Paul Thomas Richards February 22, 2011
Dan Wenk, Superintendent
Yellowstone National Park
PO Box 168
Yellowstone, WY 82190-0168
Ph: 307-344-7381
Fax: 307-344-2005
E-mail: yell_superintendent@nps.gov
Dear Superintendent Wenk,
Congratulations on your appointment and your first day in the office! You have stepped directly into a buffalo wallow. I pray that you apply more common sense than your predecessors. PLEASE act as a true public servant and PLEASE provide proper stewardship for America’s many at-risk and endangered wildlife species, instead of continuing past failed National Park policies that facilitated the extirpation of our Nation’s priceless wildlife Heritage.
Since you are new, you may not know that Yellowstone’s bison herd is America’s ONLY population of wild, migrating bison. These bison now approach complete extinction, due to the unmitigated malfeasance of the US Department of Interior and the National Park Service.
THOUSANDS of pure-DNA bison—in fact, the world’s ONLY remaining pure-DNA wild bison–are being harassed, tortured, captured, and slaughtered in and around Yellowstone National Park.
This is a National, Tribal, and Inter-National disgrace–An affront to Earth’s biodiversity, all Indigenous Peoples, and the very mission of the National Park Service!
The National Park Service and Yellowstone National Park MUST withdraw from the failed “Inter-Agency Bison Management Plan,” which outlaws the very existence of living wild migrating bison in Montana; by establishing no-exceptions firing lines and unrestricted “Killing Fields.”
During the last 20 years, Yellowstone National Park’s immoral Killing Fields have exterminated 6,502 of the only wild migrating pure-DNA buffalo in the world.
Over the last decade alone, the US Department of Interior, National Park Service, Yellowstone National Park, and the Montana Department of Livestock has already slaughtered more than 4,000 (4,098) of the only remaining wild buffalo on Earth–National, Tribal, and Inter-National tragedies of such monumental proportions that tears, grief, sorrow, and shame can only begin to suffice.
Wild migrating buffalo are a vital American Legacy, fully deserving the respect and protection of the National Park Service, which, ironically and incredibly gallingly, uses these exterminated wild bison as its very own National Park Service badge and symbol!!
Wild migrating buffalo are rounded up and slaughtered by your own Yellowstone National Park employees, working side-by-side with Montana Department of Livestock’s trespassing “cowboys” on ATVs, ORVs, snowmobiles, helicopters, 4-wheel drives, and other forms of motorized terrorism and harassment, wholly inappropriate and often fatal during wintertime.
As a result, America’s only population of wild pure-DNA migrating buffalo can no longer follow tens of thousands of years of Ancient instincts; can no longer migrate to their traditional winter and spring habitats; and can no longer calve in their traditional calving areas.
I respectfully ask that you:
1. Please IMMEDIATELY abandon all participation in and funding of the disgraced “Inter-Agency Bison Management Plan.” Please end, ENTIRELY, the Plan’s ridiculous prohibition of living wild migrating buffalo in the state of Montana.
2. Please IMMEDIATELY withhold ALL funding of, ALL funding to, and ALL cooperation with the Montana Department of Livestock.
3. Please uphold the National Park Service’s mandate to protect Yellowstone’s buffalo, perhaps our Nation’s most important icon (Along with the bald eagle, which, thanks to dedicated conservation leadership in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, we were able to save from extinction!).
4. Please uphold the US Department of Interior’s stewardship responsibilities for America’s First Nations and Indigenous Peoples.
5. Please immediately release 600 wild Yellowstone buffalo, currently trapped in the “Stephens Creek Trap,” panicked and awaiting slaughter, back into the Wild.
6. Please work closely with the Gallatin National Forest and other National Forests to allow Yellowstone’s bison to migrate onto adjacent public lands. Despite beliefs to the contrary by your predecessors, allowing bison to migrate onto these National Forest lands is NOT optional! Since you are new, you may not know that the Gallatin National Forest’s Forest Plan MANDATES the Gallatin National Forest provide habitats for maintaining viable populations for Yellowstone’s bison and all other Indigenous species.
It is not too late for wild, migrating buffalo, although they teeter on extinction’s brink. I would like to assume that you are a dedicated public servant. If so, PLEASE fulfill the incredibly constructive potential of your new job.
Superintendent Wenk, it is up to YOU to stop this senseless slaughter, disgusting mindless violence, and continued genocide against America’s Indigenous Peoples and indigenous endangered species. NOW!
Please respond to this e-mail. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Paul Richards
30 Browns Gulch Road
Boulder, MT 59632-9709
Copy to:
Ken Salazar, Secretary
US Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20240
Phone: 202-208-3100
Fax: 202-208-6965
E-Mail Address: feedback@ios.doi.gov
Jonathan Jarvis, Director
US Department of Interior
1849 C Street, NW
Room 3312
Washington, DC 20240
Phone: 202-208-4621; 202-208-3818
Fax: 202-208-7889
E-mail: jon_jarvis@nps.gov
National Park Service Contact Information
Relevant US Department of Interior and National Park Service Web Sites and Contact Information:
US Department of Interior On-Line Feedback Form
National Park Service Contact Information
US Fish and Wildlife E-mail Address
Bureau of Indian Affairs E-mail Address
Ethics Office Contact Information
Editor’s Notes:
The Killing Fields: For year-by-year breakdowns of Yellowstone National Park’s and Montana Department of Livestock’s wild buffalo slaughters, please CLICK HERE, or go to: http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/ .
Dan Wenk assumed his new position as Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park on Tuesday, February 22, 2011.
Wild buffalo are Sacred to Indigenous Peoples, Tribes, and First Nations, now dispersed throughout 12 Western states and three Western provinces. Fully ignorant of his inherent and sickening racism, Montana’s Governor, “Buffalo Brian” Schweitzer, addressing the Montana Stockgrowers Association’s Annual Convention on Friday, December 11, 2009, in Billings, Mont., proudly boasted: “No Governor in Montana history has sent more bison to slaughter than this Governor.”
Please send your comments to Wenk, Jarvis, and Salazar today! Your comments need not be lengthy, complicated, or legalese. Brief comments containing relevant information, true emotions, or legitimate feelings are just fine!
Although anger is certainly justifiable regarding the unconscionable slaughter of 6,502 of the last wild migrating buffalo in the world, try not to let this anger poison your comments.
Please remember that Wenk is new to the Killing Fields and Wenk did not sanction past indiscriminate and wholesale Montana Department of Livestock buffalo slaughters. Please try to help Wenk, as he faces the difficult task of educating VERY powerful enemies of National Parks, National Forests, public wildlife, endangered species, and the fragmented islands of necessary habitats and biological diversity our Nation’s priceless public lands Legacy contain.
PR’s Brief Bio:
As a journalist with more than 43 years’ experience in Western politics and resource issues, Paul Richards has served as editor or co-editor of three newspapers, newsman and editor for The Associated Press, and elections manager for The AP, UPI, ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC.
Richards founded and produced a successful radio news network; founded and hosted a political television interview program; founded and managed a news service for weekly newspapers; and authored a syndicated statewide political column.
Richards is a voluntarily-retired member of the Montana House of Representatives and a former candidate for the U.S. Senate.
Richards owns a leading consulting firm for nonprofit organizations, PR Media Consultants®, Public Interest Media Since 1968, near the community of Boulder, Mont.; works as a professional writer and editor; and contributes Dispatches from the Wildlands™, located at: http://blogs.alternet.org/paulrichards/ to AlterNet.
More Info:
More Dispatches from the Wildlands™ at: http://blogs.alternet.org/paulrichards/ .
Information about Paul Richards is available at: http://www.PRMediaConsultants.com and at: http://www.Richards2006.us .
