Dear Dillon Ranger District ranger, White River National Forest supervisor, Town of Frisco council members, town of Frisco manager, Summit Board of County Commissioners, Summit County government manager, Colorado state representatives and senators, United States congressional members and senators:

We urgently urge you to use the power and influence of your office to request that the U.S. Forest Service cease any further planning or implementation of the proposed “Town of Frisco Backyard Fuels and Recreation Project.”

The proposal would increase rather than decrease fire hazards by creating areas of highly flammable, rapid-fire-spreading areas of grasses and weeds, perpetuating crown-fire- and wind-throw-susceptible lodgepole pine and increasing fire-spreading wind access to the entire area.

The proposal would substantially diminish recreational and natural enjoyment of the forest by reducing protection from summer and winter sun, wind and storms.

The proposal’s removal of tree cover will substantially aggravate climate change, increasing summer temperatures in the town as well as the immediate area.

The proposal ignores the natural high-Alpine ecology of Summit County and would perpetuate fire-, wind-, disease-, and insect-prone lodgepole pine; setting the natural succession to far-more stable and desirable climax spruce and fir back a hundred years or so.

The Frisco area has already been substantially deforested by the Forest Service’s “management” via the Ophir Mountain and other projects, and this additional forest insult would further turn it from a mountain forest community to a Denver exurb.