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Professional Statistician Analyzes Beetle-Fire Risk on BHNF

Hello Defenders,

The following is from our Treasurer, Brian Brademeyer, and Friends of the Norbeck. Now we have scientific evidence that the pine beetles do not cause wildfires.

The Norbeck Wild Life Area is currently being logged by the US Forest Service in violation of federal law.Our efforts to protect it by asking President Obama to transfer it to the National Park Service have been ignored.

We will keep you up to date on other ideas to protect this last wilderness area in the Black Hills, only 0.05% of the entire Black Hills.

Charmaine White Face, Coordinator

 

 

A message to all members of Friends of the Norbeck

 

 

Friends of the Norbeck recently hired professional statistician Grant Foster to look at possible relations between large fires, on the one hand, and weather, logging, and beetle tree-mortality levels on the other. We provided him with a century of data from the Black Hills National Forest, 1910-2009.

On February 10, 2012, Grant completed his analysis, and produced a detailed "white paper" (available from FotN website, 2.7mb pdf). Grant also posted a more "accessible" (i.e., less mathematical) online version of this analysis at his Climate Blog Open Mind, entitled:

Pine Beetle Infestation and Fire Hazard in the Black Hills

that is available for public comments. Readers are encouraged to read this blog-post on this important Black Hills issue, which reaches conclusions that will astound those believing that "beetles lead to inevitable tinderbox conditions" and catastrophic fire.

Visit Friends of the Norbeck at: http://friends-of-norbeck.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network

 

Mission Statement

"Defenders of the Black Hills is a group of volunteers without racial or tribal boundaries whose mission is to preserve, protect, and restore the environment of the 1851 and 1868 Treaty Territories, Treaties made between the United States and the Great Sioux Nation."

Speaking about radioactive fallout, the late President John F. Kennedy said,

"Even then, the number of children and grandchildren with cancer in their bones, with leukemia in their blood, or with poison in their lungs might seem statistically small to some, in comparison with natural health hazards. But this is not a natural health hazard and it is not a statistical issue. The loss of even one human life, or the malformation of even one baby who may be born long after we are gone, should be of concern to us all. Our children and grandchildren are not merely statistics toward which we can be indifferent."

July 26, 1963 upon signing the ban on above ground nuclear tests