Editor,

Imagine this — a clearcut a quarter mile deep, running from Langley all the way to Bayview. That’s how large a clearcut in the Trillium Woods was before the Whidbey Environmental Action Network, or WEAN, led a public outcry against the logging that ultimately led to a 40-acre limit on clearcuts on Whidbey and other Puget Sound islands.

Despite this, regulations are still remarkably lax for loggers on Whidbey. If landowners declare that their land is to be used only for forestry, they can avoid many of the pesky environmental regulations that the rest of us face.

This lack of regulation was one of the factors behind the Oso landslide.

After Whidbey loggers finish their clearcutting, landowners are allowed to change their minds and develop the land anyway.

Even if landowners are up front about plans to develop after the logging, they are still allowed to hire their own experts to determine if their logging plans will harm the environment. Not surprisingly, most of these experts declare the logging will barely affect Mother Nature, and island planners tend to go along.

WEAN is not against logging. Logging helped build this island. If you look around, we appear to be blessed with an abundance of trees. But we can do a better job of harvesting them if everyone follows the rules.

And there are better ways to log out there.

Researchers in British Columbia found that selective logging — removing only some of the trees — can be more profitable than shock-and-awe clearcutting. Some of this kind of logging is currently being done on Whidbey Island and guess what?

You may be driving right past these logging sites without even seeing them.

Another idea for sustainably harvesting trees is to reduce harvest to the same rate that forests replenish them. Estimates are that forests grow at a rate of about 2-3 percent a year on South Whidbey.

How about limiting the harvest to an equivalent acreage? We keep our views, and landowners still receive a return on their investment.

These ideas may not be appropriate for everywhere in Washington, but they certainly make sense for a fragile island ecosystem that more and more is becoming reliant on tourists who come to enjoy our beaches and forests and who, like the rest of us, cringe at the ecological wasteland left by clearcutting.

Brian Lowey

Whidbey Environmental Action Network