“I told them that the forests would burn!” For decades, I’ve watched with sadness as wildfires have destroyed the forests I grew up in, along with homes and communities. My family spent four generations running sawmills and working in the forests of Arizona, Utah and Colorado. We believed deeply in responsible forest stewardship.
In 1952, my father moved our family to Fredonia and later Flagstaff, where he operated sawmills on the Kaibab and Coconino National Forests. I followed in his footsteps, working in the forests and mills. But by the 1990s, everything began to change. Efforts to thin the forests were increasingly blocked by radical environmental groups using legal challenges to stop nearly every timber sale offered by the U.S. Forest Service. Some even told me that their goal was to shut down all lumber companies and let “Mother Nature” manage the forests.
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