"Cleaning up the forest and doing the thinning to make the fire danger less…all of that was known thirty years ago—it was just that the politics weren't right to put any money into thinning."
They knew, they had everything already studied on the densities of forests that work, and the different densities, and how much you could thin without the trees being snow damaged in the winter. And that information was out there for the Forest Service to use. I look at this now where they're talking about cleaning up the forest and doing the thinning to make the fire danger less, and all of that was known thirty years ago—it was just that the politics weren't right to put any money into thinning — it was all building roads for logging, and getting as much money as the Forest Service could, out of the trees. But it wasn't into developing the forest for later use. And I look back on that now and I think.... All of this that we're going through now with the wildfires and the burning, trying to get rid of the brush, could have been going on thirty, forty years, if people.... But that's the way it is: it's what brings in the money that makes the policy, and that's what it was, bringing in money for cutting trees.