at this mess. New advances in mechanized harvesting equipment, plus considerably higher prices for the harvested biomass when used as energy feedstock, have created effective opportunities that weren't here in the past. Numerous companies are intently working on this. You'll see many new initiatives in the next few years.

Richard