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THE ASTORIAN • SATuRdAy, MARcH 26, 2022
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
DERRICK DePLEDGE
Editor
Founded in 1873
SHANNON ARLINT
circulation Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
GUEST COLUMN
Washington state needs inclusive forest policy
W
ashington’s Board of Nat-
ural Resources is consider-
ing banning timber harvest-
ing on state lands. That is extremely
unwise. Instead, the board must ensure
its healthy forest policies incorporate
all management tools including plant-
ing, thinning and logging.
The board, established in 1957, sets
policies to manage Washington’s 5.6
million acres granted by
Congress in 1889. More
than 3 million acres
were designated as trust
lands to support various
public institutions, of
which 2.1 million acres
are forests.
DON C.
Banning timber har-
BRUNELL
vesting robs critical
funds from K-12 pub-
lic schools, timber dependent commu-
nities, the universities of Washington
and Washington State, the state capi-
tol building and public agencies such as
law enforcement and social services.
Rather than generating much-needed
timber sales revenue, fighting wildfires
costs the state millions and drains the
state’s emergency reserves. These wild-
fires are fueled by the buildup of dead,
downed and diseased trees and ground
debris in unhealthy forests.
Healthy forests are important in cap-
turing carbon dioxide.
“Our forests are our friends in terms
of limiting atmospheric carbon diox-
ide,” says Matthew Ayres, a profes-
sor of biological science at Dartmouth
College. His research shows that for-
ests can provide sustainable products
such as lumber, pulp and fuel while still
serving as reservoirs for lots of carbon
— depending on how forests are man-
aged. His research was based on timber
harvests in Northeastern states.
Hotter, drier summers and longer fire
National Interagency Fire Center
A columnist urges Washington state to pursue a gamut of forest management techniques,
including harvest, as a way of mitigating wildfire danger.
seasons — combined with unhealthy
forests — have led to increases in
fire starts and areas burned, accord-
ing to the state’s Department of Natu-
ral Resources. Fires in 2014 and 2015
burned nearly 1.5 million acres of pub-
lic and private forestlands and cost
more than $500 million to suppress.
At the federal level, costs of fight-
ing fires jumped from 16% of the U.S.
Forest Service budget in 1995 to 55%
last year. Federal wildfire suppression
expenses were $2.35 billion in 2021.
Forest fires are part of nature, but
they are getting more dangerous and
expensive to fight. As fires increase in
size and intensity, suppression, environ-
mental restoration and mitigation costs
soar. However, special funding requests
for natural disasters will become more
difficult to obtain as our federal debt
soars above $30 trillion.
So, it is time to revisit the way we
are overseeing our forests.
John Bailey, a professor of forest
management at Oregon State Univer-
sity, calculates “megafires” — those
consuming at least 156 square miles —
are increasing. He believes “part of the
solution is thinning forests through log-
ging, prescribed burns and allowing
naturally occurring fires to be managed
instead of extinguished.”
Cutting diseased, dead and fire-dam-
aged trees is not new. In intermoun-
tain forests, loggers once salvaged bee-
tle-killed trees and sent them to rural
sawmills to be cut into two-by-fours.
That practice was severely curtailed 30
years ago.
Knowing that mature trees are most
susceptible to insects and disease, pub-
lic forest managers once designed
timber sales on small tracts as fire
breaks. The logging and subsequent
cleanup removed forest fuels which,
in recent years, have been allowed to
accumulate.
Harvesting helped fund replanting
and fire access road construction. Envi-
ronmental mitigation techniques have
dramatically improved, resulting in
clean water, healthier air quality and
unencumbered access for fish returning
to spawning grounds.
As we look forward to more aus-
tere times, we must revise manage-
ment practices in state and federal for-
ests. We can no longer allow nature to
just take its course. There needs to be a
more balanced approach which reduces
the risk of wildfire.
Megafires are polluting our air,
endangering our health and safety and
burning a bigger hole in our pocket-
books. By thinning, salvaging and log-
ging, we could not only save expenses,
but create jobs and bring in needed rev-
enue to government.
don c. Brunell is a business analyst,
writer and columnist. He retired as pres-
ident of the Association of Washington
Business, the state’s oldest and largest
business organization, and now lives in
Vancouver, Washington.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Giant hole
e have a giant hole downtown.
