In 2020 fires consumed huge swathes of forest in central Oregon and Northern California. In Portland, where I live, we felt their arrival in a sudden storm of hot wind and smoke that swept across the city and paralyzed it for months. In the aftermath the Forest Service has been aggressively logging the burned regions, tossing out any old excuse to get out the cut on public lands. The biomass of burned forests needs to cycle back into the soil in order for them to regenerate, but the commercial timber interests in the Northwest are so desperate for whatever board-feet they can scavenge that they will try to make us swallow anything they can come up with to justify the cut. The forest needs defenders, now more than ever.
A tall pine forest stands in stark black and white and a small moon hovers overhead. The text: “PROTECT WHAT’S LEFT” is written boldly below.
