LAST DAY TO Comment to PROTECT PUBLIC LANDS from Corporate GREED!!

[diva77]

Last edited Mon Aug 26, 2019, 01:16 PM - Edit history (2)

Submit comments at this link: https://www.regulations.gov/docket?D=FS-2019-0010

Email blast from Indigenous Environmental Network:

The United States Forest Service (USFS) is proposing to eliminate public participation and virtually abandon their legal and moral responsibility by significantly changing how it complies with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Adhering to these rules requires among other steps, to conduct environmental impact studies (EISs), allow for public review and must take into account not only scientific study of the possible impacts and threats but our approval or denial for proposed activities within public lands. These projects include logging, pipelines, and road building through 193 million acres of the last remaining wild places that belong to WE the PEOPLE!

We’re not being overly dramatic to get your attention! There are people currently serving in government (many of them still in an “acting” position and NOT approved by Congress!) who want to give the oil, gas, coal, forestry industries and other private projects, a free pass to carve up and giveaway the last remaining wild places in this country for their profit at our peril!

The USFS is claiming these rule changes are needed to save tax dollars on environmental impact studies and to increase efficiency within the agency. In truth these are a transparently obvious end run around the NEPA regulations put in place to protect against corporate harm and exploitation.
This move is NOT to increase efficiency as they claim – it is THEFT of PUBLIC LANDS!
This is NOT to better protect from wildfires and for pest management – it is a clear attempt to hand over control of our Public Lands and Forests to corporate control!
None of these changes are in the BEST INTEREST of the public or the health or future for preserving these areas for the next Seven Generations.
This brazen move does not follow the intent of the NEPA guidance established to preserve precious biodiversity, integrity and overall quality of health for our public grasslands and forests.
SNIP

PLEASE share this with family, friends, social networks FAR and WIDE!

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On edit: Please keep kicked for today. Please call your Congress people about this.

[diva77]

1. more info from Indigenous Environmental Network email blast:

IF WE, you and I, family and friends, don’t speak now the following will happen in the very near future:

Timber sales of up to 4,200 acres (about 6.6 square miles)

Broadly defined “ecosystem restoration and/or resilience activities/fire prevention” on up to 7,300 acres which will benefit logging and biomass burning

Construction of up to 5 miles of roads or reconstruction of up to 10 miles of Forest Service System roads

Uncontested permits for pipelines, mines, and fracking pad/operations

Utility rights-of-way

Converting illegal off-road vehicle routes to official Forest Service System roads

Eliminate the requirement to conduct public scoping for 98% of all proposed actions

The proposed rule would eliminate the presence and protection of sensitive species as an extraordinary circumstance

Discretion to authorize larger, complex projects without preparing any NEPA analysis by breaking apart the various project elements and picking and choosing how OR IF they are reviewed

Claim that an existing environmental assessment (EA) or environmental impact statement (EIS) adequately analyzed a new/different proposed action and so no EA or EIS is necessary

Remove Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs) and potential wilderness areas from the classes of actions that normally require preparation of an EIS

Embraces “condition-based management", which allows the Forest Service to authorize land management activities –usually including timber harvest without first gathering information about the resources that would be affected on the ground

Additional public engagement for CEs and EAs is at the discretion of the local responsible official, except where specified by applicable statutes and regulations (such as the project-level objections process)

Convert unauthorized or non-system roads and trails to the national forest system to allow those roads and trails to be managed on forest service transportation system

Allow the Forest Service to use another agencies’ Categorical Exclusions

[diva77]

2. Indigenous Environmental Network's Suggestions for what to include in comments

Without accountability there will be MORE logging in the wrong places, MORE roads built in remote areas, MORE pipelines fragmenting habitats and destroying precious, endangered and at risk wildlife, trees and plants.

Our national forests are the number one source for clean drinking water for 180 million Americans. They channel and filter sediments and pollutants from streams and rainwater as they recharge vital aquifers. And if there are no controls on where and on large swaths of land that logging or pipelines or other extraction decimates, millions of animals, food and medicinal plants, and endangered tree species may very well be gone forever.

The biodiversity of our public lands are as complex as they are vast.

Our national forests, summits, white water rivers and trail systems provide over 200,000 jobs and generate 13 billion dollars of revenue and this figure grows each year. Rural communities count on the integrity and beauty of these lands to provide not only jobs and economic stability, but places to enjoy nature’s wonders, relax and spend time with family and friends – benefits that can’t be measured in dollars or profits.

If the Forest Service abandons the process that protects clean water and air, healthy flora and fauna, livelihoods and recreation, it will forever compromise our ability to successfully share and care for our public lands.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

3. K&R & thanks

[Liberty Belle]

4. This could remove 75% of US Forest lands from environmental reveiw for logging.

It's a total sell out to the timber industry. Even federal forests such as Sequoia National Forest could be logged -- up to 6.6 square miles with zero environmental review or public comments, and no limit to how many times they could apply this loophole. Of course they don't have to consider climate change, either.

Please everyone, take a moment to submit your comments and also pick up the phone today and call your members of the House and Senate. Ask for legislation to block this obscene rule change. No president should be able to destroy our public lands with zero oversight!

[diva77]

5. Thank you for post -- very helpful. I hope people take action.

[diva77]

6. Kick. Please keep kicked for today & call Congress

[diva77]

7. kik for visibility

[blogslut]

8. kick

[diva77]

9. Thanks for the kick, blogslut!!