Our wilderness provides outstanding opportunities for solitude and renewal. These public values are threatened by commercial logging interests favored by the Bush administration. More Americans enjoy wildlife-related recreation than attend all major league baseball, football, basketball and hockey games combined.

Management or Mismanagement?

The U.S. Forest Service manages 191 million acres of public lands. Barely 18%, less than 35 million acres nationally, have been permanently protected as wilderness. The other 82%, or more than 150 million acres, are open to timber cutting, oil and gas development, mining, etc. While a great deal of this acreage has been damaged by decades of such exploitation, there remain about 60 million acres, or 30% of public forest lands in America, which, though unprotected, remain wild-these are America's Heritage Forests. The interim policy will protect fewer than 45 million acres of these forest wildlands from new road construction, but not from logging and, mining and other damaging uses.

The Carson National Forest is one of five National Forests in New Mexico. Some of the finest mountain scenery in the Southwest is found in this forest. Read about the proposed timber sale that Forest Guardians is challenging..

National Forest Management Planning

The laws and regulations that control land management planning on our National Forest system originate in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Forest Management Act (NFMA). Major changes are underway to the rules that implement these two statutes. Despite significant and nearly universal legal setbacks, the Bush administration is steadfast in its desire to elevate commodity extraction and other commercial interests over wildlife, water, and recreation. To this end, the administration is attempting to push though two significant proposals that would fundamentally change forest planning before the next presidential election.

The two proposals involve Forest Service procedures for implementing NEPA and the forest management planning process required by the NFMA. The first proposal, published in the Federal Register on August 16, 2007 (72 Fed. Reg. 45998), would move the agency's NEPA implementing procedures from the Forest Service Handbook (FSH) to the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) and make several changes in the procedures. A new section of the CFR -- 36 CFR 220 -- would be created. The full text of the proposed rule is available on the Forest Service website at www.fs.fed.us/emc/nepa/nepa_procedures/

Moving the NEPA procedures from the FSH to the CFR would be a positive action, from the standpoint of public access and legal enforceability. However, besides simply moving its NEPA procedures from FSH to the CFR, the Forest Service also proposes several significant changes in the procedures that could weaken the NEPA process.

The second proposal effects the Forest Service's rules for planning and management and the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) on the agency's regulations to guide the forest planning process under the National Forest Management Act (NFMA). The proposed rule and DEIS are available on the Forest Service website at: www.fs.fed.us/emc/nfma/2007_planning_rule.html.

The Forest Service's 2005 planning rule was struck down by a federal court on March 30, 2007 in Citizens for Better Forestry et al. v. USDA (C05-1144 (N.D. Cal.). The court ruled that the Forest Service had violated NEPA by failing to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement and violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to consult the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the effect of the rule on imperiled wildlife and plants. The draft NFMA rule, which was published in the Federal Register on August 23, 2007 (72 Fed. Reg. 48514) is essentially identical to this 2005 rule. The Environmental Impact Statement provides essentially no analysis of the environmental effects of the alternatives.

Forest Guardians is mounting a challenge to both proposals.

Current National Forest Management Planning

Over the next several years, the National Forests in Arizona and New Mexico will undertake the revision of their management plans. Arizona National Forests are now embarking on the plan revision process and now is the time to voice your opinion about the management of our public forests. These revised plans will set the framework and direction for management of important programs that effect wildlands and wildlife including grazing, logging, thinning, recreation, community fire protection and ecological restoration. Forest Guardians is working with a partnership of conservation groups and individuals that are systematically and strategically engaging the Forest Service in the plan revision process in Arizona and will do the same when the forests in New Mexico initiate the public participation process.
Read our Forest Management Principles..
View the Forest Management Planning Timeline..

For more information please visit the Forest Service website.
Contact: Bryan Bird.

Motorized Vehicles on National Forests

Everyone has a right to enjoy our National Forests, but no one has the right to abuse them. Most people visit our forests in search of peace and quiet and to soak up nature’s beauty. In addition, forests should be havens for wildlife and clean water. The Forest Service is currently in the process of deciding where motorized vehicles can and cannot go in our National Forests. Off-road vehicles sacrifice restful recreation as well as wildlife habitat, and it is imperative that the Forest Service hear that a pristine forest is more important that off-road vehicle travel. The Forest Service is currently accepting comments for the Santa Fe National Forest. In New Mexico, the Cibola and Gila National Forests are the furthest along in the planning process. The Santa Fe National Forest is following close behind these in its progress and will be releasing a draft motorized travel map in October 2007. And the Carson and Lincoln National Forests are not making rapid progress. In Arizona, the Coconino and Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests are making headway. Click here to read the comments Forest Guardians submitted for the Santa Fe National Forest travel management planning, and click here to read earlier comments. Send a letter of your own demanding that off-road vehicles don't degrade wildlife habitat, are confined to designated roads that can be monitored, and that road density is not increased to accommodate motorized vehicles. More information is available from the Forest Service website or www.endangeredearth.org/orv or contact Bryan Bird.

The Economic Benefits of Forest Protection

Recreation, hunting and fishing on national forests contributes over 38 times more to the national economy than the logging program. Unfortunately, our National Parks management is not working to protect ecological communities. Twenty-nine mammal populations have disappeared from western national parks since the turn of the century.