What challenges and opportunities await us in 2018?
The timber industry wish-list bill, H.R. 2936, looms especially large, passing the House on Nov. 1 and now moving forward in the Senate. We must stop it.
H.R. 3990 would cripple the Antiquities Act, which provides for national monument designations. The bill is an emerging threat we must see off. It would redefine "objects of antiquity" to exclude "natural geographic features" and severely restrict the maximum size of monuments.
We expect there will be many other public lands fights in the year ahead.
Alongside our North Bay allies we have decided to advance boldly in Napa. We are currently planning toward voter approval of the Napa initiative, dubbed the Napa County Watershed and Oak Woodland Protection Initiative of 2018. It is scheduled to go before voters in June 2018.
It will slow and eventually halt the destruction of oak woodlands in the county, as well as protect its threatened and dwindling water supplies by instituting protections for stream corridors against the polluting effects of oak tree removal.