Radical environmental groups weaponize the courts and aggravate wildfire threats

• November’s tragic California wildfires brought a Twitter war between President Trump, who argued the fires were due to forest mismanagement, and Leonardo DiCaprio who asserted (big surprise) climate change is to blame. I cannot speak to the specifics of these fires and any proximity to national forests, which have been so terribly mismanaged (as pointed out in by Chuck DeVore and more recently by Matthew Vadum). I can provide, however, a view from the Rocky Mountains.
• It is an oft-repeated truth in the West to call the federal government the “world’s worst neighbor,” and nowhere is that more true than the U.S. Forest Service's mismanagement of national forests. Beginning with President Jimmy Carter’s War on the West, which continued under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the ability to engage in prudent forest management is under attack.
• Of course, the Forest Service has help in the endless lawsuits by radical (is there any other kind?) environmental groups to prevent timber harvesting. Even after a fire, when salvageable timber remains, the groups sue to prevent logging. One radical in Oregon opined that such harvests were “like raping a burn victim.” Judges have abused the National Environmental Policy Act by stopping harvesting for more studies. The studies, which cost millions, continue until the burned timber is not salvageable, a fire sweeps through and destroys the timber up for sale, or the local timber companies go out of business. Here in Colorado, as elsewhere in the West, the timber industry has been reduced to a fraction of its former self and its ability to service national forests.
• Meanwhile, counties, states, and American Indian tribes are not so hampered. They understand the vital need, not just economically but ecologically and environmentally, to engage in science-based forest management.