I strongly support the…

I strongly support the proposal to temporarily suspend the protection of Black Ash under the ESA for at least two years. Black Ash is currently prolific across the landscape. Time is needed to best decide how to protect this species appropriately. The same mistakes made with the protections around butternut cannot be made again for Black Ash (eg. making no harvest buffers around shade intolerant species which will not allow them to regenerate at the site level, and not allowing hybridization with European butternut that was resistant to the butternut canker).

The silvics of Black Ash need to be taken into account, a protectionist mentality will contravene the silvics of this species and doom it to a slow demise through the guise of protection, whereas if appropriate relationships with humans are allowed to be carried out the species can be regenerated and given time to adapt through generational epigenetic changes or until an effective EAB control mechanism is developed.