Despite what the timber industry would have you believe, logging won’t save us from the climate-driven wildfires burning across the West. Besides the fact that the timber industry is the No. 1 source of emissions in the state, studies have also shown that clearcuts and monocrop tree farms actually burn more severely than native forests, putting surrounding communities at greater risk from wildfire.

Even in the face of the devastation that has leveled entire towns across the state and the evidence that shows  it was exacerbated by contemporary logging practices, Big Timber is pushing to ramp up logging on public lands. 

Just a few miles away from Eugene, neighborhoods in the Thurston Hills were evacuated due to the threat of the Holiday Farm Fire, yet Seneca Jones and the Bureau of Land Management are still actively advocating to clearcut the area despite the BLM’s own scientists showing that logging would increase fire hazards to local residents. 

It is time that we hold these corporations accountable for the destruction they have wrought on our communities and our climate and stop them from putting any more towns at risk. If we are to survive climate change and the increase in wildfire that it will bring, we must protect our native forests, not sell them off to the corporations responsible for these disasters.

Madeline Cowen

Eugene

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