I agree with this letter 100%, but it also exhibits what I'm beginning to realize is THE great weakness of a lot of enviro discourse: Mr  Alexander doesn't say what comes next, after we keep the forests "intact." 

There's no real sense of what this would mean besides avoiding clearcuts and increasing fire prevention and carbon sequestration. That's not much of a program for people to get behind. Where's the joy, the passion, in that? What comes after conservation? 

The leading edge thought on the question of what comes after conservation, or even preservation, seems to concentrate on "rewilding," an idea coined, for what it's worth,  by Dave Foreman of Earth First! Here's a link to a Wiki about an organization that's rewilding the Caledonian Forests of highland Scotland, Trees for Life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trees_for_Life_(Scotland)

https://treesforlife.org.uk/

We should be talking about rewilding the forestlands of Cascadia.