The Trump led proposal would undo decades of hard fought conservation work and put large swaths of mature and old growth forests on the chopping block. These forests provide critical habitat for endangered species and sequester incredible amounts of carbon. They are also naturally more fire resilient than the monocrop plantations that the BLM would replace them with. BLM’s Notice of Intent makes it clear that the purpose of these revisions is to increase industrial logging to “the maximum productive capacity of the lands”. This would mean the elimination of the last stands of mature and old growth on BLM lands and could lead to the extinction of endangered species like the Northern Spotted Owl and Marbled Murrelet.

This is the first step in the process, called “scoping.” While there may be future opportunities to comment, it’s critical to make our voices heard as early in the process as possible!