The Tahoe Fire & the Spotted Owl

re: Rush Limbaugh: "RUSH: I want to talk about this fire out at Lake Tahoe, because it's fascinating. There are two schools of thought on who's to blame. One school of thought is global warming. The other school of thought is environmentalists...[snip]...the people that live out there say it's the environmentalists. "They won't let us thin out these forests. They make this stuff remain as it is. It's a fireplace, it's a tinderbox." The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency said that they were angry at bureaucrats and environmentalists who made cutting trees and clearing of land difficult. There was always too much red tape, they say. Now it was too late. "I hate to get political..." This is the guy from the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. "...but environmentalists wouldn't let us cut down the dead trees." People in the Bay Area, however, were led to believe the fires are all due to overdevelopment in Tahoe. The media's favorite culprit for every problem on the planet of course is global warming...[snip]...So global warming is responsible for everything, but the truth of the matter is, the environmentalist wackos in this country are the instigators of more of these kinds of problems than people want to admit, and they're afraid, people are afraid to fight 'em...[snip]...RUSH: Speaking of this Tahoe fire, I forgot to mention this. They have a restriction out there that you can only cut timber, I think it's ten or 12 feet from your house. I'm not sure about the number. But, this guy broke the law. He said to hell with it, and he cut it 50 to 70 feet away from his house. His house is the one standing. His house is standing! A lot of his neighbors who followed these regulations houses have burned to the ground. Fire department people out there, fire experts have been warning not just in Tahoe, but in the El Dorado Forest, "You guys are sitting on a powder keg out here." But, you know, Dianne Feinstein and some other people introduced legislation to thin out some of these forests. The Sierra Club's been appealing it for ten years and holding it up. There are countless illustrations. It's just another illustration of all this do-gooderism,.."...