Local Activists Rally to Send Message:
“Stop the Bush Administration forest policies, they leave no trees
behind!”
La Crosse, WI – Sierra Club activists joined others today to air
concerns about Bush administration forest policies. They gathered
to tell the Bush administration--through visiting Under Secretary of
Agriculture Mark Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist--that their
proposed programs will destroy many of the remaining fragments of
relatively untouched forest land.
“We’re here to tell the Bush administration that we disagree with
their plan of ‘leave no tree behind,’” said Barb Frank, Sierra
Club’s Midwest Regional Conservation Committee Chair. “There is
a better way. We need the Bush administration to protect public
forests not timber companies’ profits.”
Americans cherish their last pockets of wild in our National forests
as places to hike, hunt and fish and as sources of clean water.
“These are the last wild forests left unprotected in the country,
and they’re disappearing because of logging and development,” asked
Joshua Davis, a Sierra Club organizer. “The Bush administration
needs to protect these remaining precious bits of forest, not only
because they exist on some of America’s premier headwaters areas and
wildlife habitat, but also to preserve them for future generations
to explore and enjoy.”
The Bush Administration is currently opening up millions of acres
of wild, roadless forests to damaging logging, road building, and
other development. In so doing, they have hallowed-out the landmark
Roadless Area Conservation Rule, riddling it with loopholes that
threaten the places Americans need and treasure for recreation,
clean water and fish and wildlife habitat.
“The Bush administration’s ‘Leave No Tree behind Plan’ removes
citizen participation, interferes with our judicial system, leaves
old growth and roadless forests vulnerable, increases commercial
logging, and will do little or nothing to reduce the threat of
wildfire. In fact, it provides more help to timber companies than
to fire-threatened communities,” concluded forestry activist Cory
Rosene.