Copyright 2000 P.G. Publishing Co.
Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette
July 5, 2000, Wednesday, SOONER EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL, Pg. A-8, LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
LENGTH: 366 words
HEADLINE:
MORE ROADLESS FORESTS
BYLINE: RAVENNA C.M. BARKER;
CAMPAIGN COORDINATOR; PENNSYLVANIA PUBLIC INTEREST RESEARCH GROUP; OAKLAND
BODY:
I am writing in response to the June
27 letter concerning the National Forest Service's Roadless
Area Initiative ("This Forest Policy Will Lead To Fires and Waste"), a
plan to protect 60 million acres of pristine wilderness in our national forests
through stopping all new road-building, logging and mining there.
The
letter claims that the passage and implementation of the Roadless
Area Initiative threatens our national forests because, through
prohibiting logging, it will enhance the risk of forest fires. Since when are
logging, mining and road-building proper management tools against fire? To the
contrary, these activities actually encourage fires. Hands down, the greatest
threat to our wilderness areas is human intervention in natural forest
processes. In fact, an estimated 90 percent of forest fires are caused by people
and machines brought into the forest on roads.
Take a look at the forest
fire potential of the timber industry. Logging of any sort on a wide scale is
one of the greatest contributors to forest fires. Logging produces mounds of
highly flammable "slash" from the cut limbs and needles of downed trees, which
serves as kindling. Logging brings many sources of fire ignition into the
forest, including logging trucks, motorized winches and helicopters. Saying that
logging our forests is necessary to prevent them from burning is like saying
that we need to sink the Titanic so that it will never hit an iceberg!
It is true that, as the letter claims, large fires occur when smaller,
crowded understory trees act as "fire ladders" up to older growth. However, in
the wilderness areas that the Roadless Area Initiative will protect, the
overcrowded and dead understory growth is typically absent because older forests
block its growth. If we allow the timber industry to continue to cut these
older, more profitable logs, then more and more flammable underbrush will be
exposed.
Let's preserve our wilderness for future generations and
prevent these highly destructive fires. Urge the U.S. Forest Service to pass the
Roadless Areas Initiative.
RAVENNA C.M. BARKER
Campaign
Coordinator
Pennsylvania Public Interest Research Group
Oakland
LOAD-DATE: July 5, 2000 
