Guest Post –
By Chandra Rosenthal –
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility –
Rosenthal is PEER’s Western Lands and Rocky Mountain Advocate.
I want to tell you what the midterm elections mean for our national forests, and where we will need your help moving forward. On November 3rd, voters across the country demanded accountability and real checks on power. For our national forests, that change could not come at a better time!
For two years, this administration has come at our national forests from every direction. It wants more roads, more motorized traffic, more logging, with fewer people left to watch over the land.
It has shut the public and local communities out of the decisions being made about their own forests.
The administration can no longer act without scrutiny, and PEER intends to make the most of it.
Here’s what we’ll focus on in the coming months and years, and where we’ll need your support:
* Exposing “emergency” logging. The Forest Service has declared 60 percent of national forest lands an emergency zone, clearing the way for fast-tracked logging with shortcuts on environmental review. PEER has filed Freedom of Information Act requests to find out what is really happening on the ground. With a new Congress, we will put what we find in front of the lawmakers who can act on it.
* Defending roadless forests. For 25 years, the Roadless Rule has protected about 45 million acres of national forest from logging and road building. The administration wants to scrap it. The agency’s own analysis found wildfires are six to nine times more likely next to forest roads. And national forests supply drinking water to more than 60 million people. We will fight to keep these wild places whole.
* Stopping a free-for-all on forest roads. USDA wants to gut the Travel Management Rule, which has protected 193 million acres from unmanaged cross-country driving for 20 years. PEER is opposing it alongside Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, the group that helped found PEER. The Forest Service faces an $11.44 billion maintenance backlog and plans to cut permanent staff by 67 percent. More roads with no one to maintain them is a recipe for damage and danger.
* Standing up for forest science. USDA is closing research stations across the country, and it continues to push out scientists and downsize its workforce. Forest managers need local science to make decisions that help rather than harm. We will defend these scientists and press Congress to restore the research our forests depend on.
* Putting forward a better vision. Pushing back is not enough. We will bring practical fixes to the new Congress: a fully staffed Forest Service, decisions grounded in science, and forests managed for the public, not a timber-production agenda.
* Roads, emergency logging, gutted science and a hollowed-out workforce are not separate problems. Together, they threaten the forests, wildlife and clean water that belong to every American. When Forest Service employees see wrongdoing and speak up, they need someone in their corner. They can turn to PEER, and we never charge the public servants we represent.
The next two years will be what we make them.
See how to support this union here.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
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