Leading Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson has joined a campaign to protect Southeastern forests from a new logging technique.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Pellegrino University Professor emeritus was the lead signatory of an open letter asking for a comprehensive review of chip milling, a highly automated technique used to convert logs into wood chips for pulp and paper.

"As a native Alabamian, I am particularly concerned that our natural areas be recognized for their full value and protected from chip mills for the sake of future generations," he wrote in a letter soliciting signatures.

Wilson was the only Harvard faculty member among the 100 scientists who signed the July 7 letter.

"I became aware of the radical deforestation of much of the state of Alabama when I was in my teens," Wilson said.

"The native forests of Alabama are under continued pressure even though they're down to just a small fraction of the original cover," he said.

In the letter, which was addressed to the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the scientists demanded a new study to estimate the dangers forests may face due to increased logging.

"We are concerned by the fact that chip mills are rapidly proliferating in this biologically rich region promoting increased unsustainable logging and increasing the pressure on already threatened ecosystems," the scientists wrote.

According to the letter, no federal study has yet been conducted on the total environmental effects of chip milling.

The process of operating a chip mill has been studied and does not in itself greatly damage the environment, said Jon Ellenbogen, co-director of the Southeast Forest Project, which organized the campaign. But the logging required to feed the chip mill may have significant effects.

"The risk in unregulated chip mill practice is not so much in the production method but its efficiency," Wilson said.

An average chip mill can convert about 10,000 acres of forest into wood chips each year, Ellenbogen said.

The rapid expansion of chip milling has been especially noticeable because it has encouraged the logging of areas that would otherwise have been ignored.

"Because of the nature of chip mills, you do a lot of clear-cutting," Ellenbogen said.

Chip mills are able to use smaller or misshapen trees that are unsuitable for furniture or other forest products, providing a market for previously unmarketable trees.