Nature's Impact on Recreation areas

[Mike Goad]

Here's some photos that I took on Saturday from a drive up Highway 7 in Arkansas north of I40.  This was one of the areas hard hit in the ice storm of January 26 - 28.

There is a lot of damage yet to be cleared up in publicly accessible areas.  There will be a lot of areas that aren't going to be cleared up soon. 

There remain a lot of potential hazards.

• The broken branches and downed trees will result in a tremendous amount of dead, dried flammable material, ready for nice hot wildfires if we have a hot dry summer.
• Widow-makers will be around ready to drop in a breeze for years (dead branches hanging up in a tree)
• Trail obstacles

Ive got more information in a post on my Out 'n About blog, for anyone that might be interested.

The first picture is the entrance road to a national forest campground.  The table is at a highway rest area.  The last picture is the road into a national forest recreation area.

 

[Wendy]

USFS may need to use some of its share of the stimulus money to clean up the campgrounds and forests. They might also want to put part of it away to cover an above average fire year.

Wendy
Bolsa Chica SB

 

[Ron]

USFS may need to use some of its share of the stimulus money to clean up the campgrounds and forests. They might also want to put part of it away to cover an above average fire year.

Or they might do one of their controlled burns and wipe out most everything. ;D

 

[rjf7g]

I live near the junction of the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive.  A few years ago when we had a bad ice storm, you could get a permit to cut and remove firewood from the downed trees in the parks.  A lot of people took the government up on it and made a fair amount of money selling the wood AND the fire hazard was decreased...a win-win as far as I am concerned.  I believe there was a clause "for personal use" and there were some issues around it.  I hope that doesn't deter the government from being creative like this again.

 

[Mike Goad]

The news release does say that people wanting to collect firewood have to have a permit to do so, but the it's the same one that already existed.  I'm pretty sure it stipulates dead or downed timber.