Gas stoves and critiquing the Forest Service in online letters to the editor, Sept. 14

OLDER HOMES LACK VENTING FOR GAS STOVES

While looking at homes to buy in Eugene recently, I noticed that most of the older homes we looked at that had gas cook stoves, a dozen or so, either had inadequate range hoods or no range hood or vent at all. I know that there are many here who could use some assistance with this problem from the city and others who are concerned with our health.

Joe Ellersen
Eugene

FOREST SERVICE THREATENS LIFE ON EARTH

The Willamette National Forest’s Young’s Rock timber sale aims to clearcut about 500 acres — approximately 140 acres short of 1 square mile — of native forest under the Orwellian guise of restoration and wildfire risk reduction about 10 miles southeast of Oakridge.

With the two ruling priorities of the U.S. Forest Service being converting native forests to “tree farms for the timber industry forever” and supporting the multi-billion dollar “Fire Fighting Industrial Complex,” the agency continues to rapidly degrade the habitat of all species inhabiting our national forests as well as threaten the very existence of all life on Earth, including bipedal hominids. Logging of national forests contributes less than .5 percent of Oregon’s gross domestic product.

The Forest Service contributes mightily to climate and ecological collapse by converting native forests with up to 1,000 tons of carbon per acre into tree farms as well as perpetrating the most habit destruction of any agency within the U.S. The Forest Service must completely reverse course and become an agency truly protecting native forests, the climate and biodiversity or be completely defunded and dismantled. By the way, I worked for the Forest Service as a firefighter and wildlife surveyor in the late 1980s into the early 1990s.

Shannon Wilson
Eugene

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