The man in charge of resource management for 20 million acres of national forest land in California believes it’s time the government and timber industry start doing a better job of working together.
Speaking Thursday morning at the Sierra Cascade Logging Conference, Barnie Gyant, deputy regional forester for the Pacific Southwest Region of the U.S. Forest Service, said he knows government is not designed to move fast.
But Gyant said he is committed to work in a more timely and efficient manner with the industry. “We are well aware of the communities we are in and how important the forests and the jobs they create are to those areas,” Gyant said.
Parts of Gyant’s talk drew applause from a crowd that for years has been suspicious of the Forest Service and its motives as logging activity on federal land has declined.
Gyant talked of conversations he’s had with environmentalists and that he’s conveyed to them if we don’t manage the forests, they will burn. “Without the people in this room, we would not be able to manage the national forests,” he said.
From The Record Searchlight: https://www.redding.com/news/2013/feb/07/forest-service-official-tells-loggers-together-a/