LETTERS: CLEAR-CUTTING DOESN'T CREATE WASTELAND

To the editor:

The Missouri Department of Conservation is to be commended for officially denouncing the worn-out Sierra Club rhetoric that to cut logs on public land is somehow akin to destroying the forest.

In the Sierra Club's words, "Cutting down all trees and brush in a large area -- 10 to 15 acres -- is the same as converting a forest into a barren wasteland." What nonsense such outright distortions really are.

Ten to 15 acres does not constitute a forest. A thousand acres does not necessarily constitute a forest. Cutting all trees and brush in 10-to-20-acre tracts does not create a barren wasteland. It does, however, create openings in the forest that wildlife thrives upon. The term clear-cutting has become a Sierra Club buzzword to try and stop sound forestry management on both public and private land. The Sierra Club activists will say almost anything to end logging and mining and agriculture in the Missouri Ozarks.

If you can destroy logging, mining and agriculture in a region, you will destroy that region's economy. With that accomplished, you can buy the entire region for pennies on the dollar and evict the inhabitants forever.

ED STEWART

Middlebrook