This letter is in reply to Fred Huntress’ letter complaining about the Dec. 27th editorial, “A gift to big timber.” I’m glad the Sun Journal wrote that editorial. That’s one of the things newspapers are supposed to do, keep us informed about issues that affect us all.

The Bush administration has handed out so many gifts to the lumber, mining and oil industries that it’s impossible for the general public to keep informed – and, of course, neither the administration nor the industries want us to be informed because that would tend to interfere with their freedom to operate as they wish. That editorial has helped make us aware that if we don’t pay attention (or, sadly, often even if we do) the interests of logging companies are going to take precedence over the public interest.

Huntress’ statement, “The days of forest exploitation on public lands are long gone” is quite the opposite of my understanding of the situation. From everything I read, forest exploitation is the standard operating procedure of the present administration.

And Huntress’ warning not “to believe the scare tactics of the Wilderness Society and others” but instead to talk with the “real experts,” the timber owners and loggers associations, does not convince me. I think we’d best not put our trust in the “expertise” of those who stand to gain from remaking the rules governing public lands. And those “facts” he says we’d get from those experts, I don’t trust those either.

Joyce White, Stoneham

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