| Stand up for America the Beautiful |
| The Bush administration has announced plans to open 60 million acres of
America's last pristine wild forests to logging, drilling, and mining. It's the biggest single giveaway to the timber industry in the history of our national forests. [1] It's time to speak up -- the official comment period on Bush's proposal is now open. Let the Bush administration know you want them to protect our last remaining wild forests, at: http://www.moveon.org/roadless/ The Clinton administration issued a new rule protecting the last wild and intact roadless areas in our national forest system in 2001. The "Roadless Area Conservation Rule" was the product of more than two decades of broad debate and three years of official review and public participation. According to then-Secretary-of-Agriculture Daniel Glickman: Never before have the American people so actively participated in helping to decide how their public lands should be managed. The fact that more than 1.5 million comments were received from Americans shows that these truly are all of the people's lands, not just a few, and they care deeply about how they are cared for. But the Bush administration's actions demonstrate clearly that they care only for the few and not the many. Since the year 2000, the timber industry has given $25 million in political donations to President Bush and his allies in Congress. [2] According to The Salt Lake Tribune, The proposed policy favors local loggers' interests over many Americans' justifiable expectation that their last surviving forests will be protected by federal oversight. The national forests are, after all, owned by all Americans, not merely those who stand to gain economically or politically from logging. [3] Tell the Bush Administration that America's National Forests belong to all of us, not just the timber corporations. Let them know we won't be silent while America the Beautiful is threatened. |
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http://www.ourforests.org [2] http://www.ourforests.org/fact/money.html [3] |