Letter: Four Rivers Forestry Committee advocates for wise utilization and management of forest resources

This letter is in response to Steven Stewart and Andy Mahler’s letters to the editor, where they expend a great deal of energy smacking around the Four Rivers Forestry Committee.

The Four Rivers Forestry Committee has operated in southwest Indiana for many years. Our mission is to support the wise utilization and management of our forest resources, including the use of managed timber harvests, controlled burns, invasive species control and timber stand improvement, to ensure healthy forests for the future. Our message has always been to encourage landowners to manage their property and leave it better for the next generations. The forestry committee was formerly under the operating umbrella of the Four Rivers Resource Conservation and Development Area until the RC&Ds across Indiana lost their funding.

Our members saw the value in the Four Rivers Forestry Committee, so since then, we have operated independently. We are a diverse group of resource professionals and private landowners. Some of our previous activities include Forestry Conclaves during the 1990s, Family Nature Fests in the 2010s, Chainsaw Classes for Landowners, Breakfasts with Foresters, Invasive Species Control Field Days and Workdays, Forest Management Field Days for private landowners, and numerous other events over the years, held in Knox, Warrick, Gibson, Pike, Martin, Dubois, Spencer, and Perry Counties. Our members volunteer many hours to develop and implement these events, which have been well attended over the many years of our existence.

Conservationists work for the environment and are quite passionate about their work. Many days they work beyond the traditional closing time to accommodate the schedules of the landowners they are assisting. They are also seen at work on weekends instead of spending time with their own families or pursuing their own interests. True conservationists know if they want to be monetarily wealthy, they do not go into the conservation field.

Even though Andy Mahler “humbly” hid his name in the list of names at the end of the letter he authored, his words are so very insulting to the people who dedicate their lives to conservation.

Steven Stewart, in his April 28 letter, called the Four Rivers Forestry Committee’s comments libelous simply because we disagree with him. The irony is all of the falsehoods being slung at the Forestry Committee. Steve and Andy spend a great deal of time writing letters criticizing the management practices planned for our public forests. Their choice of words is at the least misleading and very often deliberately inflammatory. Their tactics are to incite fear by making generalizations and twisting the facts. Readers of the Free Press and other forms of the media will not see a lot of responses from foresters and land managers because they are out on the land, working, unlike Steven, who is getting paid to sit behind a computer and generate misinformation. To quote Upton Sinclair, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

We feel it is necessary to clarify just a few of the misleading statements in the letter published on May 8. Quote: “…the Four Rivers Forestry Committee advocates for widespread logging and repeated wholesale burning of our small publicly owned forests in southern Indiana.” No. Not true. The Four Rivers Forestry Committee advocates for the wise use of our natural resources. We advocate for proper forest management activities, including, but not limited to, timber harvests and prescribed fire, to achieve the landowner’s objectives and resource needs.

Quote: “The author(s) chose not to include their names for obvious reasons – the letter is mostly speculation, hyperbole, and conjecture.” Not true, any of it. The committee members collectively wrote the letter, and signed it from the committee, similar to how a letter from the Crawford County Commissioners would be signed from the Crawford County Commissioners.

Quote: “They are promoting a heavy-handed management approach to our publicly owned forests while neglecting to mention that they and the agencies and organizations they represent are the primary beneficiaries of the cutting and selling of the publicly owned trees and the repeated burning of our forests.” Once again, simply not true. We are landowners and professionals from across southwest Indiana, and do not represent any agency or organization nor profit from public timber sales. We are simply passionate conservationists who represent the forest resource and good forest management. We have no need to employ inflammatory words such as “heavy-handed”, and “repeated wholesale burning” because we share science-based facts, and resource management experience from many years of land management, collectively.

Those three quotes, above, are taken from just the FIRST paragraph of the letter published on May 8. There are many more falsehoods throughout the missive, many involving money. As stated before, we are conservationists, not motivated by money. We are resource managers, working together to manage our land resources to their best advantage. Through our annual events, we openly share science, experience-based, and results oriented management techniques.

Andy used a terrific list to describe the multi-use management philosophy that agency land managers follow as they manage our public lands. Quote:

“Recreation and tourism;
protecting historic and cultural resources;
ensuring water quality, including protecting Patoka Lake, the cleanest municipal water supply in the State, providing water to 100,000 people;
wildlife habitat and biodiversity, including rare, threatened, and endangered species;
education and scientific research;
climate moderation and carbon sequestration;
scenic beauty, solitude and spiritual renewal; and
giant majestic oaks and other hardwoods that can live upwards of 400 years and that provide both a link to our past and a bridge to our future if we would just let them grow.” End quote.

The “multiple uses” in U.S. statute are “outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and wildlife and fish in such combinations that they would best meet and serve human needs.” The purpose of the statute is to “ensure that all possible uses and benefits of the national forests and grasslands would be treated equally”, and “to utilize them in the combination that will best meet the needs of the American people.” Utilize them in a manner that best meets the needs of ALL of the American people. All. Not just special interest groups, or those who live next to one of the public forests. All.

Steven Stewart and Andy Mahler allude that our “very small public owned forests” are scheduled to be cut and burned. The reality is there are tens of thousands of acres of public forestland in Indiana that are never intended to be harvested. This includes State Parks, Nature Preserves and even areas on the Hoosier National Forest and the Indiana State Forests. Here the oaks and other hardwoods can live up to the growth potential that the land allows. Here their version of “nature” can influence the forests and we will see the outcomes over the coming decades. Meanwhile, other lands, designated for multiple use, are intended to be strategically managed to ensure they contain the natural diversity of plants and wildlife found in our ecosystem, thus providing the bridge to the future.

Our publicly owned forests are being managed and protected, and look the way they do today because of the management techniques used by the Hoosier National Forest and IDNR land managers. As Hoosiers, we owe these land managers, past and present, a debt of gratitude for the beautiful forest lands we enjoy.

In closing, we quote Andy again: “A true forest is so much more than the trees”. Ah, here we agree! Our public land managers are managing the entire forest ecosystem, and using the many management methods available to them to create diverse ecosystems for all Hoosiers to enjoy now, and for our grandchildren to enjoy in the future.

We look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events.

Signed: Proud Members of the Four Rivers Forestry Committee

The group can be followed on Facebook here.