More logging in forests would curb wildfires

Published 1:30 am Friday, August 31, 2018

We all love our trees and it saddens us to see them go up in smoke. That same smoke causes so many additional problems and chokes out our beautiful summer sunshine. This year we have had the perfect storm: drought, hot weather and tree huggers.

When the forests were allowed to be logged the logged-off areas were fire stops and the flames were curtailed. The logging roads served to get the firefighters to the burning areas quickly and most fires were put out in a timely manner. After the areas were logged the new trees grew and were much more efficient in cleaning the air than the older trees had been. When fire broke out, everyone stopped what they were doing and went to fight fire. My husband fought fires when he was 16, then had to quit when school started. Very seldom was a fire left out of control because these people knew that the trees were their livelihood and provided jobs as well as lumber for their homes and the trees were appreciated and protected.

Since the tree huggers stopped or limited logging the fires have raged.

When logging was in its heyday the salmon were so thick you could have walked across the Stilly on their backs if one had been so inclined. We all know the reason why we have no salmon is that the fish cannot avoid the nets to spawn; however, we can’t talk about that because it isn’t PC so instead we throw billions of tax dollars at the problem and solve nothing.

Kathy Johnson in her Aug. 24 letter to the editor, got one thing right when she said that timber sales do not provide enough money to maintain the roads. Therefore if we had more timber sales the roads would be in better shape and we would have fewer fires. We also would return the forest funds to the school districts as they were intended and perhaps our taxes would drop.

I am saddened by the way our forests have been mishandled.

Mary Ann Monty

Stanwood