This Paul Richards’ Dispatch from the Wildlands™ posting utilizes colored “hyperlinks” known as “Uniform Resource Locators” or “URLs.” A URL is also known as a “domain name” or an “Internet address.” To fully activate and utilize these URLs, just go to the hyperlink and push down on your “Ctrl” or “Control” button on our keyboard and left click your mouse. With some computers, merely placing your cursor on the hyperlink and double clicking your mouse will suffice.
Dispatches from the Wildlands™ ©2011, Paul Richards
“In Wildness is the Preservation of the World.”
Henry David Thoreau
Paul Thomas Richards Should Congress Abandon 100 Years of Public Lands Protection to Open a Pandora’s Box of Special Loopholes, Corporate Subsidies, and Dictated Management that Statutorily Excludes the Public?
By: Dr. Stewart M. Brandborg, Executive Director (retired),
The Wilderness Society
I am a fourth-generation Montanan who grew up in a U.S. Forest Service family. Guy Brandborg, my father, served as Supervisor of the Bitterroot National Forest from 1935 to 1955.
I still fondly remember Gifford Pinchot, during one of his last western trips, visiting with my father in front of our fireplace. And, I still marvel at Bob Marshall’s one-day hike from White Cap Creek on the Selway River, up and over the Great Divide of the Bitterroot Mountains, and then down Boulder Creek just in time to join my family around the dining room table for supper.
After earning my Bachelors degree in Wildlife Technology in 1949 and my Masters degree in Forestry and Wildlife Management in 1951, I worked over 12 years as a wildlife biologist with the Forest Service and state wildlife agencies in Montana and Idaho. I then served as Assistant Conservation Director with the National Wildlife Federation in Washington, D.C.
I was associated over 20 years with The Wilderness Society, including 12 years as its executive director, from 1964 to 1976. I was privileged to advocate for the protection of our public lands legacy, presenting the case for wild land preservation across the Nation.
During my tenure, Congress passed landmark public lands legislation, including the Wilderness Act of 1964, creating our National Wilderness Preservation System. Since passage of the Wilderness Act, Congress has protected 110 million acres of publicly-owned wild lands as Wilderness.
We also laid the groundwork for the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which, when ultimately enacted in 1980, protected as Wilderness over 56 million acres of public wild lands within our National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, and National Forest system.
For more than 70 years, I have been involved with public lands issues.
With this background, it is with deep personal concern that I share reservations about Senator Jon Tester’s “Logging and Recreation Bill,” S. 1470.
This measure, if enacted, poses a serious threat to our National Forests. The Forest Service itself has determined the bill’s mandatory logging quotas to be unachievable, unsustainable, and unaffordable.
Senator Tester’s ill-advised bill was conceived in private and written by five logging corporations and a few conservation “collaborators.”
Deliberations purposefully excluded major players – the Forest Service, local county governments, watershed and irrigation interests, local and state land, wildlife, and wilderness interests, and a broad segment of other user groups – who have concern for the long-term protection of our National Forests.
The Tester Logging Bill undermines laws and administrative procedures that have served well to protect our Nation’s public estate. These laws and regulations require use of scientific management and public processes open to all citizens.
Objective review of the Tester Logging Bill brings these questions to mind:
1. Are Congressionally-dictated quotas for logging sub-marginal and uneconomic timber in the long-term interest of our National Forests and adjacent communities?
2. Does unsustainable industrial-scale logging of nonproductive federal lands offer the best employment for workers, when compared to sustainable forest and watershed restoration programs?
3. Instead of subsidizing roading and logging of fragile forestlands lacking commercial timber, could we better place our priorities upon the plentiful jobs provided by stream bank restorations, culvert maintenance, road obliterations and reclamations, habitat restorations, tree plantings, and selective thinning within designated community protection zones?
4. Should Congress abandon over 100 years of federal resource protection laws, set in place through bipartisan actions of 50 Congresses, and begin dispensing our National Forests to any interest group that gains the ear of any Representative or Senator?
5. Is it wise to set this calamitous precedent from which any member of Congress could dictate the exploitation of public lands, thereby severing our National Forest system into 535 separate Congressional fiefdoms?
6. Do we really want to open this Pandora’s Box of special loopholes, corporate subsidies, and dictated federal lands management that statutorily excludes the public?
In years past, Congress responded to overwhelming public sentiment to protect our National Forests from raids of special interest groups.
Now, we, the people of the United States, must again raise our voices to oppose this reckless attempt to break apart our National Forest system!
————————————————————————————
Editor’s Notes:
This Op-Ed is derived from Dr. Stewart M. Brandborg’s extensive analysis of the Tester Logging Bill, published under the heading “Former Wilderness Society Chief Opposes Tester Wild Lands Logging Bill,” and available by clicking HERE.
Dr. Brandborg encourages other media to publish and post this Op-Ed. To obtain permission or further information, contact Dr. Brandborg at: 647 Foley Lane; Hamilton, MT 59840; Ph: 406-375-1122.
Many more details about the Tester Logging Bill, also known as the Tester Wildlands Logging Bill, are available throughout AlterNet’s Dispatches from the Wildlands and at the Web site of the Last, Best Place Wildlands Campaign.
Dr. Brandborg is the recipient of the “Robert Marshall Award,” The Wilderness Society’s most prestigious honor. He currently lives in western Montana’s Bitterroot Valley with his wife, Anna Vee.
Dr. Stewart M. Brandborg, Executive Director (retired), The Wilderness Society
Dispatches from the Wildlands™
©2010, Dr. Stewart M. Brandborg and Paul Richards
Paul Thomas Richards Legendary American Folksinger, Backcountry Traveler,
and Wilderness Advocate
James “Walkin’ Jim” Stoltz
Returns to Earth
Legendary American folksinger, backcountry traveler, and wilderness advocate James “Walkin’ Jim” Stoltz passed late Friday night, September 3, 2010, at St. Peter’s Hospital in Helena, Montana.
Stoltz, age 57, a veteran performer for 35 years with 12 CDs, one DVD and several books to his credit, earned his nickname “Walkin’ Jim,” by hiking more than 28,000 miles through wild country in North America. Packing a guitar and penning extraordinary lyrics along the trails, Walkin’ Jim’s always-humble-yet-strikingly-powerful songs voiced enormous respect and appreciation for the Earth, its wild places, and the wild critters that he carefully studied and truly adored.
A one-of-a-kind performer known for his powerful baritone timbre, stunning photography, humorous and elucidative stories, inspirational poetry, literally awesome lyrics, and emotion-packed vocals, Walkin’ Jim Stoltz toured extensively throughout North America for more than 35 years. His last public performance in Montana, where he lived, was on March 6, 2010, in Missoula, where he played a benefit concert and celebration for the Last, Best Place Wildlands Campaign and Wilderness Watch.
In addition to being a co-founder of the Last, Best Place Wildlands Campaign, Walkin’ Jim Stoltz co-founded Musicians United to Sustain the Environment (MUSE) to raise funds for designating unprotected public roadless wildlands as official Wilderness, award grants to grassroots conservation organizations, and to “utilize music to promote environmental awareness and protection of wild lands, wild waters, and wild lives. We are particularly interested in efforts to protect endangered or threatened species, protection of our nation’s waters, and preserving and restoring wildland habitats. Environmental education for our young — the soon-to-be stewards of our natural heritage – is also very important to us,” Walkin’ Jim wrote when he founded the group with Craig Wagner in 1998. Walkin’ Jim staffed Musicians United to Sustain the Environment until his death.
