“Wildfire poses the biggest threat to old-growth forests,” the title of Ty Williams Feb. 27 guest column, is a ruse to distract from his biggest complaint, his contention that the Oregon habitat conservation plan is taking too many old-growth and mature trees off of the chopping block.

Williams complains that a push by a conservation group to add another 9,500 acres to the habitat conservation plan, a mere .02% addition, to help save the endangered marbled murrelet and further mitigate climate change, is “anti-forestry.”

Of course it is, to Williams, a retired employee of the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF), which has cooperated hand in glove with the timber industry in harvesting millions of acres of mature trees on our public land.

Williams stated that the “biggest threat to old growth is wildfire.” He never mentions the latest science that considers old-growth forests the most fire resilient, due to their moist understory, cooler environment and wind resistance. They are far more resilient than the tinderbox tree farms planted by the industry after clearcutting. Williams advocates thinning old-growth forests which can weaken their resilience to fire.

The biggest threat to forests is still the trees-as-money mindset of the ODF, the timber industry and their advocates like Williams. Having cut down all of the valuable mature trees on their own land, the timber industry can’t wait to get their hands on the small percentage left on our public land — trees, that if left standing, can help mitigate climate change.

ROGER DORBAND
Astoria