Sierra Nevada: Let Nature Take Its Course

Re “They’re Barking Up the Wrong Trees in the Sierra,” Commentary, Dec. 10: Chad Hanson paints a tragic picture of past logging practices on national forests in the Sierra Nevada. However, he misappropriates our concern as he deftly condemns the current U.S. Forest Service overseers while ignoring the flaws in the newest Sierra Plan. Academic and agency scientists have voiced their concerns to the Forest Service and environmentalists like Hanson about the negative impacts of continued logging in the Sierra Nevada. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s “biological opinion” on the plan lists a variety of these impacts, none of which are mitigated.

We are asked to allow a vast experiment in “fuels management” in the national forests, consisting of more logging, when the best way to protect human and ecosystem health may be to protect structures in mountain communities and let the forest burn naturally. Our public forests will not benefit from the untested theories of the Forest Service and environmentalists of thinning the forests, even when logging is reduced by Hanson’s “half,” especially when we have the opportunity to let nature recover itself.

Fraser Shilling

Davis