Got This in Email Today
"The National Forest Protection Alliance (NFPA) has put forth an inspiring and positive vision for the future of our national forestlands and it is their sole focus to make this vision become a reality.
Please help NFPA protect America's natural legacy by actively supporting their
work to end the federal logging program."
- E.O. Wilson, Pulizer Prize-winning author and scientist, Harvard University
Dear Friend,
I hope this letter finds you making plans to visit your favorite National Forest this spring. This will be one of our toughest years defending our National Forests. This is why I urgently need you - our members and supporters - to help us stop an unprecedented threat to America's endangered National Forests.
What's at Stake: Clean Water, Clean Air, Wildlife Habitat and Democracy.
America's National Forests comprise some of the most biologically and economically significant land on earth. Despite the fact that these national assets are irreplaceable, the administration in Washington D.C. has put a career timber industry lobbyist, Mark Rey, in charge of deciding the fate of America's endangered National Forests.
While the nation is distracted by the war on Iraq, Rey and the timber industry are dismantling our environmental laws behind-the-scenes. Their goal: dramatically increase logging and resource extraction on public lands. Their strategy: eliminate citizen oversight and the very laws that protect these lands.
National Forests are especially critical for maintaining biological diversity since more than 95% of the United States virgin forest's have already been logged. The remaining 5% of pristine, unlogged forests are largely found on our National Forest lands.
These endangered treasures provide invaluable social and economic contributions to the nation, simply by existing as natural ecosystems. For example, nearly 80% of America's rivers originate on National Forests, while over 900 municipal watersheds are found on National Forests, which provide nearly $4 billion annually in drinking water to communities.
Keystone Environmental Laws at Risk:
Gutting environmental laws and removing citizens from the process of land management is the only way the timber industry can proceed with its goal of returning the taxpayer subsidized logging program to the National Forests.
One such law in jeopardy is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), our nation's bedrock environmental law. If NEPA is gutted, our ability to stop logging projects by writing comments or through administrative appeals will all but end. Citizens' only recourse will be costly lawsuits or putting their bodies on the line, literally.
Imperiled species such as the Northern Spotted Owl will lose key protections if another fundamental law, the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) is dismantled. In addition, the industry-run U.S. Forest Service would have complete discretion in establishing long-term plans for National Forests. Already, the agency in California has proposed a 10-year management plan that more than doubles the amount of logging in forests of the Sierra Nevada.
A wave of anti-forest laws has already been passed . The Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the largest forest in the US, is severely compromised by limitations on legal challenges to stop logging projects, and the designation of new Wilderness is now illegal. Most threatening in the lower 48, however, is the "stewardship" contracting program whereby the timber industry can log large, valuable trees on National Forests as compensation for thinning economically less valuable ones.
In fact, every region of the U.S. has timber sales planned in previously protected roadless areas, in old growth and mature forests and in sensitive areas recently burned by wildfires. America's National Forests including the Tongass and Sequoia, as well as forests in the Great Lakes, Appalachians, and Northern Rockies all endangered by logging.
We are calling on you to help us stop this attack immediately. If Mark Rey's logging agenda is realized, corporations will have more authority to manage America's Forests than the rightful owners, American citizens. That is why I am asking for your help in two important ways.
First: Please send a contribution to NFPA of $25, $35, $50 or more, so we can continue advocating for the strongest protection possible of our National Forests. You can donate on-line at www.forestadvocate.org. Just scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the "Donate Now" button.
Second: Please call your Congressperson and ask them to stop any attempts to weaken environmental laws and to support protecting National Forests from commercial logging, in particular ask them to vote no on the McInnis Bill.
The National Forest Protection Alliance responds: Our national network of over 130 organizations and 25 state chapters are on the frontline in stopping the Bush administration from enacting its pro-logging agenda. The following is a snapshot of what we are doing this spring to protect America's endangered forests.
National Day of Action to Protect America's Endangered Forests
Member groups across the country from more than seventeen cities held rallies, marches, lobby visits, and sit-ins to stop the Bush administration's attempts to weaken environmental laws that protect public land, including endangered forests. Please visit our Day of Action photo gallery at www.forestadvocate.org to see our events.
Forest Activist Training Camp
This June, NFPA and member group, Greenpeace, will train a new generation of activists on how to defend our National Forests in a week-long educational camp in Montana. Participants will be taught valuable skills in grassroots organizing and direct action by some of the most accomplished trainers in the U.S. A new cadre of forest activists will emerge by the end the camp to defend National Forests, including the forests selected in our 2003 Ten Most Endangered Forests project.
America's Ten Most Endangered National Forests Report
NFPA will release our second bi-annual report in June that offers activists, the media, and the public a startling snapshot of an entire national forest system under attack. This full color report serves as a powerful tool, profiling the impacts of past and present Forest Service policies. The report also illustrates the dire need for ending all commercial extraction on America's public lands. NFPA will launch a series of on-the-ground public education campaigns in the 10 selected forests with the report's release.
The National Forest Protection and Restoration Act
We are working hard on the reintroduction of the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act this April - a bill that would end the timber sale program on federal lands and redirect those funds into ecologically based restoration. This year we will gather a new bipartisan group of cosponsors; co-host a lobby week in Washington, D.C. and continue to build alliances with religious leaders, Republicans, scientists and editorial boards across the country in order to broaden our base of support.
We know that you too advocate the complete protection of National Forests from logging and commercial exploitation.
So please, help us by giving NFPA the financial support we need to defend our National Forests from the Bush administration and corporate timber industry.
Sincerely,
Mike Petersen
President, National Forest Protection Alliance
www.forestadvocate.org
To look up the name of your Congressperson, visit: www.house.gov or check the government pages of your phone book.
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