From the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest to the misty groves of the Southern Appalachians, America's national forests and public lands are home to some of the most striking beauty on earth. They provide clean drinking water for millions of Americans across the country and critical habitat for America's endangered species, including grizzly bear, wolf and salmon. In addition, they provide endless opportunities for recreation and solitude.
One might think that our publicly owned national forests and other federally protected lands are already safe from logging, mining, road-building and other development. Unfortunately, they're not. More than half of our national forests no longer qualify as wilderness because of logging, mining, road-building and other development activities. There are approximately 400,000 miles of roads crisscrossing our national forests--enough to circle the planet 16 times--to help logging companies gain access to even more remote areas of our national forests. More than 95 percent of our old-growth trees have been logged. Road-building and logging cause erosion and fragment important wildlife habitat.
A New Threat
For their entire tenure, the Bush administration has waged war on our
national forests. Whether by throwing out protection for 60 million
acres of national forest land, by engineering a massive expansion of
oil and gas drilling on public land in the American West, or by
attempting to sell our forests outright--using our public lands as
a sort of ATM machine when his budget comes up short each year.
As the 2008 presidential season gets underway, we need to make sure that whoever is elected will agree to put forests first--first by pledging to permanently protect the 60 million remaining acres of pristine land in our national forests, and secondly by outlining their long-term plan for forest management, with protection being the top priority.
We need to make sure that our candidates understand that our forests are part of our national identity and cannot simply be sold off.
