Elected officials are hurting our state

The past couple of months have been some of the worst in history for forest fires. Three and a half million acres have burned up so far this year, and the season is just beginning. Much of the blame is due to poor forest management, described so well by Keith Welker of Camano Island in his July 5 letter to The Herald (“Environmentalists: Bad policies cause the real damage”). In past years timber harvesters created fire breaks and fires were more easily controlled. The environmentalists have halted the timber harvests and now fires burn for miles with no way to stop them.

Our state is represented in Washington D.C. by Sens. Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell and Rep. Rick Larsen: a housewife, a dot com investor and a professional politician. These people are making the requests to the federal government as to how our timber resources will be handled. Isn’t this a comforting thought? Now they are recommending that 106,128 additional acres near Sultan be added to the wilderness designation. No motorized vehicles will be allowed and over eight miles of roads will be closed and probably destroyed. These roads would be of use in fighting fires if the need should arise. Over 47 percent of this state is already owned or controlled by government interests and we do not need any more restrictions. We may soon see our state follow Colorado and Arizona with tinder forests if we allow more roads to be closed.

I love to hike, but I know I will not always be able to do so. By making the wilderness areas accessible only to able-bodied persons, the government is depriving the less agile of their rights and is in violation of the ADA.

These three politicians have been purchased with environmental dollars. The financial disclosures of all three show a large amount of out-of-state environmental contributions. They vote accordingly, not on behalf of their constituents. Please contact them now and ask them to stop stealing our forests and to please drop the Wild Sky Wilderness act.

Arlington