Oppose "Fix" Our Forests Act

The "Fix Our Forests Act" (FOFA) threatens Wilderness with expanded livestock grazing and manager-ignited fires, without public input. Thanks to everyone who called and wrote Senator Bennet to encourage him, as a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, to oppose FOFA. Despite Senator Bennet's nay vote, FOFA passed out of committee.

BUT THE BATTLE IS NOT OVER - YOU CAN STILL ACT!:

• Call Senator Hickenlooper at 303-244-1628. Tell Hick you oppose the “Fix Our Forests Act,” and that the minor amendments he has proposed do not fix FOFA.

• Call Senator Bennet at 202-224-5852, thank him for his nay vote, and ask him to continue his FOFA opposition.

• Vote outside Colorado?: Call your Senators (202-224-3121) and ask them to oppose the “Fix Our Forests Act.”

 FOFA is a direct attack on the ESA and NEPA, severely limits judicial review, and permits 10,000-acre clearcutting projects without an approval process. Tell your Senators the bill is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to dramatically increase logging, roadbuilding, and livestock grazing on federal public lands by undermining our nation’s bedrock environmental laws.

Below are more details from our friends at Wilderness Watch:

On January 23, the falsely-named “Fix Our Forests Act” (H.R. 471) passed the U.S. House on a vote of 279-141. Now FOFA goes to the Senate. Senator Hickenlooper has proposed minor changes, but the bill remains a major threat to Wilderness Areas, where it would increase cattle and sheep grazing and widespread use of manager-ignited fire.

The “Fix Our Forests Act” will dramatically change how America’s national forests will be managed, and Wilderness won't be spared. The bill would override bedrock environmental laws and curtail public participation to mandate landscape-scale logging on federal lands, including industrial logging on up to 10,000 acres—or 15 square miles—categorically excluded from the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, under the rationale that cutting down trees across 15 square miles of forests has no significant impacts on the environment or wildlife.

For Wilderness, the bill would promote increased cattle and sheep grazing and widespread use of manager-ignited fire that will transform these places from wild landscapes “untrammeled by man” to human-dominated ones.

Call your Senators, and then also send your two senators this email (please personalize) urging them to oppose the “Fix Our Forests Act.”

Thank you for speaking up for Wilderness, public lands, and the wildlife that call it home!