Dear HCN,
In the
long run, many well-intentioned environmental groups, with their
stubborn resistance to sound forest-management techniques, will do
far more damage to our forests than the timber
industry.
Loggers often cut too many trees, but
many environmentalists, in their resistance to cutting any trees,
may bring about a total conflagration.
I’m a
nature photographer. I live in Summit County, Colo. – in a sick,
overgrown forest of lodgepole pines, the result of over 70 years of
fire suppression without significant logging or thinning. The
Silverthorne District of the White River National Forest has its
hands tied.
Several efforts to start thinning
projects to reduce fire danger have been met by legal objections
from various environmental groups, delaying urgently needed
projects to alleviate the danger of catastrophic
fires.
Forest thinning is imperative.
Well-thought-out projects should be expedited without lengthy
environmental review by obstructionists.
We need
a grass-roots effort to change laws and untie the hands of the U.S.
Forest Service, or the heat of the massive fires such as we have
recently seen will bake the soil – and we won’t have any grass to
stand on.
Steve TohariBreckenridge,
Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Forest thinning urgent.
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