Unbeknownst to most people, logging companies and the US Forest Service have been spraying massive amounts of herbicide in clear-cut and fire-ravaged forests of Californiaand throughout the nation. And not just any herbicide, but glyphosate, a potent and problematic weed killer best known by the brand name Roundup. My first hint of all this was a single word in a letter the Forest Service sent to me and my neighbors about a year and a half ago. Lassen, it said, was to be part of an ambitious new wildfire recovery project. This was welcome, as the fires had burned perilously close to our properties. Then I came to the word "herbicides." The Forest Service would, starting in spring 2026, spray glyphosate on some 10,000 acres of public land in Lassen to wipe out leafy plants and shrubs that might compete with replanted conifers. The amount applied annually in state forests"266,000 pounds of pure glyphosate in 2023, the latest year for which data was available"is nearly five times what it was two decades ago. Monsanto orchestrated, financed, and even ghostwrote studies that were published in peer-reviewed scientific journals ... papers that state and federal agencies have relied upon to justify copious spraying of Roundup. The only potential human risk acknowledged in the Forest Service's [risk] assessment has to do with people unknowingly ingesting glyphosate after foraging for mushrooms and plants in recently sprayed areas.