Dear Friend,

In the coming days, as we count down to the New Year, we will be reminding members and supporters of the key battles Forests Forever continues to wage on your behalf as we go all-out to protect California’s forests.

As 2010 approaches its grand finale, please take a moment amid your holiday planning to contribute to the vital causes we undertake at your behest.

One of the critical battles we continue to fight for is the preservation of Giant Sequoia National Monument, which ironically is threatened by its supposed guardian, the National Forest Service.

Earlier this year the Forest Service put forth its revised options for managing the monument, and once again the agency is threatening to log extensively within one of California's most treasured landscapes!

This cannot be allowed to stand. To prevent this travesty, we need your generous financial support to assist us in battling the Forest Service’s bad management plan.

With your support, we will continue to shine a light on the agency’s deeply flawed scheme. We will keep pressure on Congress and the Obama administration. We will hold the agency to account, and alert the public to the wrong-headedness of the Forest Service’s plans to conduct intensive commercial logging activity on this iconic landscape.

Such logging would impact not just the giant sequoia old-growth forest but also threatened and endangered species including Pacific fisher, California spotted owl and others barely clinging to life in the southern Sierra. A return to the bad old days of thinly disguised commercial logging could strike the final blow to their viability.

After considering all of the options presented by the Forest Service, Forests Forever and our allies concur that the best option for managing the monument is one the agency didn’t propose: to turn management of the monument over to the National Park Service.

You can help us wage this campaign by donating to Forests Forever Foundation. With your support, we will be able to pursue the agency relentlessly, until it relents or relinquishes control.

Sequoia National Park, adjacent to the monument, already provides a good example of how the forest should be managed. The park is successfully restoring its giant sequoia ecosystem through the careful use of prescribed burns and conservative small-tree thinning. That same careful stewardship should be applied inside the monument.

When President Bill Clinton used his authority under the Antiquities Act to establish the monument in 2000, he made clear he wanted to permanently protect 328,000 acres of Sierra Nevada forestland, including 33 sequoia groves.

The Clinton Proclamation expressly prohibited tree removal from the monument unless absolutely necessary and scientifically justified for ecosystem restoration and maintenance or public safety.

Yet the Forest Service’s latest draft environmental impact statement essentially ignores the proclamation.

Ultimately, keeping the monument in care of the Forest Service will damage in this national treasure. The best course would be to transfer Giant Sequoia National Monument into the care of the gentler hands of the National Park Service.

Take action:

Please click on the PayPal button below to make a generous tax-deductible contribution to Forests Forever Foundation. The funds will help Forests Forever’s campaign to secure the transfer of Giant Sequoia National Monument into the care of the National Park Service.

Let us know you’re with us in this campaign. As we fight to protect Giant Sequoia National Monument, we’ve considered the alternatives, and find the best option to be a peaceful transfer of authority to the National Park Service.

Thank you!