To the Editor:

Pouring more money into fighting wildfires without first changing the Forest Service’s forest management practices will only promote more fires at greater costs.

Wildfires are part of nature’s way of managing forests by thinning them and eliminating brush and other low vegetation that act as fuel. The practice favored by the Forest Service is to fight every fire, thus leaving more forests with denser growths of trees and underbrush that fuel more intense and faster spreading fires. Thinning and controlled burns would reduce the frequency and intensity of future wildfires.

MARTIN E. ROSS

Rockport, Mass.