Forest Service officials say it generally costs $800 to $1,000 to thin and set prescribed fires on a single acre of forest -There are some contradictory statements here about what the logging companies want to do.[the]"Sierra Nevada Framework" ... requires the Forest Service to aggressively thin fuels from 2.5 million acres of "urban interface zones." [$2.5 billion if done at Forest Service expense, just for the Sierra Nevada.]
Often, the thinning has taken place in remote wildlands instead of around at-risk communities.
To offset the costs, the timber industry has long lobbied the Forest Service to combine thinning with commercial logging. In California, the Forest Service would like to cut and sell some "medium-sized" trees -- up to 24 inches in diameter -- and use the revenues to pay for removing unmarketable brush, said Mathes.
the plan is under attack from timber interests, who want to log larger trees in more remote areas,
The questions I don't see answered: Are the logging companies interested in logging the areas that most need to be thinned and limit themselves to the smaller trees? And would the revenues from the timber sales actually be sufficient to pay for the brush clearing?
The logging companies never seem to get interviewed for articles like these, so their plans are not clear.
A letter to the editor bringing that up might be appropriate. Perhaps dropping a line to the reporter would help as well. He does a lot of their enviro stuff. His articles are usually as fair as you're going to get out of the Bee. I think he is the one who wrote all the ones on how the enviro movement was ripping people off. It might be time to bring that up again.