Musicians United to Sustain the Environment (MUSE) features such luminaries as Dakota Sid Clifford, Craig Wagner, Joanne Rand, Magpie, Libby Roderick, Paul Winter, Dana Lyons, Susan Grace, Karen Goldberg, Alice Di Micele, Walkin’ Jim Stoltz, David Elias, Joyce Rouse, Peter and Lou Berryman, Lydia Adams Davis, John McCutcheon, Larry Long, Country Joe McDonald, Casey Neill, Jez Lowe, Kate Bennett, Katherine Archer, Keith Hammer, Leah Wolfsong, Pete Seeger, Steve Schuch, Kat Eggleston, Bill Oliver, Tom Vincent, Betty and the Baby Boomers, Dean Stevens, Cindy Kallet, Tom Paxton, Tish Hinojosa, Gordon Bok, Emma’s Revolution, Bob Zentz, Josh White, Jr., and Paul Todd.
Grassroots conservation groups that have received grants from MUSE include: Hells Canyon Preservation Council, Friends of the Clearwater, Northwoods Wilderness Recovery, Swan View Coalition, Center for Environmental Equity, Friends of the Bitterroot, Northwest Ecosystem Alliance (now called Conservation Northwest), Native Forest Network, Wild Things Unlimited, Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project, Predator Conservation Alliance (now called Keystone Conservation), American Wildlands, RESTORE The North Woods, Big Sky Wildcare, Natural Resources Council of Maine, Oregon Natural Desert Association, Conservation Leader’s Network, Western Watersheds Project, Endangered Species Coalition, The Heartwood Forest Council, and Forever Wild.
In 2006, beset by cancer, Walkin’ Jim Stoltz organized a 45-state outreach tour with other musicians and authors (many from MUSE), and worked with hundreds of community organizations to support clean water and to protect all public roadless wildlands and their dependent wildlife species. In tribute, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency honored Stoltz with its “Outstanding Achievement Award” for his advocacy for nature and Wilderness across America.
Walkin’ Jim Stoltz was featured on radio and television shows and syndicated programs throughout North America, including National Public Radio in the United States and CBC/Radio-Canada.
CDs, DVDs, Books, Gift Cards, Free Songs, Chords, and Lyrics:
Click HERE to listen to full versions of some of Walkin’ Jim’s songs about North American Wildlands.
Click HERE to download up to 14 free songs, straight from the heart of Walkin’ Jim.
Click HERE for one-minute-long clips from many more Walkin’ Jim songs.
Click HERE for lyrics and chords of Walkin’ Jim’s songs.
Children are encouraged to visit “Walkin’ Jim’s Kid’s Corner” by clicking HERE. Click HERE to read TRUE animal stories written by Walkin’ Jim’s many kid fans. Click HERE for the CD that Walkin’ Jim wrote especially for kids (includes the classics: Manfred the Mopey Moose, Slugs and Bugs, It Ain’t Easy Being An Ol’ Grizzly Bear, Pika, Pika , and Wild Things Need Wild Places).
After you are tantalized by the above, click HERE to purchase Walkin’ Jim’s CDs, DVDs, Books, and Gift Cards.
Other Information and Resources:
Wildlands advocates recently dedicated The Walkin’ Jim Hiking Trail, close to Arizona’s Hells Canyon Wilderness and the Center for Biological Diversity featured Walkin’ Jim on its Web site.
Visit Walkin’ Jim’s “Keeping it Wild” Web page in which Jim helps Americans take action to protect their endangered public roadless wildlands legacy.
Walkin’ Jim Stoltz was a co-author and dedicated proponent of the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA) , the “wildest bill on Capitol Hill,” which, when enacted, will designate 24 million acres of our roadless public wildlands legacy in Montana, Idaho, northwestern Wyoming, eastern Washington, and eastern Oregon as Wilderness.
The Northern Rockies Ecosystem is the LAST remaining functioning ecosystem in the lower 49 states where all native species still reside!
The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA), now co-sponsored by more than 100 members of the U.S. House of Representatives (for list, click HERE) and tirelessly promoted by Idaho resident and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Carole King, will protect essential habitats for many at-risk species that characterize the Wild Nature of the northern Rockies, such as the gray wolf, bull trout, cutthroat trout (Montana’s official state fish), otter, mountain goat, mountain sheep, elk, arctic grayling, northern goshawk, boreal owl, pileated woodpecker, ferruginous hawk, Montana vole, sage thrasher, wild bison, peregrine falcon, bald eagle, pine marten, fisher, lynx, wolverine, grizzly bear (Montana’s official state animal), and, perhaps Walkin’ Jim’s favorite animal, the pika, an extremely rare species, now endangered by global climate change, that lives only at high altitude rocky mountainsides.
(Many are the parents who have been driven to varying states of joy and madness by their kids’ singing Jim’s “Pika, Pika” song, from his much-loved “A Kid for the Wild” CD, over and over and over and over again.)
In the proud tradition of Montana’s famous conservationist and U.S. Senator, the late Lee Metcalf; NREPA will protect the public’s wildlands, wild animals, big game, pristine watersheds, and fisheries that make living in Montana and the Northern Rockies such a special and rare privilege.
To honor his legacy, Walkin’ Jim’s many friends and fans are already lobbying to name one of the first Wilderness Areas to be created by NREPA the “Walkin’ Jim Wilderness Area.” They contend it doesn’t really matter whether the future “Walkin’ Jim Wilderness Area” is in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Washington, or Oregon as, since Walkin’ Jim hiked through public roadless wildlands in all five states that comprise the Northern Rockies Ecosystem. Although Montana was his home base, Walkin’ Jim was equally loyal to all North American roadless areas, no matter in what state or province they were located.
Observations, Memorials, Tributes, Wakes, Celebrations, and Funeral:
Walkin’ Jim’s family and supportive friends assembled in Helena, Montana, during the first ten days of September 2010. A celebration of Jim’s life was held on Wednesday, September 8, 2010, at the Big Sky Ranch, near the town of Unionville, just southwest of Helena.
For the latest news about this observation, funeral details, memorial funds, tributes, and, possibly sometime in 2011, a celebration of Walkin’ Jim’s life, go to the Walkin’ Jim Web site or click HERE.
To converse and share stories with Walkin’ Jim Stoltz’s friends, family, and fans, go to: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Walkin-Jim-Stoltz/113598525318345?v=desc or: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Walkin-Jim-Stoltz/113598525318345?v=stream.
During his prolonged medical care, Walkin’ Jim incurred high bills. Please help Jim’s family defray these extensive medical bills! Click HERE, to make tax-deductible memorial tributes with your credit card to Walkin’ Jim’s Medical Fund. Or, please snail-mail your tax-deductible contributions, accompanied with brief notes explaining your checks are meant to help pay down Walkin’ Jim’s medical expenses, to Musicians United to Sustain the Environment at:
M.U.S.E.
P.O. Box 1512
Helena, MT 59624
Should you require further information, please call Musicians United to Sustain the Environment (MUSE) at 406-449-6252, or please click HERE to e-mail MUSE. THANK YOU!
Personal Note About A Dear, Dear Friend:
Walkin’ Jim’s life was his ministry. Jim walked the talk and he certainly walked the walk!
Jim consistently lived his life with grace and kindness. Jim reached so many people with his wonderfully creative, courageous, positive, gracious and loving energy! Watching him enthrall elementary school kids about with his stories, tall tales, and intimate knowledge about Wild country and its wild inhabitants is an experience never to be forgotten.
Walkin’ Jim will always be a vital wellspring for humans trying their best to live in symbiosis with Earth. Although we may feel pain with Walkin’ Jim’s passing, his legacy—already pure and luminous—will only grow more compelling, as subsequent generations take up Walkin’ Jim’s vocation and become vigorous spokespersons, musicians, poets, writers, lyricists, guitar players, harmonica players, and singers for our pubic roadless wildlands and Wilderness.
