Save Hanna Flats

I was horrified when I learned that Hanna Flats, a national forest surrounding a beautiful historic old-growth forest and recreational area at Priest Lake, was being considered for extensive logging.

Our national forest lands are being destroyed under the Forest Service’s false guise of addressing forest health and wildfire risk to convince the public that we have to log our forests to save them. But logging is far more dangerous to forest health. Local forests that have been “managed” by logging in the past 20-30 years suffer from a decrease of forest diversity and an increase in white pine that is susceptible to the mountain pine beetle and blister rust.

I was in Paradise, California, the day of the state’s deadliest wildfire and the loss was staggering. Paradise was a maintained forest where tree trimming, thinning, and fuel reductions have been going on for years. As George Wuerthner states, “It is climate and weather with extreme conditions of drought, low humidity, high temps and high winds, not fuels, that are responsible for all large wildfires.”

Logging our national forests comes with a high price: endangered species at risk, wildlife threatened as thermal cover is destroyed, increased runoff and sedimentation of streams, increased road density and usage, large mature trees gone, increased ground-level fuels, increased dryness and increased risk of fire in the once-moist mature forest.

This land should be kept in its wild and natural state. Let nature, the way God created it, do its amazing work.

Laura Westbrook

Priest Lake