A Moral Responsibility to Tell the Truth

The citizens of our country - those who own our federal forests - paid my salary for 38 years. I feel a moral responsibility to tell them the truth about what today’s wildfires are doing in the West’s national forests, especially the Salmon-Challis, where I completed my Forest Service career.

Lynn Bennett, U.S. Forest Service, retired, Salmon, Idaho

Barry Wynsma, a retired Forest Service friend from Bonners Ferry, Idaho, introduced me to Lynn Bennett in an email note that included a video featuring 38 years of wisdom that is still swirling around inside Lynn’s head. We subsequently spent more than two hours on the phone talking about the Forest Service thrall with managed fire.

“It’s insane,” he told me. “The current supervisor on the Salmon-Challis is very proud of the fact that he’s closed more than 65 miles of road in a drainage that has very high wildfire risk due to high ignition probability and dense fuels. Also he has likely closed more than 100 miles in other projects and additional roads under the guise of wildfire suppression restoration.

“In the last 10 years, the Forest has built less than one mile of new permanent roads for fuels and timber management…