I met Bill Vail of the Maine forest products industry at the Hall of Flags when the signatures for the clear-cutting ban referedum were turned in. With him was a man with dark glasses and a video camera collecting informaton for the same private interest. I asked both if they knew what the average-size tree in Maine was. The man with the dark glasses inside the State House didn’t know. Bill ventured a guess: somewhere between 8 and 10 inches, maybe? Wrong; 4 1/2 inches.

In Vail’s Oped column (BDN, May 22) he claims that the referendum would damage Maine’s forests. In reality it is greed, heavy equipment driving over young trees and people’s twisted belief that stripping bare 150,000 acres a year is OK that is destroying the forest. On line 20 he mentioned responsible efforts to improve forest practices. Those efforts only came after the 55,000 signatures were collected by caring volunteers.

Chuck Gadzik, director of the Maine Forest Service, should not be running around the state at taxpayers’ expense fighting this effort, which is designed to save some trees for future generations. He should be getting paid by one of the international conglomerates prospering here, not by us taxpayers.

If the profits from such exploitation were to stay in the community instead of being exported to some CEO’s estate, there would be plenty of jobs and Maine workers wuld then be making a decent wage. Canadian workers wouldn’t have to be brought in for less money (mostly because of the American lack of health care).

Deforestation is a wildlife issue. Pine martens should be listed as endangered, and fishers are pretty much gone also. Fishers need a lichen that grows only on old-growth trees in their diet. When we see so many dead porcupines on the road, it’s because there are no fishers. Nature designed the fisher to keep the porcupine in check.

Are we witnessing the desertification of Maine? Topsoil is washing into our rivers at an astonishing rate, making it difficult for fish to spawn. Also, when waterways warm up from lack of shade trees, oxygen is depleted, and so go lots of jobs in recreational fishing and tourism; no fish!

The forest is the lungs of the earth. It’s meant to filter air and water. If it’s not treated thusly, what will we tell future generations? We aren’t being good stewards of the land. Bob LeVangie Penobscot