Wow, the Flathead Beacon is now just reprinting stuff from the CSM. Well, since that’s the case, I’ll just re-post my comments from the CSM’s website.

This article leaves a lot to be desired, contains a number of false or misleading statements and basically is just a re-do of a similar article in the NY Times a few months ago. The CSM can do better in my mind.

What Mr. Love failed to you is that right now on the Lolo NF there is not one single appeal of a timber sale and there are no active lawsuits. How Mr. Love can blame appeals and litigation is a real mystery.

The truth of the matter is that our nation is experiencing the worst housing market since the Great Depression and the steepest decline in wood consumption ever. Fact is, timber company’s cannot even sell many of their lumber products right now and are not even bidding on national forest timber sales that are offered.

Why this article ignores this reality is a real mystery.

Also, for a more comprehensive look at the beetle issue check out a report titled, “Recent Forest Insect Outbreaks and Fire Risk in Colorado Forests: A Brief Synthesis of Relevant Research.”

It’s available at: http://www.cfri.colostate.edu/docs/cfri_insect.pdf

The report, from some of the leading independent researchers on the topic, answers many common questions such as:

Do outbreaks of mountain pine beetles and other forest insects increase the risk of severe wildfires? Does a large insect outbreak constitute an emergency? Are forests with large amounts of insects and dead trees unhealthy?

Some of the answers may surprise people.

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These two articles I will paste below are interesting to read in the context the Forest Service’s Mr. Love saying that appeals and litigation are the reason logging has been curtailed.

For example, the Western Wood Products Association this week revised its downward lumber forecast even lower and stated, “Western mills are experiencing the largest downturn in lumber demand ever recorded.” Read the whole thing here:
http://www2.wwpa.org/ABOUTWWPA/Newsroom/tabid/817/Default.aspx

And the Kalispell (MT) Daily Interlake reports today that Plum Creek Timber Company has shut down and reduced production at their Montana timber mills because of what their CEO said was, ” eroding demand for our wood products.”

Furthermore, Plum Creek is actually telling loggers to stop working in the woods because their log yards are full and they’ve got a lot of inventory both in logs and lumber because of the housing crisis. Get that whole story here:
http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2009/01/09/news/local_montana/news_8768521326_03.txt

Again, why the CSM’s reporter chose to ignore the profoundly dire economic reality by constructing some “strawman” about “appeals and litigation” stopping logging is a mystery. I expect much better reporting in the CSM!

Beetle killed trees won’t be a problem because the world is ending in 2012,....isn’t it MK?  The internet has spawned “research” that will justify anyone’s point of view, no matter how impractical or silly.  Funny how all the anti-logging people seem to live in wood houses isn’t it?

Redhawk: not sure what you mean with the 2012 prediction and its relationship to me. Yes, the internet has spawned a lot of “research:” however, the research I site above is from the Colorado State Forest Service, Colorado State University and the Western Wood Products Association… hardly “anti-logging” people. Is Plum Creek Timber Co “anti-logging” because they are telling their logging contractors to stay out of the woods because they have more logs than they have customers right now?

Also, not sure how the fact that I live in a home built in 1941 has anything to do with being concerned about forest management in 2009. Try again redhawk, although next time, try and call down a bit and bring some sense in your comments.

The “research” from colorado that Mr. Koehler refers too certainly didn’t sway the opinion of every local, state, and federal politician in Colorado. they listened politely then dismissed it.They’re all calling for a vastly expanded USFS timber sale program to salvage pine beetle killed timber. It’s amazing to me how peoples environmental idealism goes out the window when their property values are threatened by the dead forests and resulting fear of wildfire that comes from a beetle epidemic. Colorado Senator Mark Udall, who scored a 100% rating with the League of Conservation Voters, recently sponsored legislation that would create “insect emergency areas, where NEPA rules would be “waived” and trees could be thinned more quickly”, In 2000 Udall proposed to “take funds from the timber sale budget and reallocate it to protect wildlife” so as “to protect rather than destroy our national forests”. Nothing like a MPB epidemic to change your opinion. When the beetle comes to Missoula, your sympathizers will desert you Mathew.

Mrs. Logger, We had this discussion before on a different site, but I didn’t realize that politicians were the authority when it came to science and had the “truth” market cornered. Anyway, the study says what it says and politicians can and will do what they want.

Also, your doom and gloom rhetoric about bark beetles is belied by this little quote from a Forest Service expert (ie a scientist, not a politico).

“We’re not seeing much of anything new on the Bitterroot.  There’s just not a lot left there for the mountain pine beetle. There’s a lack of host trees the right age and size.  We’ve seen similar levels of infestation in the 1970s and ‘80s and also back in the ‘20s and ‘30s. It’s not something that’s unprecedented.” - Greg DeNitto, group leader of the Forest Service’s Northern Region’s forest health protection team at
http://www.ravallirepublic.com/articles/2008/12/23/news/news35.txt