Walkin’ Jim Stoltz will always remain our steadfast and true friend. We hold dear so many treasured memories from our time spent with Walkin’ Jim! His sincere, bone-crushing hugs will be forever felt. Our hearts will be continually warmed, every time we experience the Wild that Jim so loved, every time we defend our priceless public wildlands legacy to which Jim devoted his life, every time we ponder Jim’s brilliant poetry and lyrics, every time we hum or sing Jim’s catchy tunes, and every time we again listen to his marvelous voice and heartfelt songs.
Health Complications:
Walkin’ Jim Stoltz had a successful kidney transplant, donated by John Giacalone, on March 16, 2004. In the fall of 2007, Walkin’ Jim learned that he had cancer in his tonsil chords and lymph nodes of his neck. Jim underwent surgery, followed by chemotherapy and radiation treatments. The winter of 2007-2008 was a tough one, as expenses piled up and medical bills consumed most of Jim’s financial resources.
In the summer of 2008, with his characteristic indomitability, Walkin’ Jim underwent his own self-prescribed “Wilderness Therapy” and walked 460 miles through the mountains of Idaho and Montana. In 2009, Jim walked an incredible 500-mile loop through the remote mountain ranges of eastern Nevada.
In 2009 and early 2010, Walkin’ Jim toured unwaveringly with his ever-popular “Forever Wild” show, combining live music, story-telling, and poetry with stunning, multi-image slideshows to create a stirring celebration of the natural world.
Photos, taken by Janet Zimmerman and others, from Walkin’ Jim’s March 6, 2010, benefit concert and celebration in Missoula, Montana, for the Last, Best Place Wildlands Campaign and Wilderness Watch are available upon request.
Walkin’ Jim’s aplomb was such that most of those attending his final Montana concert were unaware of his throat cancer, ensuing surgery, and extensive chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
After Walkin’ Jim returned from his spring 2010 concert tour, doctors in Seattle and Billings found that his cancer has spread. Jim’s bills for hospitals, doctors, tests, high-cost pharmaceuticals, and medical-related travel grew exponentially.
In years past, Walkin’ Jim chose to raise funds to help pay for his kidney transplant through the National Transplant Assistance Fund (NTAF). Thanks to the generosity of Jim’s many friends and fans, those transplant-related expenses have largely been addressed.
Resolving Current Medical Expenses and Bills:
Now, Walkin’ Jim’s family urgently needs Jim’s friends and fans to again help defray extensive medical bills; these costs incurred from Jim’s cancer treatments.
Ways You Can Help:
1. Please click HERE, to make tax-deductible donations with your credit card to Walkin’ Jim’s Medical Fund. Or, snail-mail your tax-deductible contributions to: Musicians United to Sustain the Environment; M.U.S.E.; P.O. Box 1512; Helena, MT 59624. Should you require further information, please call MUSE at 406-449-6252, or please click HERE to e-mail MUSE.
2. Please click HERE to purchase Walkin’ Jim’s CDs, DVDs, Books, and Gift Cards. In addition to enriching your life and spreading Jim’s message to friends, family, and loved ones; your buying Jim’s CDs, DVDs, books, and gift cards will help his family resolve Jim’s high medical bills.
3. Walkin’ Jim’s family may designate other nonprofit organizations to receive donations, tributes, memorials, and contributions to continue Walkin’ Jim’s legacy. Click HERE to keep informed concerning Jim’s family’s decisions and please contribute generously in Jim’s name.
4. If you want to learn more about the general mission of the National Transplant Assistance Fund (NTAF), that helped Walkin’ Jim in the past, click HERE. Through 26 years of service, NTAF has helped more than 4,000 patients raise $64 million for uninsured medical expenses. If you want to contribute to NTAF in Walkin’ Jim’s name, please click HERE. (Please note: These contributions will NOT help pay Walkin’ Jim’s current cancer treatment bills–They will go directly into NTAF’s general fund to help pay medical bills for OTHER uninsured transplant patients who need transplants.) If you want to keep posted about NTAF, subscribe to the organization’s bi-monthly e-mail newsletter, by clicking HERE.
His Spirit is Still on the Run:
As I write this, I listen to Walkin’ Jim’s seminal “Spirit is Still on the Run,” the original classic vinyl album, complete with Jim’s kind personal note inscribed when he gave me the album 26 years ago. The album’s incredible title track describes a young person’s plaintive queries—“What Happened?”
Spirit Is Still On The Run
By Walkin’ Jim Stoltz
Daddy, what ever happened to the old buffalo,
I know they don’t roam here no more,
Because at school today, they say they’ve gone away,
But no one ever says just what for.
Well now listen my son, I’ll tell you how the West was won,
How the herds fell to the big needle guns,
But, the ghosts of them herds still pound o’er the earth,
And, their Spirit is still on the run.
(Chorus̶ —Upton Elementary School children singing in unison with Walkin’ Jim):
Yes, their spirit is still on the run, it’s the American dream movin’ on,
Their memory is free, left to you and to me, and the Spirit is still on the run.
Daddy, what ever happened to the ol’ grizzly bear,
I know he once roamed the west wide,
But at school today they say he’s pushed back to stay,
In the mountains where he has to hide.
Well, now listen my son, I’ll tell you about these proud ones,
Where they stalk, all others walk small,
But man to his shame, can’t stand the untamed,
And there’s some that wouldn’t have him at all.
(Chorus̶ —Upton Elementary School children singing in unison with Walkin’ Jim):
Yes, their spirit is still on the run, it’s the American dream movin’ on,
Their memory is free, left to you and to me, and the Spirit is still on the run.
Daddy, what ever happened to the big piney forests,
And the prairies that stretched out like seas,
Because the schoolbooks they say, these were all in the way,
When the settlers come a-swarmin’ like bees,
Now, listen my son, yes, all these have gone,
It’s sad, but it’s not been in vain
Their life’s blood was bought and with the Spirit it brought,
A whole country was born into fame.
(Bridge):
And all that have died or been swept to the side,
They still give us hope every one,
They give us dreams of the free, what has been and can be,
And their Spirit is still on the run.
(Chorus̶ —Upton Elementary School children singing in unison with Walkin’ Jim):
Yes, their Spirit is still on the run, it’s the American dream movin’ on,
Their memory is free, left to you and to me, and the Spirit is still on the run.
©1984 by Walkin’ Jim Stoltz and Lone Coyote Records
Walkin’ Jim Music, BMI
For those who are not old-timers enamored with bulky turntables and the good ol’ days of vinyl with absolutely gorgeous record jackets that were actually readable, Jim’s “Spirit is Still on the Run” album has been combined with his equally-great “Forever Wild” album into one CD, so you can now buy BOTH albums for only $14 by clicking HERE. In addition to “Spirit is Still on the Run,” this combined CD also includes the Jim’s indispensible sage counsel contained within “I Walk With the Old Ones” and “Follow Your Heart.”
Follow Your Heart:
For an even greater version of “Follow Your Heart,” guaranteed to give you goose bumps, purchase Walkin’ Jim’s “Oh, What A Life” CD, a remarkable live concert recorded before an enraptured audience at Jim’s beloved Lone Mountain Ranch, where, for decades, Jim hosted popular winter sleigh rides and sing-alongs. For an-all-too-brief snippet from this incredible live performance; once again to feel, hear, and touch Jim, click HERE.
Follow Your Heart
By Walkin’ Jim Stoltz
(VERSE):
In this life that we’re all living with all its twists and turns,
It’s so easy to lose our way, forget the lessons that we learned,
But, the road that leads us on will always bring us back,
Once you’ve walked your own trail, and stepped in your own tracks.
