1. United States
2. Ala.
3. Letter

President Trump’s executive order telling the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to aggressively log in national forests is almost certainly illegal and moreover is built on a lie. Cutting down mature trees does not reduce the risk of wildfires—it increases it, as the older trees have natural resistance to fire that saplings and underbrush do not. Also, those national forests belong to the US people, not the logging industry, and should be maintained for the good of us all. He argues that we’re importing timber and should harvest our own, but preserving our forests is a more critical function of the BLM and of the Forest Service. Please do everything in your power to stop this travesty and preserve our forests, as well as endangered species of plants and animals.