Letters to the Editor 10/24/2007

To the Editor,

I was very disappointed with The Nugget for publishing Steve Bryan's letter to the editor on October 10.

To quote your policy "The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor." Why do you print editorials that are so derogatory? I am a "Bible-follower" and totally disagree with the points he makes, but the paper is not a place to discuss these differences.

(Letters) do not change people's firmly held attitudes and beliefs. Harsh, misinformed, rude, hateful (letters) only succeed in raising people's blood pressure.

I think of the poor misguided young man that burned down the McDonald's in Sisters. Would he have been so convinced that it was what the people of Sisters wanted if there had not been so many angry editorials published against the building of McDonald's?

I urge you to raise your standards and give the City of Sisters a paper that we can be proud of, not one that makes us cringe. You do have the right to select (letters) that are written in a mature and respectful manner.

LuAnn Backman

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To the Editor:

Dan Rosauer's letter in last week's Nugget maintained that environmentalist groups manage our forests by using "our legal system to enforce their beliefs" and are partly responsible for the area's forest fires.

But environmentalists merely serve as watchdogs when the National Forest Service (NFS) ignores our laws - laws based on hard science, not belief systems. And even the NFS is quick to concede the catastrophic scale of our area's wildfires is caused by a century of misguided fire suppression.

Anyone who owns and maintains a grass lawn can understand why logging a forest after a wildfire is an unhealthy practice in the long run. Grass draws and stores nutrients from the soil. If a lawn is cut using a non-mulching lawn mower and is not fertilized, it eventually dies because vital nutrients are being removed and not replenished.

Trees also pull nutrients from soil. Those nutrients return to the soil when a tree decays on the forest floor. But when trees are harvested after a fire, nutrients needed to fertilize the next generation of trees are removed. The resulting soil depletion hurts forest health and productivity.

Michael Cooper

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To the Editor:

Dan Rosauer believes the environmental groups have some evil agenda to ruin our forests by taking away the ability of the Forest Service and timber companies to manage them. By winning the lawsuit the environmental groups didn't make one cent from it. What economical gains or benefits do they get? None. So, we know there's no financial motive. Yet, we know there is a financial motivation for timber companies, because more volume equals more dollars.

And if Dan thinks the timber companies truly care about the health of the forest ecosystem, he is living in a dream world. This is especially true on public land, which is not the timber companies' land. They won't have to worry about logging it again for another 80 to 100 years so the men will not be around anymore and the company may not be around either.

Dan claims the forests need to be actively managed, burned or unburned. Well, I hate to break the news to him, but forests have been self-managing themselves for hundreds of millions of years and have done a great job. The imbalance started when man went in and began altering (thus unbalancing) the system, driven by financial rewards of extracting huge amounts of forest products. He also said that forests are being burned up because of the environmentalists keeping managers and loggers from cleaning the forest up. Did you know that the most fire prone areas are areas that have been logged?

Forestry literature sites this all the time. The enormous amounts of logging slash on the forest floor create a fire hazard, and those medium to light fuels (branches, twigs, needles) dry fast and become easy kindling. The best way to prevent these catastrophic fires is to allow fires to burn the understory of the forest every five or 10 years.

Don't listen to the politicians because they studied law not ecology. Go down and talk to your local ecologist and please not the ones hired by timber companies. I think you know why.

Jim Rutherford

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To the Editor:

We are not greedy developers. We purchased our land in 1977, zoned five-acre minimum exclusive farm use, for the purpose of selling several lots to fund our retirement. Five-plus acres provides privacy, open space and room for a family to produce their own organic meat, milk, eggs and vegetables.

Then the zoning was changed, and for 26 years we were unable to partition, until Measure 37 passed. We jumped through all the hoops, paid the fees and right now are holding our breath waiting for the approval of our two-house partition application, meeting all of the conditions placed upon us. Measure 49, if passed, would lay waste all of our efforts and expense.

Just four five-plus acre parcels in an EFU partition is considered a subdivision - hardly the huge, dense developments they're trying to scare you with. And they aren't telling you how many of those Measure 37 claims have been denied because the zoning when claimants purchased their land didn't allow what they're asking for.

The "fast-track" option offered for current claims is a joke! Under the new M49 rules, hardly any existing claims that are "re-examined" would be found eligible for approval, including ours. M49 sets up almost insurmountable obstacles and costs to approval for people such as us who don't have funds to fight them.

Before you mark your ballot, if you can't read all of the arguments in opposition, at least read pages 60-62, written by attorneys who know how to read the fine print. Measure 49 is NOT fair! Whatever problems with M37 can be solved in better ways. Please vote NO!

Lorene Richardson