LETTER: Zinke is right about forest management

I applaud Rep. Ryan Zinke for his efforts to achieve a common sense approach to forest health rather than the all-or-none approach of environmentalists AND some loggers. The extreme views of either no logging at all on national forests — even salvage of dead trees — or clear cutting represent the polar opposites of a problem that is easily solved with intelligent compromise.

Having lived through the Moose Fire of 2001 watching trees torch on Huckleberry Mountain from my bedroom and the Roberts Fire of 2003, also visible from my home, with ash the size of fingernails raining down for days, I am saddened at the smoke which enveloped the valley during our fire season.

I don’t understand how the same people who complain about carbon dioxide emissions and global warming take no issue with not only carbon dioxide but also extremely unhealthy particulates emitted by forest fires. A National Science Foundation sponsored study from the University of Colorado Center for Atmospheric Research estimates that the carbon dioxide emitted from forest fires in a few weeks is equivalent to 4-6 percent of the total yearly emission of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels in the entire country. And this doesn’t even consider the negative consequences on health and tourism in our valley.

Commander Zinke has taken a sensible approach to a solvable problem: How do we make the forests more healthy and resilient when the inevitable fires occur from either lightning strikes or human negligence. We can reduce the calamitous  effects of forest fires by thinning our currently overgrown forests, diversifying the species with planting, making it more difficult for obstructionist environmental groups to block all these efforts, adding additional resources to more actively fight fires, such as the National Guard, and breaking down the usual moronic federal bureaucracy (like the Forest Service regulation which prevented five state DNRC helicopters from participating for no good reason).

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if our representative could use his command instincts learned as a Navy SEAL commander to convince the Republican Majority Senate (the House has already passed Commander Zinke’s Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2015) to do something positive for our forests and reduce the damage done by the inevitable fires in the Northwest and Alaska?  

But, of course, that would require both our senators including Democrat Tester to do what is best for the people of Montana, not his campaign contributors from out-of-state... and for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to actually accomplish something. I’m not getting my hopes up. —P. David Myerowitz, Columbia Falls