(AUDIENCE HELPS JIM SING THE FOLLOWING CHORUS):
Follow your heart, that’s where to begin
Chase down those dreams and go a-dancin’ with the wind
Listen to the love that you find along the way
Let your light shine in, and sing your life away.
(VERSE):
Truth is a word, but it’s so often hard to find,
Searchin’ through the mirrors offered up by time
To face it on your own, and to look it in the eye
Will take all you have to give, but ain’t it worth the try.
(AUDIENCE AGAIN HELPS JIM SING CHORUS):
Follow your heart, that’s where to begin
Chase down those dreams and go a-dancin’ with the wind
Listen to the love that you find along the way
Let your light shine in, and sing your life away.
(VERSE):
Listen to the song of the Earth as she turns,
Bask in the life of the sun as she burns,
Seek out the power in your own minds eye,
Listen to your heart, it’ll teach you by and by.
(AUDIENCE, ONE MORE TIME, HELPS JIM SING CHORUS):
Follow your heart, that’s where to begin
Chase down those dreams and go a-dancin’ with the wind
Listen to the love that you find along the way
Let your light shine in, and sing your life away.
©1997 by Walkin’ Jim Stoltz
Walkin’ Jim Music, BMI
Forever Wild:
In conclusion, there’s little to say that Walkin’ Jim Stoltz hasn’t already beautifully articulated. Perhaps we should conclude with Walkin’ Jim’s best known anthem, “Forever Wild.”
In 1986, we closed each of our touring “Wild West Exposition” pro-wildlands, pro-Wilderness road shows with this sacred composition. Audiences everywhere always joined the cast of the Wild West Exposition in singing the pleas of Walkin’ Jim’s chorus. At song’s end, as Jim’s final guitar chord resonated and then gradually receded into the absolute stillness of entire crowds held breathless, there were no dry eyes.
Forever Wild
By Walkin’ Jim Stoltz
There’s a magic in the air, that I feel when I am there,
It plays straight to my heart, and lays it all a’bare,
It’s in the cry of the eagle and the deer so meek and mild,
It’s in the rise of a mountain, let it stay Forever Wild.
Forever wild, Forever Wild
Let it stay, Forever Wild.
It’s in all that is not tame, and some that can’t be named,
It’s in the fog down in the valley, and the scent of summer rain,
It’s in the scream of a lion when she’s soundin’ like a child,
It’s in the song of a river, let it stay Forever Wild.
Forever wild, Forever Wild
Let it stay, Forever Wild.
Now the Earth it holds the key to all that shall be free,
It’s in the peace of the desert and the wisdom of the trees,
It’s in the grace of a swan’s wing and the grizzly when she’s riled
It’s in all the love I bear it, let it stay Forever Wild.
Forever wild, Forever Wild
Let it stay, Forever Wild.
There are those of my own kind, they’re runnin’ fast, but goin’ blind
And the only thing they worship, is their God, the dollar sign
We must fight* them with our Spirit, with our might, and with our guile
We must show them that the answer: It must be Forever Wild.
Forever wild, Forever Wild
Let it stay, Forever Wild.
Forever wild, Forever Wild
Let it stay, Forever Wild.
By Walkin’ Jim Stoltz on Wild Wind Records
©1986 by Walkin’ Jim Stoltz
Walkin’ Jim Music BMI
* Editor’s Note: In his most recent concerts, Walkin’ Jim substituted the word “teach” for “fight.”
Just How Big Is the Heart of Humankind?
Now it is time for us to pause, take deep breaths, say prayers for our dear friend, lovingly and respectfully listen to Walkin’ Jim’s “Oh, What a Life,” downloadable HERE for free, weep, and gratefully allow this magnificent gentle soul to return to Mother Earth.
Oh, What A Life We Could Live
By Walkin’ Jim Stoltz
There’s an old owl flyin’ free, and he’s callin’ out to me.
What can I tell him as the big trees fall?
And he slips on through the cracks. Oh, I can’t turn my back,
For his kind is our kind, and the writing’s on the wall.
If we could see this world through the eyes of those
Who keep sharing when there’s nothing left to give
If we could walk this land with respect for all
Oh, what a life we could live.
There’s a salmon swimmin’ deep, her destiny to keep,
How can I tell her, she’s the last of her kind?
Oh, a thousand times around, from the sea to the spawning ground,
What a cost! What a loss! To all memory, and all Time!
If we could see this world through the eyes of those
Who keep sharing when there’s nothing left to give
If we could walk this land with respect for all
Oh, what a life we could live.
Oh, what a life we could live.
Oh, what a life we could live.
If we could walk this land with respect for all
Oh, what a life we could live.
(Bridge):
She wolf howling in the night,
She knows there’s a lesson comin’ soon.
Just how big is the heart of humankind?
Won’t you stand back and give her room?
(Audience now joins Walkin’ Jim on chorus)
If we could see this world through the eyes of those
Who keep sharing when there’s nothing left to give
If we could walk this land with respect for all
Oh, what a life we could live.
Oh, what a life we could live.
Oh, what a life we could live.
If we could walk this land with respect for all
Oh, what a life we could live.
(Audience again joins Walkin’ Jim on chorus):
If we could see this world through the eyes of those
Who keep sharing when there’s nothing left to give
If we could walk this land with respect for all
Oh, what a life we could live.
Oh, what a life we could live.
Oh, what a life we could live.
If we could walk this land with respect for all
Oh, what a life we could live.
(Just Walkin’ Jim):
Oh, what a life we could live.
Oh, what a life we could live.
©1997 by Walkin’ Jim Stoltz
Walkin’ Jim Music, BMI
Legendary Folksinger Walkin' Jim Stoltz Happily Returns to Mother Earth
Jim, thank you for being…..
With the deepest possible love and appreciation,
Your Forever Friend,
Paul Richards
30 Brown’s Gulch Road
Boulder, MT 59632
406-225-4235
Dispatches from the Wildlands:
http://blogs.alternet.org/paulrichards/
(All Walkin’ Jim Stoltz’s Copyrights Accompany His Above Lyrics)
Excepting All of Walkin’ Jim’s Copyrights Above, This Memorial
©201o, Paul Richards, Dispatches from the Wildlands™
“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”
Henry David Thoreau
Editor’s Note: This eulogy utilizes colored underlined “hyperlinks” known as “Uniform Resource Locators” or “URLs.” A URL is also known as a “domain name” or an “Internet address.” To fully activate and utilize these URLs, just go to the hyperlink and push down on your “Ctrl” or “Control” button on our keyboard and left click your mouse.
Walkin' Jim at Last Best Place Wildlands Campaign Celebration in Missoula, MT, on March 6, 2010. Brett Haverstick, Larry Campbell, Walkin' Jim Stoltz, and Paul Richards. (Photo by Janet Zimmerman).
Paul Thomas Richards FORMER WILDERNESS SOCIETY CHIEF OPPOSES TESTER WILD LANDS LOGGING BILL
Statement of Dr. Stewart M. Brandborg,
Former Executive Director of The Wilderness Society,
to the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests,
U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
Concerning S. 1470, “The Tester Logging and Recreation Bill”
FOREWORD:
The following statement was written by Dr. Stewart M. Brandborg, former executive director of The Wilderness Society. As described below, Dr. Brandborg worked more than 20 years with The Wilderness Society in Washington, D.C., including 12 years as the Society’s executive director, from 1964 to 1976.
During Dr. Brandborg’s tenure as the head of The Wilderness Society, the U.S. Congress passed the Wilderness Act of 1964, landmark legislation that created our National Wilderness Preservation System and designated 9.1 million acres of National Forest wild lands as Wilderness. Since passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964, Congress has protected 110 million acres of publicly-owned wild lands as Wilderness.
