Those who want to boil the issue of forest health down to "logging" versus "no logging" cannot see the forest through the trees. The issue of forest health is much more complex than that. To cast the issue in those terms is a disingenuous effort to create a false choice. Those who support the maintenance of healthy forests and ecosystems do not propose to log their way to that goal.

The forests of the West belong to all of the American people and are home to countless numbers of wildlife and fish. For some time now, 40 million acres of these priceless treasures, and others they support, have been threatened and damaged by unnatural fires. These fires, unlike natural fires that actually help our forests, burn so hot that soils are left impotent to sustain new plant life. Larger trees that natural fires do not victimize are consumed by these overpowering infernos, and vegetation that holds sediment on stream embankments in place is lost with the sediment then oozing into our streams, rivers and lakes.

No, this debate is not about "logging" or "no logging." This debate is about whether this nation is going to have healthy forests or risk losing everything healthy forests give us.

In 1998, Congress' General Accounting Office authored a report on forest health. The Forest Service agreed with the findings and recommendations which pointed out that, "the most extensive and serious problem related to the health of national forests in the interior West is the overaccumulation of vegetation, which has caused increasing numbers of large, intense, uncontrollable and catastrophic destructive wildfires" on 39 million acres of the national forests.

What the western governors have called for is the restoration of our unhealthy national forests and watersheds. That will require a number of activities to be undertaken simultaneously: watershed protection, the elimination of weeds and invasive species, the maintenance of wildlife habitat, the obliteration of some roads and the proper maintenance of others, prescribed burns in healthy forests and fuels reduction, which includes thinning to return stands of timber to their natural condition.

What we're calling for in the West is a balanced program of stewardship and investment in our national forests. Nothing more and nothing less. Those who find conspiracies in our pleas risk losing everything that they claim to hold in awe.

Marc Racicot is governor of Montana.

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