Federal ‘Fix Our Forests Act’ would harm Los Padres | Opinion

Logging our way to disaster

I’ve lived on the Central Coast long enough to know what Los Padres National Forest means to people here. I’ve camped under its oaks, watched condors soar over Pine Mountain and walked its trails after the Dolan Fire, where blackened trunks stood beside new green shoots. That balance, loss and renewal is fragile. The Fix Our Forests Act would shatter it.

This bill claims to prevent wildfires, but in reality, it clears the path for industrial logging by weakening environmental review and silencing public comment. Under its rules, massive logging projects of up to 10,000 acres could proceed in areas like Los Padres without meaningful oversight. That’s not fire prevention. It’s exploitation.

Fire scientists tell us the most effective protections are home hardening and defensible space, not logging miles from towns. Embers, not flame fronts, destroy most homes. Yet this bill invests nothing in community fire safety while handing favors to timber interests.

If Congress truly wants resilience, it should fund prescribed burning, tribal stewardship, and fire-safe councils, not bulldozers in our backcountry.

Los Padres is not a timber bank. It’s our watershed, our refuge, our inheritance.

Jill Stegman Grover Beach

Government shutdown

The federal government is currently shut down because Congress has not passed legislation funding continued operations. Unfortunately, the posture of the Trump administration on this issue makes it unlikely that a funding deal will be reached anytime soon. Trump has refused to negotiate with Congress on funding and has made it abundantly clear — by impoundments, redirections and other budgetary maneuvers — that he does not intend to abide by any funding decision that Congress makes. Simply put, Congress has no incentive to negotiate because there is no reason to believe that Trump will honor whatever is negotiated. Congress could solve this and reclaim its constitutional power of the purse by demanding Trump’s resignation and impeaching him if he refuses. Republicans did that with Nixon in 1974 and could do it again now. If it doesn’t do that, Congress should declare itself irrelevant, go on vacation and leave the government unfunded until the next election.

Christopher Toews

San Luis Obispo

Dana Reserve

Bruce Gibson’s op-ed on the shenanigans going on with the Dana Reserve is a reminder of what a valuable supervisor will be lost when he retires. I had many reservations about the original plan for the Dana Reserve, as did many others. As a result, two nonprofits, the Nipomo Action Committee and the California Native Plant Society, sued the developer.

The developer then agreed to decrease the number of houses, but the homes deleted were for moderate or low income people — the very demographic that most needs housing — and the nonprofits reportedly get $2 million. The California Native Plant Society is a fine organization. I have been a member for many years, but how does the, say $1 million, they get help Nipomo’s environment, and how does the loss of low -income housing answer the desperate need for that type of housing? I am further mystified why three supervisors are not demanding to know under what conditions these two organizations may get a settlement. I’m very disappointed in John Peschong, Heather Moreno and Dawn Ortiz-Legg. Sunshine is the best medicine! And the painful irony, as Gibson wrote, the second plan the developer came up with is worse than the first. Why are they accepting this? We don’t need more million-dollar homes.

Penny Koines

San Luis Obispo

Chevron cleanup

I was pleased to read the report in The Tribune about Chevron cleaning up the 8-million-gallon oil spill in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes complex. They said they’ve spent untold millions of dollars to get the job done. Good for them.

However, there is another, much larger bill to be paid, caused by a much larger, invisible spill. Emissions from oil combustion like carbon dioxide, methane, and fine soot particles are spilling into the air we breathe, costing us billions of dollars annually in healthcare costs, droughts, and extreme weather events. Worsening drought and high temperatures from climate change will damage the wine-making industry in the Paso Robles area. The 2022 drought cost California $1.7 billion from lost agricultural production. The Gifford fire caused $202 million in damage, not even counting the fire suppression costs.

There is no doubt that the oil industry has aided us over the past century. But now it’s time for oil to exit the stage and make way for cleaner forms of energy. The question remains: will oil companies ever take responsibility for the long-term damage their products are causing to our country’s health and economy?

Don Gaede

San Luis Obispo

This story was originally published October 26, 2025 at 10:00 AM.