Dear HCN,
In the William deBuys
essay about controversy surrounding northern New Mexico’s forests,
he says “We need to create more small forest edges in order to
promote species diversity” (HCN, 2/5/96). I am no expert on this
matter, but it caught my eye because of research that’s been done
in Eastern forests. It shows that creation of edges and the
disappearance of contiguous forest harms migratory songbird
populations. I realize this research on Eastern forests and birds
is not research on Western forests and birds, but the casual
suggestion that we need to create “edge” in the forest makes me
uneasy.
Too many times we have solved one
problem in our ecosystem by creating
another.
Michael Cain
Sedona,
Arizona
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Forests on the edge.
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