Barbara Davis, The Mountain-Ear, September 13, 2025

Dear Editor,

I was disappointed to see two articles in a row from The Mountain-Ear that left out crucial science and public opinion on a topic that is one of the main reasons so many of us live in beautiful Colorado: our forests.  

  Your August 8 article covered the last public meeting for the tree cutting planned for Tucker Ranch on Boulder County land outside Nederland. While the article included the County’s statements about its own project, it ignored concerns from several members of the public at the meeting who referenced a large volume of science showing that thinning in the forest is not effective at stopping the spread of wildfire. Also left out of the article was how the vast majority of public comments on the County website critique or oppose the project.   

  Then, your August 13 article about a hike through a burned forest I attended, organized by Boulder County Public Lands Collaborative, didn’t just exclude the science, it left out the whole reason for the hike.

This was a spot in the Roosevelt National Forest thinned for fuel reduction by the U.S. Forest Service in 2015 which then burned in the Cold Springs fire the next year. The cut area ended up burning at mostly high severity—which I saw with my own eyes as well as in a figure from a 2023 Forest Service Study [see figure below with text and arrows added for clarification]—while the private unthinned forest right next to it hadn’t burned at all. The article also didn’t mention how one of the hike guides had formerly written management plans for Boulder County Open Space nor how the guest speaker was the nation’s foremost forest ecologist studying wildfire in the Front Range.  

I hope that in the future The Mountain-Ear conducts more balanced journalism by including science and public opinion on such crucial topics, especially regarding expensive and controversial government projects funded by our tax dollars. 

Barbara Davis

Nederland