It’s a mismanagement crisis

Regarding Erin Benson’s letter of Aug. 18, “Wildfires and the climate crisis”:

“Climate crisis.” Yow. When is this nonsense going to be abandoned? My guess is that the “research” involved in this “finding” was churned out by government bureaucrats and university modelers that sign paychecks paid for by taxpayers. That has been a pretty obvious trend for the past 30 years despite all of the proof (“reality”) challenging these false claims.

Again, these fires were accurately — and widely — predicted by myself and others more than 25 years ago. Their cause is mismanagement of our federal lands due to onerous anti-logging regulations that have been adopted and promoted via NEPA and ESA since the late 1960s. That is why these fires keep happening on federal lands rather than state, private and Indian lands — despite all of these different ownerships “indicating” they have the exact same “climate.”

Lazy workers, deceitful politicians and irrational attention-seekers are at the heart of this fear mongering, and most all have been financially or socially rewarded by their self-promotions. The more serious problem associated with these efforts is the degradation of science, both in teaching and in conducting legitimate research. Eisenhower was right.

Bob Zybach

Cottage Grove, Ore.