Dr. Stewart M. Brandborg, Executive Director, Retired, The Wilderness Society
INTRODUCTION:
I am Stewart M. Brandborg. I am a fourth-generation Montanan. For more than 70 years, I have been involved with and worked on public lands issues. I have lived the early and late years of my life in the Bitterroot Valley of western Montana.
I grew up in a Forest Service family. Guy M. Brandborg, my father, worked a variety of positions in the Forest Service in Montana and Idaho and served as Supervisor of the Bitterroot National Forest from 1935 to 1955. I earned my Bachelor of Science Degree in Wildlife Technology in 1949 and my Master of Science Degree in Forestry and Wildlife Management in 1951 from the University of Montana, where I met my wife, Anna Vee. The University of Montana and its School of Forestry awarded me an Honorary Doctor of Science in 2010.
I worked more than 12 years as a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Forest Service and with state wildlife agencies in Montana and Idaho. My early career research work in the Bob Marshall and Selway-Bitterroot Areas gave me early, lifelong appreciation of Montana’s and Idaho’s Wilderness.
I worked for three decades for national environmental organizations and agencies in Washington, D.C. I served for four years as Assistant Conservation Director with the National Wildlife Federation in Washington, D.C. I was then associated over 20 years with The Wilderness Society, including 12 years as its executive director, from 1964 to 1976.
During these years, I was privileged to advocate for the protection of our public lands legacy, presenting the case for wild land preservation across the Nation – from Alaska to Florida – before public agencies and the Congress.
During my tenure, the U.S. Congress passed landmark public lands legislation, including the Wilderness Act of 1964, and laid the groundwork for the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which, when ultimately enacted in 1980, protected as wilderness over 56 million acres of public wild lands within our National Park, National Wildlife Refuge, and National Forest Systems.
Since passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964, Congress has protected 110 million acres of publicly-owned wild lands as Wilderness.
I submit this information concerning S. 1470 to help the Public Lands and Forests Subcommittee and the entire U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources carry out their responsibilities for wise and farsighted stewardship of our Nation’s priceless public lands legacy, including necessary protection of the public’s wild lands and the irreplaceable species that depend upon these wild lands for their very survival.
S. 1470 Threatens Our National Forests And Other Publicly-Owned Lands
It is with a deep personal concern that I share my insights and reservations about Senator Jon Tester’s Logging and Recreation Bill, S. 1470. This measure, if enacted by Congress, poses a serious threat to our National Forests and other publicly-owned lands. It was conceived in private, it revokes protections currently in place for public lands and it places National Forest management in the hands of local extractive user groups.
I have a special appreciation of Montana’s nine million acres of roadless wild lands, richly endowed with wildlife that is not to be found in such diversity and abundance anywhere else in the world. This grew out of my 12 years of research as a professional wildlife biologist in the Bob Marshall, Selway-Bitterroot, and Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness Areas, and my experience in National Forest backcountry on timber and range surveys and lookout fireman jobs.
We have the best of it, to be enjoyed by all who value unspoiled, natural ecosystems and the bounty that these public wild lands provide us: Hunters, anglers, students of nature, and the many others who seek solitude, peace of mind, refreshment of spirit, and the privilege of experiencing the best of life in the backcountry.
This wild backcountry must be preserved for those generations who follow us.
S. 1470 Is A Product Of Closed Door Deliberations
The Tester bill is described by its supporters as a product of a collaborative effort that brought all parties – all stakeholders – together in its drafting. In fact, it was conceived and put together by a few corporate logging entities and a half dozen staff members of a few conservation groups.
Major players were excluded from the closed door deliberations – local county governments, watershed and irrigation interests, local and state land, wildlife, and wilderness interests, and a broad segment of other user groups – who have a primary concern for the long-term protection of our National Forests. In forming the Tester bill, a handful of people negotiated behind-the-scenes, in complete absence of much-needed broadly-based public involvement.
S. 1470 Is A Repudiation Of Meaningful Public Involvement
Senator Tester deserves credit for his stated desire to bring people together to work cooperatively in resolving our public land issues. Ultimately, this must occur in our communities, if present polarization and divisive politics are to be overcome in favor of sound, research-based management policies.
But closed-door negotiations between self-appointed agents from a few carefully screened special interest groups are hardly the proper methods for managing our public lands.
From my more than 70 years’ involvement in public lands management, I know firsthand that respectful discussion must encompass extensive research-backed public information and spirited open debate. I know that real cooperation among all members of our communities promotes respect between all parties. This involves processes for bringing people together to build trust and working relationships in which they can honestly express their opinions, hammer out differences, and find common ground.
Meaningful communication concerning our public lands legacy must start with extensive scientific information and continue on to open public review, discussion, and understanding of that information. This will ensure the fullest possible constructive and educational dialogue.
Many of us in Montana would welcome the opportunity to participate in such well-informed and cooperative community building. An important first step in this direction will be a collective decision by all involved to implement genuine grassroots projects for this purpose, avoiding the serious breaches of the public interest that we have seen in the drafting of S. 1470.
Senator Tester’s stated desire to bring people together to work to resolve our public land issues is a good idea but one that Senator Tester clearly did not accomplish. He limited the people he invited to the timber industry that will benefit from his mandated subsidized logging and to a few foundation-funded big environmental groups. Closed-door negotiations between these carefully winnowed and self-appointed circles are hardly the proper methods for managing our public lands.
S. 1470 Revokes Current Protections For Public Wild Lands
The Tester bill places public roadless wild lands in Montana in jeopardy. Specifically authorized are requirements for taxpayer-subsidized roading and logging on 100,000 acres of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest and 30,000 acres in the Kootenai National Forest’s critical grizzly bear habitat. Ranges of threatened, endangered, and sensitive species – wolverine, lynx, fisher, grizzly bear, wolf, and bull trout – would be written off for logging and development.
The Tester bill calls for only minimal designations of seriously fragmented “wilderness areas,” and removes the necessary protections for roadless wild lands now provided under the Clinton and Obama Presidential Roadless Initiatives and under the 1977 law, Senate Act 393, carefully shepherded through Congress by Montana’s late Senator Lee Metcalf. If the Tester bill passes, a precedent will be set to allow the greater part of these roadless wild lands to be opened for development without mandated wilderness reviews.
S. 1470 Overrides 100 Years Of Federal Forest Management Policies
Through its maze of prescriptions—acreages mandated for logging, fragmented “wilderness areas,” motorized recreational and vehicle use, etc. —Senator Tester’s bill ignores or abrogates long-established management programs of the U.S. Forest Service and other public land agencies.
The complicated and multitudinous micro-management provisions spelled out in Senator Tester’s bill defy the framework of Federal Laws that Congress has wisely passed to define management policies for our Nation’s public lands over the past 100 years: The Organic Act that established our National Forest System, the Multiple Use and Sustained Yield Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Wilderness Act, the National Forest Management Act, and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.
In short, Senator Tester’s bill overrides the statutory policies and management requisites that the U.S. Congress enacted for the protection for the 193 million acres of our publicly owned National Forests and Grasslands. It unwisely dictates acreages and deadlines for logging of 100,000 acres of National Forest land. It subverts requirements for habitat preservation of endangered, threatened, and sensitive species.
S. 1470 Threatens Proper Congressional Management Of Other Federal Land
Similarly threatened by the sort of preemption of Federal laws promoted by the Senator Tester’s bill are all of our other Federal land jurisdictions: The National Park System, the National Wildlife Refuge System, and the public domain lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management.
