The U.S. Forest Service: an agency adrift

“Clean Energy’s Dirty Secret,” though well-intentioned, grossly misinforms readers about wind energy’s impacts and ignores its many environmental benefits (HCN, 10/26/15). Contrary to the impression left by the story, wind farms are not a major source of bird mortality. North American wind turbine sites kill an estimated 134,000-230,000 small birds each year ­— only a […]

Jodi Peterson’s brief on timber salvaging’s negative impacts mentioned black-backed woodpeckers but omitted some essential facts (“Log on,” HCN, 11/9/15). This woodpecker is neither threatened nor endangered. With the huge acreages of dead timber now available in the Western U.S. and Canada, the bird has an overabundance of foraging opportunities, aka “snag forest habitat.” Current […]

Kudos to Elizabeth Shogren (“The Campaign Against Coal,” HCN, 11/9/15) for exposing a wider audience to the ongoing battles raging in Western states over the mining and burning of king coal. Shogren rightly points out that small local communities dependent on the mining and burning of coal — some of which I myself have lived […]

Judith Lewis Mernit’s Oct. 26 HCN cover story, “Clean Energy’s Dirty Secret,” seeks to paint the wind industry as a villain equal to the tobacco industry when it comes to the science related to their respective industries. The piece implies that my organization, the California Wind Energy Association, personally attacked a researcher and his work […]