Sierra Club’s Bluestem Action Alert for June, 2003

River Prairie Group

We are asking you to make three calls on an important forestry issue. Please call your federal Congressman and ask him/her to sign on as a sponsor to HR 2369, the Inslee-Boehlert National Forest Roadless Area Conservation Act

AND also please call both senators and ask them to sign on as a sponsor to S1200 Cantwell- Warner Bill, which is the National Forest Roadless Area Conservation Act in the Senate.

HOW YOU CAN CONTACT YOUR FEDERAL CONGRESSMAN AND SENATORS:

You can find your US Representative on the web at:

http://www.elections.state.il.us/dls/pages/DLSAddresscrit.asp

Just type in your 9 digit zip code or your complete address, then click on "Search". Click on the name of your US Representative to find his/her telephone number. Then click on “Statewide Officials” to find your Senators and click on the name for his telephone number.

You can also call your Congressman and two U.S. senators by calling the capitol switchboard in Washington D.C. toll free at 1-800-839-5276 and asking for them by name.

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In January, 2001, the Clinton administration announced the Roadless Area Conservation Rule which declared 58.5 million acres of US Forest Service lands off limits to new road building, except in cases of compelling need, such as wildfire prevention. This rule was designed to protect pristine wilderness areas from logging and development. It stops the nearly $300 million that taxpayers spend each year subsidizing logging. The 600 public meetings and more than 2.3 million comments from the American people demonstrated the overwhelming support for protection of these wild areas.

The Roadless Rule is now under attack. Several environmentally destructive changes described below are being proposed by the Bush administration. The Inslee-Boehlert bill in the House and the Cantwell-Warner bill in the Senate would make the Clinton Roadless Rule into law, thus preserving these lands as off limits to further road building and logging.

Under the Bush administration, the Forest Service has proposed exempting the 16.8 million-acre Tongass National Forest in Alaska from protection by the roadless rule, thus giving private industry free reign for industrial-scale logging and roadbuilding in this area, which contains some of the last remaining old growth temperate rainforest in the world.

The Bush administration’s changes to the roadless rule will also allow all governors to seek exemptions from the roadless rule in cases of “exceptional circumstances,” which would include activities such as maintenance of dams and other existing facilities, habitat restoration and wildfire prevention. However, in today’s Forest Service, these criteria may be broadly interpreted.

Although the Bush administration says that more roads are needed in these areas to prevent forest fires, roads for logging operations actually increase the risk of fires. An area that has been cleared for road building experiences an increase in the amount of invasive weeds and brush and debris which can build up, creating higher fuel loads. Forest Service research has found that fires are twice as likely to occur in previously roaded and logged areas as in large, roadless areas.