Comment re: This Week with Rep. Hendrick column and HJR 8

Requiring a bond in forestry litigation is unnecessary and sets bad precedent. The other side of requiring a bond is that in order to be fair, both sides in the litigation would have to post bonds to cover the other sides "losses" or "costs".

Trees are being killed by beetles and are burning in the annual forest fires of the region, but that is not why mills are closing. Competition with foreign timber (from Canada, etc) is a prime economic consideration for those mills. The answer to competition cannot be found in raising the prices of US timber products, so the alternative is to cut a larger volume of timber. This yields a smaller profit margin, but more "product" to get that smaller profit from.

It is agreed that there is a need for timber harvest and that trees growing too closely together will make a bigger fire. Smaller trees will move fire up into the larger more fire resistant older trees. Cutting all the trees will certainly prevent forest fires, but on the surface seems to defeat the whole purpose of forest management.

Using scare tactics such as the Big Burn of 1910 and blaming the future pending catastrophe on halted timber projects is a bit misleading. One of the biggest contributors to an over-accumulation of fuel for fires would have to be the policy, still practiced due to political considerations, of jumping on every forest fire and suppressing it. Multi-million dollar homes in forest fire zones contribute to the political impulse to stop fire before it can remove this overabundance of accumulated fuel from deadfall and dense growth smaller timber.

Some timber harvests may specifically target dead wood, but the trucks I see carrying timber are not carrying dead trees. I'm not a timber expert and neither is Rep Hendrick, but by just using the argument in Rep. Hendrick's own column, fresh cut timber and larger diameter timber is the ideal for the logger's profit margin.

Rep. Hendrick incorrectly blamed the contamination of Superior's water supply on the forest fires of 2000. The mine tailings that existed above the townsite would have contaminated the water supply regardless of the effect of the fires. The proper action would have been to work with state and federal authorities to initiate a mine waste cleanup program before the contamination occurred.

For many reasons; profitability, sustainability, environment, and aestetic values among them, the boom days of timber and other extractive industries will never exist again in the West. But there will always be a need for timber management and forest maintenance. HJR 8 will not contribute to that need. The forests belong to all of us, look to the future and stay involved in the management of your public lands.

Glenn Ferren

Superior, MT