Founded in 1989, Forests Forever exists to defend and restore California’s 17 million acres of diverse woodland ecosystems, from the foggy cathedral forests of the North Coast to the juniper/pinyon pine forests of the Southern California desert. A chief source of our drinking water, wildlife and our spiritual refreshment, California’s magnificent forests help define the special character of the place where we live.

Forests Forever performs a unique function in the forestry-reform community by carrying out a program of broad-based citizen education and mobilization through direct-contact grassroots organizing.

Our mission is to protect and enhance the forests and wildlife habitat of California through educational, legislative, and electoral activities; to recruit, educate and train articulate and effective organizers in the skills needed to convey our message to the citizens of California.

Forests Forever coalesced around the campaign to save the Headwaters Forest. Located in Humboldt County near Eureka, Headwaters Forest was slated for clearcut logging by MAXXAM Corp. We generated crucial public pressure through thousands of letters and petition signatures to decision-makers that helped bring about acquisition of the 7,500-acre Headwaters Reserve. The area opened to the public in March, 1999.

In 1999 we joined with other environmental groups urging then-President Bill Clinton to establish a national monument protecting ancient sequoias. On Apr. 15, 2000, the president proclaimed 328,000 acres of Sequoia National Forest as the new Giant Sequoia National Monument.

In 2002 we helped generate some 5,000 citizen letters opposing the proposed management plan for Jackson State Forest on the Mendocino Coast. Forests Forever Foundation filed suit against the California Department of Forestry in October 2002. On Aug. 5, 2003, the Mendocino Superior Court ruled in our favor, tossing out the flawed management plan and ending all logging on the forest until a new management plan is adopted.

The Oak Woodlands Protection Act requires counties to include oak woodlands in the planning process and provides mitigation measures for “converted” woodlands. We campaigned for the bill from its introduction in 2002. In Sept. 2004, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the bill into law.

Most recently, in ruling on a lawsuit brought by Forests Forever and 19 other environmental organizations, a federal judge reinstated the original Roadless Area Conservation Rule. And, after we had campaigned for ten months for AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, the measure passed both houses of the state legislature and was signed into law by Gov. Schwarzenegger.

Forests Forever is a California non-profit Corporation operating under IRS code section 501(c)(4). Our Federal Employer ID Number is 68-0201338. Forests Forever is governed by a Board of Directors, consisting of as many as nine volunteers, each elected to a three-year term.

The Forests Forever Foundation, incorporated in 1998, carries out research, litigation and public education. Its Federal Employer ID Number is 94-3244942.

Contributions to Forests Forever Foundation are tax-deductible. Contributions to Forests Forever, however, are not tax-deductible because it engages largely in grassroots lobbying activity.

For more information on Forests Forever’s campaigns to protect and restore California’s forests and watersheds, please write or phone us.

Thanks for your interest — and vital help — in our work!

To view the latest financial summaries for Forests Forever, Inc., click here.

To view the latest financial summaries for Forests Forever Foundation, click here.