Thinking of felled forests
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UNTIL RECENTLY, October Mountain State Forest was a 16,000-acre Berkshire paradise of northern hardwood forests, intermingled with a scattering of conifer plantations and graced by undisturbed streams, ponds, and wetlands. Over the last few years, the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation has laid siege to the heart of this public forest with an industrial type of logging heavily reliant on clear-cutting. I fear that this is a harbinger of what is to come to the rest of our state lands if current plans for at least four huge tax-subsidized, wood-burning biomass power plants come to fruition.
The millions of cubic tons of green wood needed to feed these plants will come from our standing forests, and will require a vast expansion of current logging rates.
Is it just coincidental that the DCR has recently developed management plans for its four western districts calling for massive increases in logging, with 75 percent of this through "even-age management" - a euphemism that usually means clear-cutting?
Should all of these plants be built, they will contribute about 1 percent to the state's energy grid, an amount that could easily be surpassed with a moderate effort at energy conservation.
David Gafney
Hinsdale
