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Show Better Forest Management Needed As a Panguitch native I want to stress my opinion. The fires on all the surrounding mountains moun-tains of southern Utah, have left me doing some thinking. I just can't get over the fact of how much dead, thick, black unhealthy forest we have been blessed with. And I can't help thinking what the benefits of logging are especially now that all of it's going up in smoke. Proper forest management is a must for a healthy forest, and a thick cover of spruce and fir are definitely not a healthy forest. The thick growth prohibits new young growth, with little or no ground cover at all, except the deadfall (which does not help when extinguishing an out-of-control burn). The compatibility with wildlife and livestock are all most non-existent. A too-thick cover makes a canopy that shades the ground, young plants and new growth require sunlight and water to produce green leaves and grow. We should all remember that from basic biology in high school. A healthy forest it will become, after these fires bum out. The new growth will be an aspen growth, which allows much needed sunlight and moisture mois-ture to reach new plants. This will be what most range managers man-agers will call a healthy forest. The palatability (a range term which means the vegetation that wildlife and livestock seek out first) with wildlife and livestock will be at a high. The plant com (See LETTERS on page 4-A) Letters From Page 2-A munity will be as the range managers say "high serai" or a "climax pnc or potential natural community" (range terms for the ecological state of the range) with a wide variety of plant species, and much needed nutrients nutri-ents from the recent burn. The forest will flourish, and in a few years new trees, such as the ponderosa will begin to grow. And then after many more years the spruce and fir will once again sprout up and - if a different management system isn't in affect, the forest will once again go up in smoke. Now this isn't all that bad, UNLESS you want to" manage the forest in a healthy way to produce a renewable resource. If a select logging cut were allowed, you could maintain a very healthy forest with many, many plant and tree species with a very high compatibility for livestock and wildlife, thus, creating cre-ating jobs in town, and helping our local cattle and sheep men out. (In my opinion that is what is best, not letting it get so unhealthy again). The benefits to logging a forest for-est are endless, but if it is not logged and managed, mother nature has her own way of getting get-ting rid of an unhealthy forest by bugs and disease or by fire. Now your extreme environmentalist environ-mentalist will say that is the correct cor-rect way to manage it - let nature do it. I think not. I want my children chil-dren to see the beautiful forest as I have once seen it. I would like to keep the livelihood of my hometown alive. I would like to see a healthy forest all the time, and not witness how unhealthy it now is. The livestock issue is sensitive sensi-tive and debatable to many. To me the debating is nonsense. I'm all for livestock. I have yet to meet a livestock man who said, "I want to over-graze her so bad, that I'll never be able to run livestock again." Our livestock men are probably proba-bly the most efficient range managers we have. Here are some examples to the benefits of livestock on our open range. They help maintain the range in (See LETTERS on page 9-A) Letters To The Editor From Page 4-A several ways: by taking off the old growth and promoting new growth; by taking in the plant nutrients at one place and depositing those same enriching nutrients back to the soil in another; by grazing off plants that are diseased and infested with insects; by breaking up the soil, (a natural way of rotor tilling till-ing the hill side - you know the benefits to your home vegetable gardens); and some have sug-. sug-. gested that the saliva from cattle contains the vitamin thiamin, which serves as a growth promoter pro-moter for plants. Grazing may also reduce fine fuels (those that fuel forest fires). In all, my opinion is that grazing cattle is compatible with plants on the open range. Not to mention that the money generated generat-ed from grazing goes into a fund, where the interest acrued is allocated back to our public schools. In my opinion, these recent fires could have been greatly reduced if proper management were in place, if the forest had been logged and maintained for health, if the range had been grazed to reduce the small fine fire fuels, and if the townspeople townspeo-ple had been allowed more wood gathering permits to reduce the dead fall in the thick black timber. I personally don't believe that even in this drought year we would be having such bad fires. Its been 1 1 years since I studied stud-ied this at Southern Utah University, and I haven't any degree, but I do have a strong opinion, and some common sense. What the environmentalists, environmental-ists, and the range managers have accomplished is plain to see. Drive over Cedar mountain, moun-tain, and look at what's becoming becom-ing of the neighboring forests they're either dying from bugs, or fire or they will be. We need to support our elected elect-ed officials, who support true environmental management. Lance Miller Paicines, Calif. |
