1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

I am expressing a serious concern about the proposed closure of U.S. Forest Service forestry research laboratories, including the Irvine Forestry Sciences Lab. These labs are essential to long-term forest science and management. They support decades of continuous ecological research, some sites with nearly a century of repeated measurements, and provide irreplaceable data on how our forests are changing over time. For example, at the Kane Experimental Forest, weekly precipitation chemistry data has been collected every Tuesday since 1978 through the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program. If these programs are disrupted, that kind of continuous record cannot be replaced, and its scientific value is permanently weakened. These labs also directly support forest management decisions, including tools like SILVAH and research on forest regeneration and deer impacts that have helped restore and sustain Pennsylvania’s forests. I’m asking the Senator/Representative to oppose the closure of these labs and to support continued funding for long-term forest research and data collection. Once these systems are disrupted, they cannot simply be restarted without losing critical scientific knowledge. Thank you for your time and for your attention to this issue.