Whatever should we do with it?
Lots of ideas are floating around. We need
to rethink this.
For 70 years, Astoria has tried to
become a tourist destination. The giant
condom on the Astoria Column didn’t
work, and you want to chase off the sea
lions. Now we have a great chance to
achieve that dream.
No longer do the trailers and motor
homes have to drive right on by. We have
a hole. If we put billboards on U.S. High-
way 30 claiming it to be “world famous,”
we’ll attract tourists.
We can plant bushes around it and
charge tourists to look in it. We could call
it The Astor Hole. Or the Not so Grand
Canyon. We could put mannequin arms in
it, and call it Astoria’s Arm Pit.
Maybe some wild donkeys — we
could call it the Astoria A**hole. Or stat-
ues of former politicians (we could use
the same name). Maybe we could put in
some water and a statue of a half-naked
mermaid. Plant some olive trees, and call
it the Olive Pit.
Why not have some fun, and make it
“world famous”? Let’s face it, sooner or
later someone is going to figure out how
to make some money with this thing. The
rest of us won’t get a vote.
Money talks. Let’s get ahead of this
thing, and have some fun.
DAVE BERGQUIST
Astoria
W
Practice
eople should be able to download a
free phone-based app that we could
use to practice for the Cascadia Subduc-
tion Zone event.
The phone app could randomly send a
notification that a Cascadia practice event
just for you, or a group, or the whole
region, was beginning. It would then use
your phone’s GPS to locate you and notify
you of the hazards at your location, while
providing a map of your immediate area.
You could see if you had to escape a
tsunami inundation, where to move to,
and how long that you had to get to higher
ground. After the practice event, the app
would tell you and Oregon emergency
managers what virtually happened to you.
We need to practice and know what to
do wherever we are at, whenever it hap-
pens. Without this type of real-life prac-
tice, I am not sure how anyone could be
prepared. I do not see how emergency
managers can reliably predict outcomes
and prepare a response.
An app like this could be some-
thing that allows residents and visitors
to become orientated to actual escape
P
LETTERS WELCOME
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tical projects that help communities
thrive. INCO applauds Wyden, Merkley
and Bonamici for doing their best to make
our lives less difficult, especially in these
uncertain times.
CHERYL CONWAY
Indivisible North Coast Oregon
Leadership Team
Astoria
Must comment
’m a soon-to-be resident of the extraor-
dinary city of Astoria and, although I
don’t yet live there, I feel I must comment
on the Heritage Square project.
A central, downtown square, or plaza,
is an asset beyond measure to a commu-
nity and, once it’s lost, cannot normally
be restored.
While additional housing is an urgent
need in Astoria, the Heritage Square loca-
tion that’s being considered is just not the
wise choice, unless there’s an equally cen-
tral block where a plaza could be devel-
oped in the near future.
I appeal to the citizens of Astoria to
protect this very valuable, and likely irre-
placeable gathering place, and to recog-
nize what a great and lasting effect its loss
would have on the quality of life there.
JULIE KENNEDY
Port Townsend, Washington
I
strategies. An app like this could engage
large numbers of people in Cascadia
preparedness.
This is a link to the rough design: bit.
ly/3wjDF7A
ROGER LINDSLEY
Astoria
Salute to good governance
nce again, we see how good gover-
nance makes a positive difference in
our lives. Indivisible North Coast Oregon
salutes U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici for
her leadership in getting federal stimulus
funds to our area.
The city of Astoria will receive more
O
than $600,000 to upgrade drainage sys-
tems in landslide-prone sites. These
include a site near Columbia Memorial
Hospital and at First and Commercial
streets. City officials identified key sites
for this funding.
INCO thanks U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden
and U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley for their work
to secure $1 million in federal funds for
a waterline project in Warrenton. This
money is part of funding for cities, pro-
grams and organizations in Oregon they
obtained to support rural communi-
ties, protect public lands and build envi-
ronment resilience, according to The
Astorian.
Northwest Oregon is fortunate to have
members of Congress who focus on prac-