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<p>Monte Rio Fire Chief Steve Baxman raised some important points in his April 9 Close to Home column, "Clearing forests; saving lives."</p><p>In particular, his premise that "fire feeds on fuel sources -- typically dense, dry or dead vegetation" is correct and provides good guidance for addressing forest management techniques that will reduce fire hazards. This good advice does not, however, fully address the Bohemian Club's application to the California Department of Forestry for a Non-Industrial Timber Management Plan.</p><p>Opponents of the Bohemian Club's commercial logging application have consistently emphasized that they support the club's efforts to thin thickets of genuinely fire prone hardwoods on the property. These include tanoak, bay laurel, madrone, ceanothus and other brushy understory trees. We agree with Chief Baxman on the nature of the work which needs to be undertaken on the property to reduce fire hazard.</p><p>It is important to clarify that the thinning and removal of hardwoods, including tanoak killed by Sudden Oak Death, which Baxman speaks of, can be accomplished without approval of a timber management plan and, in fact, the Bohemian Club has recently initiated such a program.</p><p>However, this appropriate targeting of truly fire prone hardwood stands is an entirely different matter than the proposed commercial logging of redwood and fir at a rate of more than 1 million board feet per year from the Bohemian Grove.</p><p>This is an important distinction that Chief Baxman's article fails to make clear.</p><p>As UCLA biology professor Philip W. Rundel wrote last May in a letter to CDF concerning the Bohemian Club's proposed logging plan last year: "This is clearly a logging project, not a project to reduce fire hazard. Old growth redwood forests have very low flammability. It is only when these forests are thinned and light openings are present in the canopy that flammable shrubs and tanbark oak can invade these stands. As a result, fire intensity, the spread rate of fire, and flame lengths will be much higher than if these stands were left in their natural state. Once a cycle of thinning is established, reduction of fire hazard inevitably involves heavy regular applications of herbicides to reduce shrub establishment and prevent the growth of ladder fuels with all the negative aspects of such herbicide treatments."</p><p>The Bohemian Club began logging its property commercially in the mid-1980s under the authority of some 18 consecutive timber harvesting plans. Since that time, more than 11 million board feet of redwood and fir (500,000 board feet per year) have been sold from the Bohemian Grove.</p><p>The net result of these damaging two decades of logging has been, as admitted in the draft timber management plan, an increase in fire hazard across the property.</p><p>The plan in question will double the rate of commercial logging. How this dramatic increase will improve the situation has never been made clear.</p><p>In conclusion, the Bohemian Grove is not an ordinary logging tract. It includes the largest remnant stands of old growth redwood in Sonoma County, twice as big as the old growth component of Armstrong State Reserve. Even the second growth component of the forest is in the 100- to 110-year-old range and well on its way to becoming reestablished as old growth habitat.</p><p>UC Berkeley wildlife management professor Reginald H. Barrett wrote in a September letter to CDF: "Department of Fish and Game (DFG) concluded that the NTMP could adversely affect a number of wildlife species, because it will substantially reduce the stands of larger, older trees with dense canopies . . . I agree with DFG's concerns about the plan's impacts on wildlife, and I do not believe these impacts have been mitigated."</p><p>We urge all citizens of Sonoma County to speak out for protection of the Bohemian Grove.</p><p>It must be understood that fire hazard can be reduced by removing hardwoods without jeopardizing one of our great forest legacies.</p><p>Rick Coates is the executive director of Forest Unlimited and a Cazadero resident.</p>