Roadless Intitiative Under Bush's Attack!

[Apollonaris Zeus]

George Bush is giving his buddies of the "Haves and Have Mores" more free wood and minerals the right to place roads into the remaining jewels of our national forests.

In Montana we already have 100's of thousands of roads crisscrossing our national forests. they have fragmented into hundreds of sections of broken wildernesses. timber interests have enough land to log and if they were properly managed they might be profitable, but montana doesn't have profitable stands of timber. We have welfare logging for people that should be out making a living at a job that the public doesn't have to pay for.

We have less then 10% of untouched National Forest Lands left! If our govenment cannot manage the 90% properly and make a profit why destroy the remain 10% and be left with nothing except clear cuts. Please Help America Preserve The Last Best like the Tongrass, the Kootenai, and many more. Please send an email to help!

Please send your comments to:

ADDRESSES: Send written comments by mail to: Content Analysis Team, ATTN: Roadless State Petitions, USDA Forest Service, P.O. Box 221090, Salt Lake City, UT 84122; by facsimile to (801) 517-1014; or by e-mail at [email protected].

A II Z

[theCryptofishist]

Here's the link to the Forest Service webpage that announces it.
http://roadless.fs.fed.us/

The proposed rule and notice on reinstatment of interim directive have been sent to the Office of the Federal Register. The interim directive is labeled DRAFT since it won't be officially issued and become effective until the date the notice (item 6) is published in the Federal Register.

Which means that they could start implimenting this this month. This is real. I'm much better with information than with activist suggestions, but don't take this lying down.
It affects 2% of the "American Landbase" which is huge when you actually think of it. And because it's being punted to the governers, work on state officials as well.

[Apollonaris Zeus]

Here's the link to the Forest Service webpage that announces it.
http://roadless.fs.fed.us/

The proposed rule and notice on reinstatment of interim directive have been sent to the Office of the Federal Register. The interim directive is labeled DRAFT since it won't be officially issued and become effective until the date the notice (item 6) is published in the Federal Register.

Which means that they could start implimenting this this month. This is real. I'm much better with information than with activist suggestions, but don't take this lying down.
It affects 2% of the "American Landbase" which is huge when you actually think of it. And because it's being punted to the governers, work on state officials as well.

I can't imagine that our present governor, Judy, Judy, Judy Martz, which by the way, was sold land to by arco at a highly discounted markdown, would make a decision that was in the recreationalist point of view or Idaho's Kempthorne's. These are national citizens land and it should be your congressmen that should be making the decisions, not the Lap Dancers of industry's.

A II Z

[Simply Joel]

So, you suggest state officials have no say in what happens within the confines of their state...

this is a state's right issue...

I am not for further roads destroying our forests, yet I am also not for hobbling a state's ability to enhance their economy... and I also believe there has to be some middle ground where a pragmatic solution can be attained...

but hey, i am just an optimist.

[Apollonaris Zeus]

So, you suggest state officials have no say in what happens within the confines of their state...

this is a state's right issue...

Yes, they do have a say and that's though their elected congressmen.

It's a national rights issue. they are national lands within the state. They have their state lands to manage and many of them sold those lands long ago. What state lands Montana has, are managed to make income first and recreation is a by product of that management practise. If that practise was applied to the national lands, then a forest isn't managed as a forest but source of cash and the attributes that we hold dear for that a forest is also a wilderness are no more.

The Republican platform in Montana is to get control and ownership of the land back to the state so they can rape it for the short term, sell to the highest bidder and put all of what was once national lands into private hands as private lands!

We have more money coming into Montana from recreational sources then mining, cattle grazing and logging combind. Those are the main constituency of our republican control state.

A II Z

[theCryptofishist]

A II Z was right on what I said about state officials. I was in my "use every available alley as an opportunity for protest" mode not in my "hey wait a minute, this land belongs to ALL americans" mode.
As for state's rights, I'm very suspicious of that as an argument, as historically it has tended to mean "States Right's to do any horrible thing we can." (Cite: the civil war.) To be sure there is great tension in the west between states and the feds, in part because so much of the land belongs to the feds. (80% or so in Nevada.) On the other hand, since the Forest Service and the BLM have tended to manage their lands for logging interests on the one hand and grazing and mining interests for the other, it certainly isn't true that these lands have been kept in anything like a pristine condition. Many of the large fortunes in the west result from renting federal lands at tiny prices and to hell with local concerns. But state public land haven't nessesarily been better managed. The thing to remember about both these agencies is that they are managed more in tunes with the economic concerns than ecological ones.

[theCryptofishist]

Short term economic interests, not long term ecological and economical concerns. Remember, using up the principle (natural resources) and not just living off the interest is a long-term economic as well as ecological disaster.

[cowboyangel]

lets put Bush on a roadless path to nowhere