Among the dozens of comments we’ve received in response to Mary Wagner’s May 10 speech at a reception sponsored by the Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition:

Ms. Wagner indeed works in a Fantasy Land. She needs to take off the rose colored glasses and her Forest Service uniform and take a trip through the West. She needs to visit a few of the once vibrant timber communities the Forest Service helped build. She needs to see that the only places where sawmilling infrastructure remains is where here is ready access to predictable flows of state and private timber. Then she needs to ask herself who is going to remove and process the millions of acres of dead and dying timber that must be removed from the West’s ready-to-burn national forests. Then she needs to contact the National Association of Forest Service Retirees and ask for help. Ned Pence, U.S. Forest Service, retired.

Having lost patience with the lack of substance and actual work product, my business partner and I have started a company in Asia to manage forest least assets in the Russian theater for various Chinese investment funds. There we have been able to grow our business as we are bringing the most skilled staff we have and the new ones we hire each month to work there.

In Russia, there is a can do attitude among the federal forest managers to get infrastructure and manpower I place to create jobs and grow their economy. This doesn’t seem to be the main focus anymore in America. Since endless meetings with no work product bore me to tears, I find a much more enjoyable working atmosphere in Asia than here. It’s fun to take the best of the best I can hire with me. They are really excited about an active business future outside the Gordian knot of public timber management in the USA. John Zapel, forestry consultant

Mary Wagner’s opening salvo against the forest products industry pursues a tiresome corruption theme for which there is no evidence. The story has been perpetuated for decades by people who believe the only way to protect forests is to lock them up in no harvest reserves. Recent wildfire seasons teach a different lesson, which is that only through active management can our advanced society enjoy the forest benefits it seeks. If I were going out to look for corruption in our national forests I’d start with biologists planting evidence to “prove” the existence of nesting owls, phony lynx hairs, politicians selling their votes to environmental lobbies, and Forest Service employees who start fires to protest their failed marriages or because they need overtime pay. More Forest Service timber dies and falls to the ground on the ranger district closest to our mill than we can process in our small sawmill in an entire year. Now I consider that criminal. Lynn Herbert, Herbert Lumber Co., Riddle, Oregon

I checked the Official U.S. Forest Service dictionary for a definition of the word “collaboration.” Here is what it says: kuh-lab-uh-rey-shuh-n: relinquishing all science-based forest management responsibilities to non-governmental organizations, lobbyists and liberal courts so that publicly owned national forests continue to die and burn in increasingly destructive wildfires; ignore all scientific evidence as well as the opinions of those who are trained in the art and science of managing forests. Wynsma got it right. Collaboration is the process by which timber dependent communities discuss the terms of surrender with environmentalists and their ilk. Danny Dructor, Executive Vice President, American Loggers Council, Hemphill, Texas

This is beyond delusional. I can’t imagine that this woman has visited a rural timber town in the last decade. If she had she would not have said what she said. The fix for the Forest Service is beyond meetings and collaboration. Nothing but nothing is going to change without the Congress revamping and modernizing the laws that relate to public land management, which then may finally give the USFS or whatever entity the USFS becomes, a clear vision – hopefully one with local management and accountability that comes from actually having to live with the benefits or consequences of decision making or a failure to make decisions, which is where we are today.

Mike Crouse, Loggers World, Chehalis, Washington