To the editor: This front-page article highlights the bipartisan motion in Congress to go the Repair Our Forests Act, or FOFA, to be able to tackle the ever-increasing threat of wildfires (“With support from loggers and (some) environmentalists, Congress unites on major wildfire bill,” Sept. 10). Over the past decade, rising temperatures, prolonged droughts and ineffective forest administration practices have led to massive will increase within the annual acreage affected by U.S. wildfires, together with a number of “megafires” in California and different Western states.
FOFA would provide proactive forest administration to deal with wildfire threat by eradicating regulatory limitations to expedite important forest initiatives whereas preserving core environmental safeguards. The invoice implements forest thinning and removing of lifeless and diseased timber to cut back fireplace depth, invests in new wildfire prevention applied sciences and improves reforestation steps after fires happen.
Our altering local weather and the rising wildfire threat demand new, simpler forest administration practices. It’s heartening to see Democrats and Republicans coming collectively to maneuver ahead this vital laws.
Chad Edwards, Altadena
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To the editor: The controversy over the Repair Our Forests Act is just not a alternative between managing our forests and leaving them alone.
The Sierra Membership helps energetic, science-based forest administration, together with prescribed fireplace, ecological restoration and thoroughly designed thinning the place acceptable. We additionally acknowledge that local weather change is making wildfires extra harmful and that we urgently have to do extra to guard communities and ecosystems.
Our concern with the Repair Our Forests Act is just not that it promotes energetic administration. It’s that the laws would weaken environmental overview and public oversight for initiatives that may cowl 1000’s of acres. These safeguards assist be certain that forest administration relies on sound science and ecological wants relatively than merely accelerating industrial logging, notably underneath an administration that has made a transparent resolution to prioritize timber harvest over all different values for our nationwide forests.
We will transfer sooner to revive forests, use prescribed fireplace and scale back wildfire dangers with out treating environmental protections because the impediment. The query isn’t whether or not we handle our forests. It’s how we handle them — and whether or not we do it responsibly.
Anna Medema, Washington, D.C.
This author is deputy legislative director, forests and public lands, of environmental advocacy group the Sierra Membership.
