As fires ravage the Carolinas and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster declares a state of emergency, I remember how my brother and I spent long, hot summers in rural Colorado, cleaning up dry brush and dead wood to protect our mountain home from fires. My father, a volunteer fireman, taught us the importance of forest management from a young age, because it was essential to protect us from harm.
For this reason, I was horrified to learn that President Joe Biden had issued an executive order that might prevent this forest clearing in the name of protecting “old-growth forests.” Rather than allowing for the three strategies to prevent forest fires—targeted logging, controlled burns, and cleaning brush from the forest floor—his administration promoted a top-down bureaucratic approach that might have contributed to some of the horrific wildfires Americans have suffered in…
