"We WON!"

[azsnowman]

YES!!! The Az Supreme Court in a overwhelming vote, overturned an injuction filed by the radical environmentalist groups, Southwest Center For Biological Diversity, Forest Conservation Council, The Forest Guardians to halt a mojor thinning project in Coconino County and in the Rodeo Chediski Burn Area "TAKE THAT YOU FRUIT LOOPS!" I for ONE and HAPPY to see this, this means I won't have to wipe my **** with a spotted owl now

Dennis 8)

Save a logger, eat more OWL

[mf_dolphin]

The lack of thinning is what contributes to the massive wildfires we've had over the last few years. When will these people ever learn. I'll take my spotted owl broiled please

[firefighter16]

A little fire isn't bad but the fire we've had are absolutley not good.

[azsnowman]

Yes indeed, the Rodeo Chediski Fire was ONE heck of a fire. My wife, son and I spent 4 days working road blocks, my wife and I are with the Navajo County Sheriff's Dept, we belong to the K9 SAR unit. After the 4th day, we were ordered to evacuate, we were gone for 7 days, didn't know if we had a house to come back to or not, that fire consumed over 480,000 acres, 482 homes!

Dennis

"Everything tastes better with spotted owl!"

[firefighter16]

I tried to get on a tanker crew last year that went out west. They got canceled though.

[Aslkahuna]

Federal Judge Marquez in Tucson or the Ninth Circuit Court will overturn that though. Only place to beat them is in the Supreme Court.

My February Summary and outlook through Summer will be posted on my homepage this evening. Basically, I'm looking for normal or possibly better Spring rainfall but that will not be much help down here as normal rainfall in the Spring is pretty minor. The Summer looks like typical post Nino Summer with a late starting monsoon and a tendency towards dryness particularly west of here and more violent storms than usual.

KVOA News last night had a report from the Fire Management people in the Coronado NF and they said that although the heavy snow this month will delay the onset of the fire season, once the Spring winds hit after the Spring melt things will dry out fast because the snow will probably not be around as long as they would like to see it. Another VERY negative factor is that the entire large aircraft tanker fleet is grounded pending FAA inspections and recertification with the C-130s totally out of it. They do NOT expect that any of the larger aircraft will be available for fire fighting efforts until June at the earliest which could cause problems as the smaller aircraft and choppers have neither the speed nor the payload to help much on a big fire-so we are by no means out of the woods yet.

Finally, it appears as though the main axis of the Drought may be shifting north and east into the Northern Plains this year and although this does not mean that we will be out of drought conditions it does suggest that things may not be as bad as they have been the past couple of years-for this we'll have to wait and see what happens.

Steve

[Stephanie]

That's great news Dennis!

[azsnowman]

IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME!!! WAAAAHOOOOO

Another 150,000 acres was approved for thinning by the Sec. Of Agri. Mark Rey, he said his Dept has signed off on another 150,000 acre tree thinning project near the 487,000 acre Rodeo Chediski Fire and awarded the White Mountian Apache Tribe 5 million $ to upgrade the Fort Apache Timber Co sawmill in Whiteriver, Az.

Rey made the announcements during a congressional subcomittee hearing to discuss President Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative, a plan that attemps to short cirrcuit appeals by radical, terrorist environmental groups and accelerate cutting in the wests seriously overgrown forests especially near populated areas!

Dennis 8)