Letter to the editor - Conserve, not log, forests

Editor,

The Bozeman Municipal Watershed logging project, the South Plateau Landscape logging project near West Yellowstone, and other plans to log public lands in Montana ignore the scientific fact that logging exposes soil to the sun and wind, to heat and drying.

The drying out of the continent, particular in the West, is more than a matter of episodic droughts, more than lack of precipitation. Hotter climate extremes increase the drying, as does logging.

The current trend is “progressively lower river flows, drier landscapes, higher forest mortality, and more severe and widespread wi...