Fuel for wildfires used to be harvested, but that's different now, reader says

Letter to the Editor,

When smoke clouds the skies and the fires that burn the West every summer, begin again, a little reminder might be invoked.

Fires need fuel, and that fuel, the forests that burn now, used to be the source of money to build roads and support schools. Money, that now, is deficient and short because mills all over Montana are closed and much of the wood we use is imported. 

Ask yourself, where all the paper that Americans still use, is coming from?

Since the environmental side of the ledger is responsible for this situation and advocated no logging or thinning-only letting timber hit the ground and decay, I have often wondered how close the fire would have to come to their cabins or places of business, to have them change their minds?

One member of that side said in an interview that he was not supporting logging, but his cutting down trees on his land was called “thinning the wood lot.”

Too bad our wood lots and more are burning needlessly. It helps to remember why.

—Clare Hafferman

Kalispell