Regarding the issue of cutting trees on public reserve lands: Maine has 17 million acres of public and private forestland.

In his book “The Northeast’s Changing Forest,” Lloyd Irland said that half of the private landowners in Maine never intend to cut a tree, and the other half (mostly paper companies) await a market that may never develop.

Irland also said that one-third of the Northeastern forest is of poor quality (meaning it will never sell), and that the majority of our wood products come from out of state or even out of the country.

Even if we clear-cut 400,000 acres of public reserve lands, that will leave 16.6 million acres of standing timber that no one wants or ever intends to cut. Our wildlife species are dwindling (deer, grouse, rabbits, woodcock, even pheasants and quail) primarily because of lack of habitat, i.e., early successional growth under 15 years of age. None of these species eats trees!

Even worse is that our wildlife management areas are 80 percent forested.

Only about 1 percent of those lands — paid for and maintained solely by hunters’ dollars— are being manipulated to produce new early successional habitat each year. Last year it was at a cost of $6 million in federal Pittman-Robertson funds.

The last time Maine had great wildlife habitat was in the 20 years following the famous fire of 1947. In the 1950s our annual deer harvest was more than double what it is now. Harsh winters? Deer will survive if they have enough food, but they can’t live on trees.

Nearly the entire state of Maine is in mature forest, trees that are unmarketable and useless to most wildlife. At this point we have too many trees and not enough wildlife.

I’m with Gov. LePage. Cut it, burn it, do what you will with the money, but get rid of some of these trees!

Stephen D. Carpenteri

Lyman