emerald chapter in the news
Foresters Should Know Best: Eugene Register-Guard, Sunday June 15
The Healthy Forest Act has been endorsed by the Society of American Foresters, which, politics aside, should best understand how to improve a forest's condition and minimize the risk of catastrophic fire.
Columnist Larry Swisher (Register-Guard, June 10) contends that unhealthy forests in the Northwest have been created through "decades of aggressive fire suppression, clear-cutting and old-growth logging." A more complete understanding of the problem, as expressed by the professional forestry community, is that the huge wildfires occurring throughout the West are the result of decades of fire suppression combined with lack of management.
Looking around the Northwest, it is easy to see the big fires, for the most part, are not occurring on private forests. Many private forest lands are being actively managed, resulting in a state not nearly as susceptible to wildfire. So which is is really, harvesting or lack of management, that contributes most to the problem?
Critics of the bill say it would allow "loggers to remove commercially valuable older trees" to help pay for the removal of brush and small trees. Forest Service Chief (and SAF member) Dale Bosworth told Congress, "What is left on the land is more important that what is taken away."
Professional foresters can develop win-win prescriptions to both maintain the forests in a healthier state and allow for the removing of some trees to help defray the costs. This bill takes a common sense approach to dealing with a real risk.
Eric Kranzush, Chairman
Emerald Society of American Foresters
