Help ban clearcutting in California!

Clearcutting is highly destructive of the natural environment. Its effects include:

• Destroying wildlife habitat and corridors and endangering native plants and animals;

• Increasing soil erosion and sedimentation in rivers and streams, which increases the need for
costly water treatment, diminishes the capacity of the state’s water storage facilities and harms wildlife;

• Boosting the risk of intense wildfires by converting cool, moist forests into sun-baked slash
piles and later to fire-prone tree plantations;

• Degrading the state’s natural beauty, which in turn affects tourism, recreation, retirement and property values; and

• Contributing to global warming by removing a major natural storage reservoir (standing vegetation) for carbon dioxide, and by exposing forest soils to accelerated weathering.

Ending the practice of clearcutting in California’s forests is necessary and urgent. Our forests are being destroyed at an ever-increasing pace. You can help us fight clearcutting by helping to elevate this issue in the priorities of California’s elected officials.

Please write to the three top officials in the state– Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, and Attorney General Jerry Brown. All three are likely to run for high office again within the next two years. We must encourage them to begin now to build into their campaigns a prominent and aggressive plan to end clearcutting in California.

Tell them about the destruction of California’s forest legacy by a few greedy timber companies that contribute only a small percentage of revenue and jobs to the state. Let them know that this issue is not going to go away until clearcutting in California has been stopped!

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Save the giant sequoias from the Forest Service!
Transfer Giant Sequoia National Monument to the National Park Service

The Act to Save America’s Forests would transfer control of Giant Sequoia National Monument from the Forest Service to the National Park Service.

The Forest Service has neither the expertise nor the inclination to manage or restore natural ecosystems. The Park Service, on the other hand, has nearly a century of experience in preserving national monuments, many of which have become national parks.

In addition to placing Giant Sequoia National Monument under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, the Act to Save America’s Forests will end clearcutting on all federal lands and stop logging and roadbuilding in the last wild, roadless and ancient forests. It will require our federal forest agencies to restore the native biological diversity on our national forests.

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