Dead trees misconception

Kudos to George Wuerthner for his guest opinion on increasing logging within the Colville National Forest (“Harvesting dead trees is bad for forests,” Feb. 7).

Biologists have long known the importance of dead trees to the forest ecosystem and the life that they support. Likewise, timber companies have long known that cloaking their increased cutting with words like “forest restoration” and “thinning to prevent wildfires” is the best way to gain support for further damaging our national forests. As co-conspirators in that scam, environmental organizations have played their own damaging role, by validating the timber corporations’ own schemes.

It’s time to treat the national forests in ways which support their highest purposes: the protection of biodiversity, serving as invaluable parts of the carbon cycle, and reminders of how we’ve scarred the rest of the planet. If we’re serious about doing that, we must create a system of zero cut and zero extraction on our national lands and we must find a way to stop environmental organizations, like the Lands Council, from helping to sell our heritage away.

Thomas Linzey

Spokane