They cut back timber and suffer the consequences

By Lars Larson,
NW and national radio host

Massive fires covering literally hundreds of square miles fill the air of the Northwest with smoke for yet another summer.

Homes burn and if we’re lucky, no one will die as they did last year.

Feckless state governments offer up nothing much in the way of long term solutions.

Let me remind you it doesn’t have to be this way

For about one third of a century from the fifties to the 80s the Northwest had almost no big forest fires. Now they happen every year.

What changed? Liberals tell you it’s climate change. Nope. It’s logging or the lack thereof.

Those fire free decades featured the harvest and replanting of forests. That’s called sensible management. It generates the kind of incomes that make families comfortable and taxes to pay for thinning and fire prevention.

Today, this region grows literally billions of board feet of timber more than it cuts.

We could cut what grows every year and never run out.

That’s called sustained yield.

But folks who live in cities, in houses made from wood, a roll of wood products next to the toilet, their takeout meals in a paper bag…seem not to make the connection.

You can cut trees and have a healthy forest or you can breathe the smoke every summer.

Life truly is about choices…both in the forest and on your election ballot.