To the editor:
I’ve had a few minor health issues this year, and I trusted my care to medical experts.
Every year when tax time rolls around, I trust our lawyer, a tax expert, to handle our taxes.
When we sold our previous home, we trusted a Realtor to handle the process for us.
We have a financial adviser whom we trust to oversee our retirement funds.
You see, I am happy to admit that I trust experts in areas of expertise in which I am not skilled.
These days, a lack of trust has arisen from a few people involving the management of public forests that allow timber harvesting as one of multiple uses.
The experts managing public forests are balancing many multiple uses, including recreation, hunting, ecosystem services, timber harvesting, et al. The great thing is that these multiple uses are not mutually exclusive. As net users of wood in Indiana, it is fitting that our public lands ought to contribute to the global supply of wood.
The confusion seems to be with some folks, as evidenced by a recent letter to the editor, that somehow timber production is the highest or only consideration of public forest land management experts.
Timber harvesting is one of many tools to restore or maintain ecosystems. It can be used to keep an overstory healthy or create a balance of forest age classes, while at the same time producing a sustainable, renewable building material. Not only are our wildlife adapted to disturbance, but they depend on it. Whether created by a tornado or chainsaw, young forest habitat is in a critical shortage on both private and public lands.
The government ought to be leading by example, and how better to demonstrate balanced ecological and economical forestry than to implement it on a portion of our public forests, as is being done now?
Michael Spalding, Brown County
