Logging Agreement

As a local grass-roots environmentalist, I am dismayed that once again the press has chosen to portray the Quincy Library Group’s struggle to get their agreement codified in federal law as a national-versus-local issue; a small-town group battling the big bad national enviros (“House OKs Increase in Logging to Cut Fire Risk,” July 10).

Give me a break! The vast majority of the environmental groups that oppose the QLG plan are Sierra based and grass-roots.

The reality is, grass-roots environmentalists within Plumas County (I’m one of them) and from throughout California have long opposed the QLG plan. But politicians and newspapers and the gullible public just love the fantasy of former opponents sitting down and working out their differences. Sierra Pacific Industries (the largest private landowner in California) is laughing all the way to the bank. With the help of the QLG, it has managed to convince the Washington crowd that the federal lands of the Northern Sierra need the special legislation made-to-order for Sierra Pacific.

NEIL G. DION

Blairsden, Calif.

Your July 10 editorial, “Those Pricey Back Roads,” tells only a portion of the total story. In addition to subsidizing the timber industry for road construction, the far larger deficit lies in the enormous acreage that is taken out of timber production through retention of the bulk of this road construction.

Only the main through-roads should be retained and maintained for management, fire access and recreation. All the rest should be ripped up, outsloped for proper drainage and either replanted with high-quality species or allow nature to reseed these ripped-up roads with future timber-producing trees.

JAMES R. PRATLEY

U.S. Forest Service (Ret.)

San Diego