Mary Ann Zimmerman's column ("Natural preservation needed in wake of Bush initiative," Sept. 23) sheds light on the huge problem of wildfire in the American West. She blasts Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative as I would expect any East Coast environmentalist to do. I'll forgive her for that.

I graduated in May and moved to Bend, Oregon (the site of the president's forest speech) to work at a television station. The top story at our news station every single day has been wildfire, and for good reason. I have had the opportunity to witness the destruction fires caused by the unhealthy overgrown forests that cover much of the west. One hundred fifty thousand acres have burned so far this year in central Oregon. One of these fires burned five miles from my residence. I had to clear ash off of my windshield and had difficulty breathing for several days. Thousands of residents would have seen their homes go up in flames if the wind had shifted direction.

The population of central Oregon is a good mix of political ideologies, but even the most liberal environmental thinkers in town agree that something needs to be done to thin the forests. Currently, the forest service, with the help of prison inmates, is able to clear some areas of thick underbrush, but this is not enough.

The residents of central Oregon are solidly behind the president's plan to allow logging, so long as old growth forests are preserved (this is a stipulation of the current plan). In reality, Bush's plan is the only salvation for a region of the country that has suffered due to poor forest management. I know it is disturbing for liberals to admit that Bush actually has good ideas concerning the environment. The liberals here have.

By allowing private industry to thin the forests, residents in the west are protected from fire with little cost to the taxpayer. We don't need Superman to save us from wildfire, just some "common-sensical" politics and a lot of chainsaws.