1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

The U.S. Forest Service isn’t managing forests anymore. It’s running a timber operation and poisoning everything else to do it. A yearlong investigation by Mother Jones found that the Forest Service and private logging companies are systematically spraying thousands of acres of national forest with glyphosate (Roundup) to kill off native shrubs and wildflowers that compete with commercially valuable trees like Douglas firs and sugar pines. After wildfires, forests naturally rebound with diverse vegetation and wildlife. What’s replacing that recovery is rows of industrial saplings surrounded by silence. No insects, birds, or flowers. It’s just dead zones. Glyphosate application in California’s forests has quintupled over the last two decades in one year 266,000 pounds were sprayed a record. The World Health Organization classifies glyphosate as a carcinogen. The Forest Service is using it at industrial scale, on public land, to benefit private timber interests. This is what “multiple use management” looks like when timber wins every time. Ecological health, wildlife habitat, native plant communities all of it gets written off as competition. Stop the poisoning and destruction of our forests!!!!!!!