LOGGING: Blue Creek done right

In response to Madison Hardy’s “Resident Questions Logging,” I was involved with forest management and the timber industry for 35 years.

On Sunday afternoon, I drove up Blue Creek to the logging operation referred to in Saturday’s Press, seeing for myself what the site looked like. Finding the place where The Press photos were taken, I found nothing out of line with the logging operations performance. There were many decadent logs being removed.

About Ms. Hicks’ comments, it’s disappointing to have a favorite trail unusable, not heartbreaking.

Heartbreaking is when you lose a loved one, or losing everything because someone stopped a logging operation from removing diseased timber that would fall to the forest floor causing excessive fuel loading and a fire started in that forest and burned hundreds or thousands of acres destroying forest, homes, belongings and people themselves.

Heartbreaking is when selfishness causes lost livelihood, natural resources that if milled would provide employment, housing market materials and foreign trade commodities to pay for our foreign cars and help to balance trade. That’s heartbreaking.

Trees, Ms. Hicks, are a renewable resource, a CROP we grow, tend and harvest when appropriate as are other crops like wheat, corn or tomatoes. Good stewardship requires harvest of the resource.

Ms. Hicks, educate yourself in forest practices, protection, production, disease and financial/economic returns the timber CROP provides our community. Then, you can make an informed, positive and constructive contribution to the community in which you live.

JOHN FILLMORE

Post Falls