Logging collaboratives re-ignite timber wars

The local logging collaborative with their approval of devastating logging and roadbuilding projects like Chloride-Gold and Buckskin-Saddle has re-ignited local and regional opposition. The Inland Empire Task Force is concerned about these logging projects. Logging of these watersheds dries out landscapes, increases fire risk, produces sedimentation and exacerbates rain-on-snow events. Evapotranspiration rates increase as plantations grow, removing groundwater that supplies critical bull trout and harlequin duck habitats.

How can the collaborative's so-called "environmental" groups support huge logging projects, deficient in recruitment and existing old growth? Old-growth forests balance evapotranspiration, carbon storage, local climate moderation, and healthy streams. How can they ignore the Executive Order requiring the protection of CO2-storing mature and old-growth forests? Do they know that logging produces high levels of greenhouse gasses, while biodiverse snag forests retain carbon?  In 2021, hundreds of climate and forest scientists warned Congress that logging of U.S. forests emits 723 million tons of uncounted CO2 into our atmosphere each year, more than 10 times the amount emitted by wildfires and tree mortality from insects combined (Moomaw 2000 and others).

Timber first logging collaboratives claim "success" because they eliminate dissent and like the Borg in Star Trek, think alike without introspection.

PAUL SIERACKI

Priest River