Responding to the voice of the people, Congress has been successful in protecting our public lands legacy from the raids of special interest groups. Congressional supporters of public lands thwarted the D’Ewart grazing bills of the 1940s and 1950s. The House of Representatives defeated the lumber industry’s National Timber Supply Act of 1970. These bills sought to profit small segments of private users – grazers and lumbermen – at the expense of each of us who share in the ownership and stewardship of these public lands, and our right to use them in ways that best serve the public. In each instance, the U.S. Congress responded when the American people spoke out in opposition to these raids on their public lands legacy.
S. 1470 Places National Forest Management In The Hands Of Local Extractive User Groups
Senator Tester’s bill opens the door to the calamitous precedent from which any one of the 535 members of Congress could dictate how National Forests and other Federally-administered lands would be used. In place of the resource protection of our Federal Laws, management would be dictated by local advisory committees. Local pressures for any special interest – mining, logging, damming, oil and coal development, et al – would come into play solely for the benefit of personal or corporate profits. Senator Tester’s bill’s prescriptive requirements would abrogate the law and administrative procedures that have served so well to protect our public estate through the generations.
If Congress were to endorse Senator Tester’s bill and others like it, more than one hundred years of Federal resource protection laws, set in place through the bipartisan actions of 50 Congresses, could be overridden by prescriptions of any interest group that gained the ear of any Congressman or Senator.
We Need Long-Term Jobs, Revitalized Rural Communities, And Sustainable Local Economies
Objective review of Senator Tester’s bill brings these questions to mind:
1. Is the mandated designation of over 100,000 acres of public National Forest lands for taxpayer-subsidized commercial logging of sub-marginal timber in the long-term interest of our communities?
2. Is industrial-scale subsidized commercial logging the best possible employment for forest-dependent workers, when compared to the economic and environmental benefits of long-neglected forest and watershed restoration programs?
3. Are there better ways to create sustainable local economies? Can Congress better help provide restoration and reclamation jobs, recreation, pure water, clean air, and excellent wildlife habitats for many generations?
4. Instead of subsidizing the roading and logging of fragile and marginal forestlands lacking commercial timber, could not we better place our priorities upon stream bank restoration, culvert maintenance, road obliteration and reclamation, habitat restoration, tree planting, and selective thinning within designated community protection zones?
5. Is it the best role for Congress to exacerbate conflicts between short-term resource extraction and long-term public lands stewardship? Can Congress facilitate the transition from short-term “timber-dependent” communities to long-term “forest-dependent” communities?
S. 1470 Fails To Bring About Long-Term Jobs
With its emphasis on the very short-term, Senator Tester’s bill fails to bring about long-term jobs that will revitalize and sustain our rural communities in the West.
The long-term jobs our rural communities need will only be provided by directly addressing and correcting the Forest Service’s enormous backlog of reclamation, restoration, and habitat improvement programs.
For years, the Forest Service promised these reclamation, restoration, and habitat improvement programs, as conditions for obtaining approval of past timber sales. It is now time for the agency to deliver. Instead of pitting neighbor against neighbor, trying to get the last possible cut out, regardless of cost, Congress needs to honor its stewardship responsibilities.
Let’s look at old logging roads, for example. They have great deleterious effects on forest ecosystems, including dramatically altering natural drainage patterns and causing landslides, changing wildlife behavior, fragmenting wildlife habitat, and promoting weed infestations. Large amounts of sediment originating from roads ultimately reach our National Forest’s streams and rivers, degrading water quality and impairing fish reproduction.
Road decommissioning involves removing culverts and unstable road shoulders, re-contouring to restore natural slopes, and re-vegetation with native species. This restoration mitigates environmental damage, improves aquatic habitats and provides increased security for big game like deer, elk, moose, and bears.
All of this needed work requires heavy machinery and creates highly skilled well-paid jobs for rural economies. As resource extractive industries continue to lose jobs, removal of unnecessary roads and practicing forest restoration have great potential for employment throughout our forest-dependent communities.
Instead of expensive short-term subsidies to four timber corporations to log sub-marginal timber, Congress needs to provide for long-term restoration of National Forests and their watersheds. Reclamation and habitat improvement programs will provide perpetual dividends for eons to come.
We will all benefit when forest restoration provides extensive recreation and restoration jobs, steady flows of pure water for agricultural irrigation and community water systems, better fishing and hunting, improved wildlife habitats, increased public recreational opportunities, more non-consumptive resource utilization, and continued sustainable harvests from our fiber producing lands.
S. 1470 Does Not Provide Needed “Shovel-Ready” Forest Jobs
Senator Tester is right concerning one thing: People in our forest-dependent communities need and deserve work. If there is to be subsidized timber cutting and tree thinning, let it occur in the critical community protection zones that most need it. Fuels reduction projects in these zones, based upon the best available science, will make our communities safer and enhance habitat. Forest restoration jobs, described in the previous section, will make our forest-dependent communities more stable.
We are talking about a fresh beginning for our National Forests – a bright new day that we welcome with open arms. The desperate need for these “shovel ready” community protection zone fuels reduction and forest restoration jobs is now firmly proven. We must now call upon Congress to think creatively and adequately fund the abundant employment opportunities produced by needed community protection and forest restoration.
Of course, our wild lands’ backcountry will continue providing virtually unlimited long-term benefits: Jobs for rangers, trail crews, scientific researchers, packers, guides, outfitters, non-extractive resource users and student conservation corps, and public recreation for hunting, fishing, backpacking and trail riding.
S. 1470 Continues A Failed Policy of Taxpayer-Subsidized Logging
Ninety percent of National Forest logging is subsidized through the agency’s road construction investment and the sale of timber at below-cost prices. Will untouched watersheds, wilderness, and wildlife preservation values be better served by opening these now-Presidentially-and-Congressionally-protected roadless wild lands to short-term taxpayer-subsidized resource extraction, as opposed to their being preserved for the long term as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System?
S. 1470 Constitutes A Direct Threat To Sound Public Lands Management
While we must encourage efforts to bring every public land shareholder – each of us – to the table in answering these and the myriad of other questions brought into focus by Senator Tester’s bill, we come down to the pivotal questions: Does the bill serve the public interest of all of us who share in the National Forests’ ownership? Or, does the bill serve the private interests of merely four logging corporations?
Does Senator Tester’s bill manage the public’s land for the public good? Or, does it initiate a dangerous precedent-setting mandate that any one of the 535 members of Congress can dictate what will be done with Federally-owned public land in their individual Congressional jurisdictions?
Is it in the public interest to override the legacy of more than 100 years of protective management under the laws laid down by Congress, in order to promote 535 separate and disparate Congressional fiefdoms?
S. 1470 Opens A “Pandora’s Box” Of Loopholes and Subsidies
The Tester bill must be recognized as a well-intentioned effort – at great public financial and environmental expense – to rescue an impoverished logging industry and the workers who depend on it for their livelihoods. However, with the lumber market near collapse, this large public investment would better be made hiring local contractors and woods workers for critically-needed forest restoration work.
We need not open this Pandora’s Box of special loopholes and subsidies for a handful of corporations.
We need not forsake our remaining public wild lands heritage.
We need not diminish the purity of the water that freely flows from our pristine roadless areas to our farms, ranches, and communities.
We need not erode the habitat of fish and wildlife species that mean so much to those of us fortunate enough to live here.
We need not subvert the functioning of our precious ecosystems, upon which we depend for life and sustenance, for the short-term economic gain of a few.
Let Us Honor The Basic Tenets For Protection Of Our Public Lands
Many of my dearest friends and colleagues – Howard Zahniser, Sigurd Olson, Harvey Broome, Ernest Oberholtzer, Bernard Frank, Benton MacKaye, Harold Anderson, George Marshall, David Brower, Olaus and Mardy Murie, Charles H. Callison, Benton Stong, Ken Baldwin, Don Aldrich, Doris Milner, Justice William O. Douglas, Congressmen John Saylor and Morris Udall, Senators Frank Church, Hubert Humphrey, and Lee Metcalf have passed on.
