Clearcut on the Helena-Lewis & Clark National Forest, Montana. Photo: Steve Paltt.
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies is proud to announce that the Blue Ribbon Coalition, an anti-environmental group of motorized wreckreactionists and industries, claims the Alliance is responsible for stopping more logging projects and protecting more wildlife habitat on public lands than any other environmental group in the country.
One might wonder why this group is so enamored of logging our public forests. Simply put, they love logging because whenever the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management wants to clearcut our national forests, they first bulldoze in more logging roads, which means more roads their members can drive ATVs, dirt bikes, and four-wheel drives.
The Alliance was recognized as the top environmental group to hate because we stopped an astounding 80 of the162 federal logging projects that were stopped nationwide.
Let that sink in. The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, with one employee and an annual budget of less than $250,000 stopped 49.38% of all the logging projects stopped by environmentalists.
Compare that to the big Gang Green groups such as the Sierra Club, with its 1,700 employees and a $300 million a year annual budget, stopped 19 logging project. The Wilderness Society, with a $93 million endowment, $43 million annual budget, and over 200 employees, stopped five logging projects.
Yet the Alliance protected more habitat for fish and wildlife and stopped more logging and road bulldozing projects than all the big weenie-greenie environmental groups combined.
Like the Alliance, it’s the small environmental and conservation groups such as Native Ecosystems Council, Conservation Congress, and Friends of the Clearwater that are actually stopping the vast majority of deforestation projects on public lands.
The Trump administration’s horrendous anti-environmental policies are keeping us very busy fighting to protect habitat for native species in the Rockies with our lawsuits in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Nevada, and Utah.
But because we operate on limited funds and there are so many bad logging projects we can’t stop them all. So we focus on the worst projects that bulldoze in logging roads and clearcut dwindling old growth forest habitat for threatened and endangered species such as grizzlies, lynx and wolverine.
Just one great example: The Hanna Flats logging project in northern Idaho. We have been fighting and winning in court for seven years now — and the old growth forest is still standing and still providing great habitat for grizzlies, lynx, and wolverines.
Think of how many grizzly cubs, lynx kittens and wolverine kits were born there over the last seven years, how much carbon the old growth forest has sequestered out of the atmosphere, and how much wetter and cooler the forests are than clearcuts baking under the sun with no trees left to provide shade.
But it’s neither easy nor cheap to beat the unlimited funds and power of the federal government. As one of the smallest environmental groups in the country it’s a true David and Goliath battle. But just like David, the Alliance wins.
We win because we do the hard work to analyze the projects, submit salient comments, and hire the best environmental attorneys in the country to force the federal government to follow the law.
We’re in the world’s sixth great extinction period, primarily caused by humans destroying wildlife habitat, and there are always more cases than we have funds to hire attorneys.
Bottom line: We need your help. If keeping our forests standing and recovering Endangered species by protecting their habitat is important to you, please join us by making a donation to the Alliance for the Wild Rockies today. Please also consider donating to Counterpunch so they can keep the public informed.
We fight and win more than any group in the nation — but like David, we need stones in our sling, and that’s what your donation provides. Thank you!
