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Executive order needed to log Wolf Creek

Summer continues to be very busy. I have been given the opportunity to discuss the legislative session with folks from Pagosa Springs to Gunnison, and I hope to see many more citizens between now and when the second session begins in January.

I attended a tour and then a forum spearheaded by Hinsdale County Commissioner Cindy Dozier regarding the devastation of Southern Colorado forests by the spruce beetle. Speakers at the forum included experts in forest management from the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Colorado Forest Service. The number of dead trees on Slumgullion Pass equal numbers on Wolf Creek Pass. The difference is, on Slumgullion Pass, the USFS has contracted with the sawmill in Montrose to remove dead trees along the highway corridor. This will help to serve as a fire break in case of a catastrophic fire. Young, living trees are left standing which will hurry reforestation of the area.

The problem is, the Montrose sawmill would like to expand to two work shifts per day and, even with millions of dead trees, the federal bureaucracy hampers the ability to provide the trees needed. I continue to agree with State Rep. Don Corum that a presidential executive order is needed to hurry up the federal permitting process in this emergency situation to get as many dead trees off the forest as soon as possible to minimize the devastation of an inevitable catastrophic fire.

I have asked on numerous occasions why no work is being done on Wolf Creek. One of the answers was that there is a "roadless area" on one side of Highway 160. It is crazy to use that excuse when we have this emergency situation that is the prelude for a catastrophic fire of the magnitude that we have never seen. I will continue to press for action on Wolf Creek Pass.

We also are beginning to see beetle kill in the Purgatory and Coalbank Pass areas.

I am very impressed by the knowledge and expertise of our local USFS and BLM employees. These folks know what they are talking about and want to do the right thing. However, they are hampered by politics to say what they really think. Several of them did lament that our national forest had not been managed properly because of misplaced public pressure by certain activist environmental groups. The result has been the destruction of the timber industry, and a crowded and unhealthy forest that was vulnerable to the 2002 drought which gave rise to the spruce beetle infestation.

Our grandchildren will never know our National Forests as we have known them. The trees are dead or dying. Nature will take its course, and in 200 or 300 years there will again be a forest as we know it today. The damage has been done, and we can not go back in time. However, we can and must learn from our past mistakes as we manage for the future.

J. Paul Brown

State Representative HD 59, Ignacio