The U.S. Forest Service is required to provide a comment period for citizens to respond to its Notice of Intent to prevent use of 40 million acres of roadless areas in National Forests. Environmental groups such as The Wilderness Society and Sierra Club have urged their members to respond during the comment period.
Forest Guardians, a New Mexico-based anti-logging environmentalist group, recommends its members include the following points in their comments:
- Prohibit not only “commercial logging,” but also any other removal of living or dead trees from roadless areas.
- Protect roadless areas from off-road recreation vehicle use, mining, and other “environmentally damaging” activities.
- Issue a nationwide directive that immediately prohibits road building and logging in all National Forest roadless areas.
- Create no exemptions, especially the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.
- Immediately provide interim protection from logging, road building, mining, and other harmful activity for any non-inventoried areas of 1000 acres.
While its Web site claims Forest Guardians use “cutting-edge science to challenge misguided federal agency actions” that threaten public lands, the site offers little evidence of sound science at work.
