Dear Governor Kitzhaber,

I am writing you regarding a proposed timber sale on Sun Pass State Forest, which is just down the road from where I live. It is a place in which my family, friends and I frequently recreate. The local ODF foresters have named the sale "Siderod", and it is due to go to bid this spring.  If this sale goes forward as planned, over half of the remaining old growth trees in one of the last old-growth remnants in Sun Pass Forest will be cut.  If nothing changes, the remaining big trees will then succumb in future sales. This is all taking place in an area where most of the mature forest is already gone.  It is enormously distressing to me to have the Oregon Department of Forestry be so far behind the curve in current forestry thinking. I am fully cognizant of all the good and necessary things funded by the Common School Fund; but this Fund currently has $800 million in assets and is projected to reach $1 billion. The value of an intact old growth forest - to school children probably more even than others of us - with all its component species and functions, is surely far greater than the small number of dollars this sale will add to the already large School Fund. Saving these giant pines and firs is providing for our children's future in a way that may not be quantifiable.

Governor, do we have to change the mandates for managing the State's lands, or is there room under current laws to manage more in tune with the ecological consciousness of theAmerican people, and certainly that of Oregonians? Our young friends, who live on land surrounded by Sun Pass State Forest, have worked tirelessly with Bill, Ed and others of ODF's Klamath Falls office, urging them to review the Siderod sale and preserve the big trees. They have set up a web site to tell the story of what they call "The Children's Forest" and to make more people aware of how Common School Fund lands are managed. I urge you, Governor, to view this site at http://www.innerexplorations.com/forest.htm  I think you will be moved and impressed.

I also urge you to do whatever you appropriately can to move ODF into the new era of forest landmanagement. It will benefit your young son and all his generation far more than a few annual dollars added to the School fund. Thank you for your help.

From Singapore 

Dear Governor Kitzhaber,

Saving The Children’s Forest

Greetings.

I am writing you concerning the unfortunate situation that has befallen and will continue to befall, it seems, the place called The Children’s Forest. It came to my attention, thanks to the Director of Inner Explorations Jim Arraj, that the Oregan Dept. of Forestry has proposed a Siderod Timber Sale in Klamath County, Oregon, due to go to bid this spring, and plans are underway to cut down the best and last old growth forests and to remove more than half of the old growth trees now, with absolutely no provision for saving them in and for the future.

It seems that the whole area is already over-cut, with most of the mature forest destroyed. And despite repeated requests, they have yet to provide adequate data about what they and other forest owners in this area have done in the past as concerns the downing of the old growth trees, and of how this logging has affected the creatures whose very existence depend on the flourishing of such forests.

On their side, they claim that their timber cutting is justified by their legal mandate to "maximize revenue", and that the money goes to the Common School Fund. Apart from the fact that this is not justified even on the basis of the current economic resources of the Common School Fund (see http://www.innerexplorations.com/forest.htm), one must be very clear that while revenue should be maximized, it must never be done at the expense of other incommensurable and irreplaceable goods. This especially goes for goods which support and make possible the very survival of the human species. The ecological balance is so delicate and already so badly disrupted that estimations of mass extinctions have been made for the human species. Certainly this is not simply a matter of the romantic preservation of beautiful birds for the later generation, but a crusade for the very existence of the later generations of the human species itself.

A certain classical thinker once said that a sign of human intelligence is his ability to plan. Man for his part, while not equipped with physical features like the brutes which ensure his survival, has instead been blessed with intelligence, which makes for his physical natural weaknesses. If we are at all to survive as a species, we must plan, and plan well for the future, as is clear to your very prudent office.

Therefore I appeal to you to ask the Oregan Dept. of Forestry to reconsider this sale and to refrain from destroying the old growth trees, especially the enormous ponderosa pines, sugar pines, and white fir more than 200 years old and which are fast vanishing from the
east-side forest. On my part, I thank you and your good governance, which will effect the endurance of the later generations.