To the Editor:
The Department of Conservation and Recreation’s (DCR) proposal to clear-cut more than 15,000 white pine trees from Manuel Correllus State Forest is a bureaucratic solution looking for a problem. This forest stands as a vital component of the Island’s natural resource infrastructure. To replace 175 acres of lush green forest with perpetually managed meadows, barrens, and woodlands, is unnecessary and counterproductive. And it raises the question: Who will benefit from this resource extraction?
Clear-cutting the forest will initiate a cascade of transactions that benefit the interests of select groups while imposing long-term costs on the community and environment. The forest as it exists today generates no direct or indirect revenue streams, but it provides immense value by mitigating the negative impacts of climate change. The proposal to transform the white pine forest into “something else” will require significant effort and expenditures: construction work to clear the land, fuel to run the equipment, and ongoing management fees for maintaining the modified landscape.
The DCR is attempting to fix something that isn’t broken. The agency claims that removing the white pine forest will restore native habitats and reduce fire risks, but completely glosses over the astronomical amount of carbon emissions this “restoration” will generate. Their half-baked solution reveals a lack of community engagement and inadequate due diligence. The DCR is relying on outdated information provided by an environmental impact review from 2001 (as in 24 years ago!).
The white pine forest is not a fungible commodity. It is a carbon-sequestering, aquifer-protecting, shade-giving, air-filtering, mystery-keeping forest. An irreplaceable asset. The DCR should ditch its ill-conceived plan and Let the Forest Be.
Johanna Hynes
Charlestown
