Logging still top priority for Forest Service

by Jeff Lonn, Hamilton

The Forest Service continues to announce an endless parade of taxpayer-subsidized commercial logging projects across the northern Rockies; nowhere is that more obvious than here in Bitterroot National Forest. They tell us this logging will protect our homes and communities, improve the forest ecosystem, and save wildlife. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the USFS, instead of spending all their time providing subsidized logs to the timber industry, actually prioritized the clean water, clean air, carbon sequestration, biodiversity, wildlife habitat, recreation, aesthetics, and refuge from the human world that we all value in our forest? What if they proposed true restoration projects without commercial logging? What if they educated people on living with wildfire and making their homes fire-wise, rather than spreading the fear of wildfire far and wide? What if they maintained trails, and brought the necessary, existing roads up to standards? What if they worked to reclaim old, unnecessary roads instead of building new ones that scar mountainsides, fragment habitat, and silt up our trout streams? What if, instead of writing justifications for timber sales, the biologists were out surveying the forest to find the intact ecosystems, the old growth, and the critical wildlife habitat, and working to connect them? What if they worked to slow the spread of invasive weeds by curtailing the soil disturbance created by road building, logging, and livestock grazing? What if they truly protected old growth and mature forests, rather than cutting them to the maximum extent allowed? What if, instead of dismantling and circumventing our environmental protections, they made sure they followed those laws and were honest and transparent about their intentions? What if the rangers were out ranging, getting to know the forest and educating forest users?

The Forest Service has the capacity to do all that, just not the will. It’s up to us to speak up and give them that will, otherwise many of the reasons we live here will be lost forever.