Environmentalists blamed for huge forest fires

PHOENIX -- Environmentalists are the target of a blame game as wildfires rage through Arizona forests.

State Sen. Sylvia Allen, a Republican from Snowflake -- a town in the White Mountains not too far from the huge Wallow fire -- says misinformation, lawsuits and lies have been used to promote unhealthy forest environments and those philosophies have made their way into federal policies.

In a statement last Saturday, Allen said, "I once again must express my anger at the lack of forest management that, for the last 20 years, has turned our forests into a tinderbox of undergrowth, small trees, brush and downed trees. In some areas of the forest around Alpine, the undergrowth was so thick that you could not even walk across the forest floor."

Allen said her family was forced to evacuate their home in 2002 because of the Rodeo-Chedeski fire.

"The catastrophic fires of the last few years are an indication of the health and vitality of our forests," she said.

Allen has allies, including Apache County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Brannon Eager, who says poor forest management and stewardship of the land has left the forests vulnerable to dangerous and destructive fires, such as the Wallow fire burning in the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest near Alpine, Springerville and Eagar.

"For years and years, we logged the forest," Eager said. "We went though, we took care of it, we logged it. We harvested the timber, we thinned the timber and that's what a ponderosa pine forest is supposed to look like.

"The forest has been growing for 25 to 30 years now with nobody taking care of it. It's just been allowed to grow. This is my opinion -- that we should go back to taking care of the forest, to utilizing what's up there."

Eager agrees with Allen's criticism of environmentalists for pushing to save the Mexican spotted owl, the goshawk and other animals. He said they stopped the logging, put families out of work and created a volatile forest environment.

"We need to do everything we can to protect the animals that we have, but at the same time we also need to protect our forests."

Eager asked, "What are the spotted owls going to nest in now? There's nothing left."