Local land management downplays wildlife needs

Local approaches to federal land management downplay wildlife needs and emphasize recreation and logging concerns.

A closed-door meeting in Sandpoint, involving lawmakers, the U.S. Forest Service, the Idaho Department of Lands, timber companies, and a token conservation group, aims to craft a wilderness agreement. It is not their right to exclude the public during negotiations. Unacceptable concessions will be made for timber interests, for legislation keeping Upper Pack River open to snowmobiles and allowing mountain bikes in new wilderness and grizzly habitat, while ignoring violations to grizzly core habitat in the Myrtle Bear Unit. 

The timber industry wants land with mature/old-growth forests despite their ecological and carbon storage values, exchanging their clearcut wastelands with the Forest Service. They whine about the need for certainty and press for more volume.  Some faux conservation groups, who lack leadership qualities, suffer from "environmental amnesia." They will compromise crucial connectivity areas and carbon-storing forests, benefiting industry and recreation, not remembering what has been lost. Increasing recommended wilderness, roadless and connectivity areas to maintain vital forest ecosystems and wildlife habitat is necessary to reverse the trend. Our anthropogenic climate crisis exacerbates the need. 

Please support the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act to designate all roadless areas as wilderness and create jobs through rewilding key connectivity areas.

PAUL SIERACKI

Priest River