TO THE EDITOR
them at each other for years to come.
Can’t wait to see us there.
Loren M. Mohler
Eugene
ARTFUL DODGERS
James Johnston’s interesting article
(cover story, 8/30) on the plight of the coastal
forests and the BLM’s latest logging proposal
focuses understandably on damage to envi-
ronment
and
endangered
species.
Unfortunately, federal forest management
agencies have become artful at dodging these
crucial issues through pseudo-science, ad-
ministrative exclusion and budget train
wrecks. The public relations pitch, offered by
timber industry and friends for increasing
BLM logging, is that the new plan will cut
less timber than what is grown. This defini-
tion of sustainability, so-called “sustained
yield,” where tree growth equals or exceeds
timber harvest is, as they know, mandated on
federal forestlands.
Oregon’s old forests have been methodi-
cally liquidated to the twisted tune of this
mythical mantra, one that justifies logging
slow growing old trees by “balancing”
growth against rapidly growing young ones.
Any unbiased forester would question how
biomass growth in cubic feet fairly compares
to mature timber growth in board feet. Will
seedlings replace 200-year-old trees in 60
years or even three times as long?
In this “sustained yield” ploy, projected
growth of “replacement” trees is typically
computer modeled rather than measured
against actual performance, resulting in huge
overestimates. As an example, predicted
north coast tree growth failed to materialize
due to unforeseen predation by Swiss needle
cast, an endemic fungus rampaging through
Doug fir monocultures at epidemic levels.
Bloated future growth predictions justified
logging too much mature timber in the pres-
ent, which is how the north coast was shame-
lessly overcut.
Federal sustained yield models for log-
ging old-growth forests are also skewed by
overestimating old-growth acres or relaxing
definitions to include maturing timber stands
of suitable size but lacking classic age, den-
sity and structure. By puffing up the total vol-
ume, more volume can be “sustainably” ex-
tracted. Have BLM’s “old-growth” acres
been field checked by unbiased foresters? Do
agency yield models consider climate warm-
ing, increased fires and pathogens due to
drought and slash, or soil productivity losses?
Along with bemoaning forest environ-
ments and suing over endangered species,
groups anxious to discredit the BLM logging
plan should attack their sustained yield model
on its own lack of merit.
Roy Keene
Eugene
ALL PART OF THE PLAN
It is no accident that the war against Iraq
has turned into a disaster of biblical propor-
tions. That was the plan.
It is no accident that Hurricane Katrina
was manipulated into a massive ethnic
cleansing operation that continues to this day.
That was the plan. That’s what FEMA does.
It is no accident that an Iraq War contrac-
tor has been chosen to lead the development
of downtown Eugene. The same grand lar-
ceny will be committed here as has been
committed in Iraq. The Pentagon has deep
pockets. Do we? Do you think the rich will
pay the bill? Are you kidding?
The Eugene School District failed to meet
payroll this month. They are trying to cut
benefits for school staff (secretaries, custodi-
ans, librarians) while simultaneously increas-
ing benefits for administrators (principals,
vice principals, superintendent.) Not meeting
payroll will be blamed on the greedy custodi-
ans and secretaries, but the only pay increase
in sight is going to the highest paid employ-
ees. This is no accident, either. That was the
plan.
Stealing from the poor is a crime against
nature. Destroying a country in order to gain
wealth and power is a crime against nature. It
is also a crime for which the penalty in law is
life in prison. Ethnic cleansing is a crime
against nature and also a crime for which the
penalty in law is life in prison.
Will the victims of the school district’s
power grab stand up for their rights or allow
themselves to be robbed and impoverished?
Will the citizens of Eugene stand up against
the selling of our downtown to a Wall Street
war profiteer or allow our city and parks to be
destroyed for the profit of a few?
Ann Tattersall
Eugene
More Beads Than You Can Imagine!
KAZURI BEAD TRUNK SHOW
ONE DAY ONLY!
Thursday, Sept. 13th
11am – 5pm
(Eugene location Only)
www.azillionbeads.net
O
OW REG
PIO A E NED ON
NE UG BY
ER EN
FA E
MI
LY
EUGENE
665 Conger St.
Suite J
(541) 338-8311
BEND
(541) 617-8854
IT’S A MATTER OF CHOICE
It took a lot of courage to print Nancy
Willard’s Viewpoint (8/30) on school choice.
Her dark vision of the world will no doubt
draw more responses in defense of Eugene’s
remarkable system than you can possibly
read, let alone publish.
We live in a city in which parents can
choose which school to support so long as
there’s room and so long as the parents pro-
vide transportation. Seventy percent of the
parents who opt out of their neighborhood
schools do so to use another “regular” school;
only 30 percent use alternative schools. Why
do any of them do this? Nancy neither knows
nor cares. Of the 11 paragraphs in her edito-
rial, seven focused entirely on how to allocate
real estate, which is hardly the real issue.
The real issue, left between Willard’s
lines, is that when parents choose an alterna-
tive school’s higher scores and/or different
philosophy, families with a greater academic
SEPTEMBER 13, 2007 5