To the editor:

I think Cameron Clark’s guest columnist article (Dec. 6, 2017) would have been better titled, “DNR: State’s forests being carefully damaged.”

Please understand, as an employee of the state’s DNR, Mr. Clark gets paid to say the words he does. I found it amusing how many times he carefully selected the word “backcountry” when referring to the logging of state taxpayers’ forestland as if it is something only done to the kind of forgotten land no one sees and should care about. It’s his use of words “veteran” forester and “scientifically” managing by those spending a “lifetime studying” our state forests that make me think he’s merely spouting cultured words of a salesman.

It is best to allow the forest to take its more natural course free of the inherent greediness of impatient man, if for no other reason being that it is evolutionarily designed to happen that way.

Mr. Clark can’t really expect any normal person to believe the state is allowed to log trees from the state forest “for the health of the forest, not profit.” He was careful to add the word “part” when informing us that part of managing a taxpayer-supported recreational area — excuse me, a “backcountry” — targets mostly dead, diseased and declining trees. To my more commonsense mind, that tells me these trees already are or will soon be opening up the forest floor naturally to more light for those new saplings, so why expend needless energy? For the DNR, isn’t it really about managing for those saplings to grow quicker into harvestable size?

The missing part of managing a forest he doesn’t mention — and it’s the biggest part — is the logging of the oldest and largest, most majestic, healthy hardwood trees of monetary value in each acre of Yellowwood State Forest “backcountry.”

If Mr. Clark thinks certain rare and endangered species of Brown County need periodic thinning of forests, I can assure him that private landowners are doing their fair share of altruistic forest thinning to help these poor little critters. If this huge acreage of privately owned logging isn’t helping them get off the county’s endangered list, then it must be due to other reasons and certainly not anything an additional 299 acres of taxpayer-supported Yellowwood State Forest chainsawing will help.

He goes on to say that timber harvests are only allowed during a six-month period to protect bat species. Is this a practice done just as much to justify the DNR’s “carefully managed” sales pitch? Logging trucks are hogging our roads all months of the year, regardless of any particular species of bat propagation.

Of course, he doesn’t show concern for the animal species benefiting from a dark forest environment. It doesn’t fit his narrative of needing to convince concerned citizens to allow the state to generate money for what big government perceives to be needed for more important things. It is Mr. Clark’s job to lose if he doesn’t support the command handed down from state government, and he reminds us that law allows this devastating “management.”

Please, for the sake of our state’s hikers and other nature enthusiasts, listen to us and don’t log our state-owned forested recreational areas. Bring enchantment back to the dark forests we’ve lost. They are ours to thrive within when wandering through the wonder of their sheltered canopies.

Mike Kelley, Stone Head

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