Uphold the Roadless Area Conservation Rule!!
- by: Heritage Forests Campaign
- recipient: U.S. Congress
To urge the Bush Administration to keep its promise and protect America's last wild forests, we need your help! Please sign this letter telling the Bush Administration to keep its word, and to the U.S. Forest Service to register your formal opposition to these environmental rollbacks.
The Roadless Area Conservation Rule is the result of the most extensive public rulemaking ever, with over 600 public meetings, and an unprecedented 2.2 million supportive comments. It protects almost one-third of America's last undeveloped national forest land from logging, mining, and most road-building. A fair and balanced plan, the rule garnered bipartisan support from Congress, scientists, and faith-based communities from across the nation.
Among the benefits of this popular conservation policy are clean drinking water for 60 million Americans; protection of critical habitat for more than 1,600 threatened wildlife; and unlimited recreation for hikers, hunters, and anglers.
The Bush Administration, despite its promise to uphold the rule, continues to put central protections in jeopardy through a litany of obscure rollbacks. Just days before Christmas, the Forest Service issued two new directives that would seriously undermine the rule. Among other things, these directives will:
- Abolish requirements to conduct environmental and public reviews before logging, mining, and drilling can begin in protected areas;
- Exclude more than a dozen of America's most magnificent national forests from critical protection, including Alaska's Tongass National Forest
- Eliminate a moratorium on logging, mining, and drilling in millions of acres of national forests critical to wildlife habitat protection.
Attention: Road Policy
PO BOX 221150
Salt Lake City, Utah 84122
RE: Forest Service Interim Directives 7710-2001-3, 1920-2001-1
Dear Mr. Dale Bosworth,
I am writing to ask you to call upon the Bush Administration to keep its promise to uphold one of the most significant forest conservation policies in decades, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Issued in January 2001 after the most extensive public rulemaking in history, the rule protects 58.5 million acres of undeveloped national forest land from logging, mining, and drilling.
I believe your action now is especially urgent given two recent directives quietly issued by the Administration that run contrary to this pledge, undermine the rule, and pose a serious threat to our national forests. That's why I'm sending you -- my Congressional representative -- my official comments strongly opposing these latest Forest Service directives, as well as to Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth.
As you know, last May, after a three-month review and under pressure from Congress and the public, the Bush Administration pledged to uphold the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, promising only minor changes. However, in recent months, special interests working with their allies in the Bush Administration have moved to significantly weaken the national forest protections provided by the rule through a litany of bureaucratic maneuvers.
Just days before Christmas, the Forest Service issued two directives that eliminate a moratorium on road building in previously protected areas. The directives also abolish requirements for regional and local forest service officials to conduct environmental and public reviews before logging, mining, and drilling can begin in protected areas. Officials also have begun a new decision-making process that facilitates new road building, logging, and mining in more than a dozen of America's most magnificent national forests, including Alaska's Tongass National Forest. The Forest Service currently is taking public comment on these directives, until February 19, 2002.
More than 2.2 million Americans already have taken the time to personally tell the Forest Service that they support protecting the last of our wild national forests through the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. But the Bush Administration is apparently listening to the timber and mining special interests and not to us.
And that's why I'm writing to you. I urge you to call upon the Bush Administration to keep its promise to protect America's last wild national forests through the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
Because once these forests are gone . . . they're gone forever.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
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