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Your Nov. 15 headline "Timber Controversy: Protesters met by counter-protesters in Elkins" would have been more accurately written "Timber Travesty."
The protest organized by rural citizens and groups to fight the U.S. Forest Service's ridiculous plan to clear-cut 3,500 acres in the Lead Mine area of Tucker County is about safeguarding the area from flooding and from the destruction of water supplies. The protest was about preserving old-growth forest. The USFS Upper Cheat River Project currently involves a plan to clear-cut 3,500 acres.
I would ask your readers to please do as I and many others are doing and email Cheat District Ranger Jon Morgan at jonathan.morgan@usda.gov and ask that this clear-cutting, this "Upper Cheat River Project," be put on hold, and that the efforts at management in this area of Mon Forest be re-evaluated, in order to focus on water retention on steep slopes, invasive weed control, carbon storage, old-growth protection, and safeguarding drinking water quality and overall quality of life for the area's residents.
Regrettably, on the 14th I was in Berkeley County taking an ill family member to a medical appointment, so I was unable to attend the protest aimed at getting the USFS's attention. Had I been able to attend, I would have stood alongside the many brave Tucker County residents who took their time, money and energy to send a message to the USFS that we all wish to send: "STOP THIS CLEAR-CUTTING."
These trees, as one protester's sign put it, are "Worth more alive than dead." The fact that those in the timber industry felt it necessary to "counter-protest" suggests that the USFS stated purposes for this project are merely cover for a greed and profit motive that will ultimately, if this clear-cutting is done, result in an impoverishment of the area and of the quality of life of its rural citizens.
Country people deserve to live in beautiful places, too, and to be listened to when they realize a clear cut is a bad idea. Not all clear-cutting is bad, but this Upper Cheat River Project's clear-cutting is -- it's an overwhelmingly foolish undertaking.
Deborah Stiles
St. George