Your chance to protect our national forests and grasslands TWS ACTION 12FEB10

This is our opportunity to have a say in the policies to be established by the USFS U.S. Forest Service for managing our national forest and grasslands. Click the header to go to the action page of The Wilderness Society, and you can edit the letter they have there to reflect your views (see mine below).

The Forest Service is in the process of developing new rules for managing our national forests and grasslands.
This gives those of us who care about wild lands a rare opportunity to help shape how the national forests of the 21st century are managed.
But, the Forest Service will be hearing plenty from those entrenched industries that seek to exploit our air, water and land.
Click here to share your thoughts with the Forest Service. Tell the agency to protect our national forests and grasslands.
With your help, we can send a powerful message that the agency's top priority should be to protect and restore our natural resources.
We have a great opportunity to ensure the new rules emphasize the need to safeguard our water supplies, protect the land for wildlife, people and communities, and help to address problems from global warming.
Thank you for your help!
Sincerely,
Kathy Kilmer
The Wilderness Society

My letter to the U.S. Forest Service

I urge you to develop a forest planning rule that protects and restores the water, wildlife, recreational opportunities, and other natural resources of the National Forest System. The planning rule must be rooted in sound science, ensure broad public participation in forest planning, and squarely address new threats created by climate change.

You should make it a top priority to protect and restore our watersheds, streams, and wetlands. Plans should identify threats to water quality and ways to correct problems, such as eliminating old logging roads and reducing livestock grazing near streams.

Forest plans must also ensure protection for wildlife. The national forests are uniquely capable of supporting rare species that rely on old-growth forests or require large expanses of habitat. The rule should require the Forest Service to do all it can to maintain viable and healthy populations of fish and wildlife.

The Forest Service should give special attention to climate change issues, including carbon sequestration and wildlife adaptation. The national forests store immense amounts of carbon that should be safeguarded as part of our national defense against climate change. In order to help wildlife survive the stress caused by climate change, forest plans should also identify and reduce other human stresses, such as harmful logging and harassment caused by motorized recreation.

Please do all you can to preserve wilderness and roadless areas within the National Forest System. Protected landscapes are the best hope for people who need clean water, for wildlife that require wide open spaces, and for communities seeking to build sustainable futures. The planning rule and the forest planning process provide an important opportunity for the Forest Service to update its roadless area inventories, seek broad public input, and recommend additional areas for wilderness designation.

It is also time for the Forest Service to start getting a fair market value for any of the nations resouces from private business. Sale of Americas resources, lumber, hard rock minerals, gas and oil, and grazing access, leased or sold, should be at a fair market value, companies should no longer have their operations subsidized by the taxpayer while these companies rake in profits and too often leave environment degradation American taxpayers end up paying for.

Thank you for considering my comments.