Where are reports of the destruction?

(Letter to Charleston Gazette, Aug. 30, 2001

Editor:

I've been to the mountaintops above Oceana and Matheny, and I have seen the destruction that unfettered greed has brought to these once-beautiful mountains.

Mudslides - the length of football fields - saddened, meandering logging roads, and denuded hollows cover hundreds of acres.

The mountains have been clear-cut. Piles of limbs and bulldozed tree trunks lie rotting, contaminating wells and diffusing greenhouse gases. Hell lay before me, and from here high waters had engulfed Oceana, Matheny and Glen Fork.

I gazed out on this destruction and asked myself, Where were the reporters? Where were the photographers? They were after the easy stories downtown. Misery sells, I suppose. Where were the conservationists? They could have a field day up here, but I assumed that they had written off Southern West Virginia long ago.

According to one of our delegates, we have scientific logging regulations. This scene cannot be scientifically valid, so where is the DNR? Can it be that the tribunes and the bureaucracy who should be the protectors of the people are the tools of the logging industry?

James D. Toler
Kopperston