Christopher Egan’s recent op-ed, “Changing land use designations at Wendell would set bad precedent” (Recorder 1/14/19), begins “The Massachusetts Forest Alliance represents forest landowners, foresters, timber harvesters, and forest products professionals.” Thus, we know from the outset Egan’s opinion comes from someone with a vested interest in continuing business as usual in our public forests.
Forest protectors have no such investment. They work for free to save public forests for the public’s interest.
Egan references the highly flawed “Forest Futures Visioning Process,” a process that completely ignores current climate science. He goes on to state “Wendell State Forest and other nearby state forest lands already contain a significant acreage of Reserves” as if the designation prevents further logging. Leo Roy of the Mass. Dept. of Conservation and Recreation noted at a Wendell Selectboard meeting that Reserves merely means the area won’t be logged for another 10 years! Ten years deeper into climate chaos when we’ll need as many older trees as possible to sequester an overabundance of CO2 emissions.
Further on Egan says: “The claim that this harvest is depleting the future carbon sequestration capability of the land is without factual or scientific basis.” That is utterly false and easily refuted by the latest climate science.
Don Ogden
Leverett