I have been so privileged to have known these fine spirits and to spend my life working side-by-side with them in dedication to America’s public lands! Let us not let political shortsightedness, greed, or desperation strip us of the priceless legacy they fought so hard to bequeath to us.
Let us work to bring long-term jobs and stability to our rural communities. Let us respect the countless hunters, anglers, and outdoors people that fully appreciate the true value of Wilderness and that have valiantly defended it with their hearts, minds, words, and actions through the ages.
We Montanans are blessed to live in this “Last, Best Place” with our plains and rolling prairies, snow-capped mountains, and beautiful valleys and streams. Wilderness and roadless wild lands are an irreplaceable part of this heritage. They deserve the fullest possible protection if they are to be preserved for those who follow us. Senator Tester’s bill places them in peril.
Thank you for the privilege of submitting this testimony.
Dr. Stewart M. Brandborg
647 Foley Lane
Hamilton, MT 59840
Phone: 406-375-1122
Dispatches from the Wildlands™
©2010, Dr. Stewart M. Brandborg and Paul Richards
_________________________________________________________
Editor’s Note: Dr. Brandborg wrote all of his draft language for this statement in pencil on yellow legal-sized notepads and mailed roughly-organized “chapters” via bursting-at-the-seams envelopes to Paul Richards, a Montana-based journalist with 42 years’ experience as writer and editor. Many months of respectful, productive, good-natured, and comprehensive telephone conversations between Dr. Brandborg and editor Richards produced the above final text.
Paul Thomas Richards FORMER WILDERNESS ASSOCIATION OFFICIALS
DISOWN TESTER WILDLANDS LOGGING BILL
“It is with heavy hearts we are compelled to oppose the organization we once proudly served as Officers and Governing Council Members.”
We, the undersigned former Officers and Governing Council Members of the Montana Wilderness Association (MWA), respectfully urge Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) to withdraw Senate Bill 1470, the “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act,” to rectify severe problems outlined by Agriculture Undersecretary Harris Sherman, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service.
Sherman testified that the Tester bill dictates timber cutting quotas that are “not reasonable,” “likely unachievable and perhaps unsustainable.”
Sherman also charged that the Tester bill’s “enormous” costs and mandated logging could create a harmful precedent for other National Forests. For example, the Tester bill mandates logging 7,000 acres a year for 10 years in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest—seven times the current annual average.
“The levels of mechanical treatment called for in the bill far exceed historic treatment levels on these forests, and would require an enormous shift in resources (away) from other forests in Montana and other states to accomplish,” Sherman told the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
We, as former leaders of the Montana Wilderness Association, cannot support the legislation as now written. We must diverge from our organization, because we believe that the Tester bill degrades both the quantity and quality of some of America’s most cherished wildlands in Montana. We encourage consideration of the issues we have outlined below that would be necessary in order for us to support it.
We endorse the 10-point position paper, Keeping It Wild! In Defense of America’s Public Wildlands, submitted by the Last Best Place Wildlands Campaign, a coalition of more than 55 grassroots conservation organizations.
The Tester bill legislates the net loss of hundreds of thousands of roadless area acres, including Senate Bill 393’s Wilderness Study Areas, designated in 1977 by Montana’s late U.S. Senator Lee Metcalf. This will create widespread environmental damage and the loss of an irreplaceable legacy for which future generations would, quite correctly, hold ours accountable.
Also, the Tester bill’s Congressional mandate for timber cut levels sets a dangerous precedent. Subsidizing these “below-cost” timber sales will cost federal taxpayers more than $100 million. And, the bill’s proposed new “wilderness” areas are small, often disjointed, primarily “rock and ice” parcels that would fail to protect fragile wildlands habitat and wildlife ecosystems and corridors.
To make matters worse, the Tester bill includes special provisions for new “wilderness” units that defy both the intent and letter of the Wilderness Act of 1964, and the spirit of Wilderness that so many Americans believe is a vital and wondrous part of this great Nation’s Heritage. Motor vehicles, including helicopters, simply have no place in designated Wilderness. Yes, we need more Wilderness—lots of it—but we want it to be real Wilderness!
The bill also codifies secretive negotiated agreements—such as the Beaverhead-Deerlodge “Partnership”—that excluded many individuals and groups who have long been involved in the public process. This, and similar agreements, have been sealed by the Montana Wilderness Association and others over the objections of excluded organizations and individuals, of whom most live and work close to the land and know the compromised areas intimately.
It is with heavy hearts we are compelled to oppose the organization we once proudly served as MWA Officers and Governing Council Members. Most of Montana’s undeveloped wildlands are long gone, and we cannot afford to lose big chunks of what remains.
We believe that, in recent years, the Montana Wilderness Association has clearly compromised its long-held mission of vigilant advocacy for protection of public wildlands. We know many former and current MWA members who agree.
In fact, most grassroots conservationists and activists in the region are convinced that, quite simply, MWA has lost its way. We are saddened to now count ourselves among them.
The Tester bill currently supported by the Montana Wilderness Association will irreparably damage Montana’s and the Northern Rockies’ dwindling public roadless wildlands legacy. It will salt the gaping wounds cut into the conservation community by MWA’s recent actions.
The Tester bill degrades the Wilderness Act of 1964 with provisions that damage both Wilderness and the values of what Pulitzer-Prize-winning Western author Wallace Stegner termed the “Wilderness Idea” in his seminal 1960 “Wilderness Letter.”*
In conclusion: The Tester bill is a bad deal for future generations of Montanans, who will need Wild country more than ever, in an increasingly crowded and uncertain future.
Again, we respectfully urge Sen. Tester to withdraw this bill.
Sincerely for Wild Montana,
Loren Kreck (Co-Founder of the Montana Wilderness Association, MWA Council, and past MWA Vice-President) (Please see Editor’s Note concerning Kreck below) – Columbia Falls, MT
Lou Bruno (MWA Council and past MWA President) – East Glacier, MT
Joan Montagne (MWA Council and past MWA President) – Bozeman, MT
Elaine Snyder (MWA Council and past MWA President) – Kalispell, MT
Dan Heinz (MWA Council and past MWA Vice-President) – Reno, NV
Paul Edwards (MWA Council and past Chairman, MWA Wilderness Committee) – Helena, MT
Paul Richards (MWA Council and Recipient of MWA’s Brass Lantern Award, “For leadership in defending unprotected public wildlands contained within the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest”) – Boulder Valley, MT
Larry Campbell (MWA Council) – Darby, MT
Susan Colvin (MWA Council) – Great Falls, MT
Randall Gloege (MWA Council) – Billings, MT
Keith Hammer (MWA Council) – Kalispell, MT
Steve Kelly (MWA Council) – Bozeman, MT
Lance Olsen (MWA Council) – Missoula, MT
Bob Oset (MWA Council) – Hamilton, MT
Ross Titus (MWA Council) – Big Fork, MT
George Wuerthner (MWA Council) – Helena/Livingston, MT
Janet Zimmerman (MWA Council) – Pony, MT
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EDITOR’S NOTE: Co-writing and signing the above statement was the final of countless acts taken by Dr. Loren Kreck to protect our nation’s priceless public wildlands legacy.
Dr. Kreck, a co-founder of the Montana Wilderness Association in the 1950s, and, for the last six decades, one of Montana’s premier conservationists, died peacefully in his Columbia Falls, MT, home earlier this year. Homage to Dr. Kreck will soon be posted upon this “Dispatches from the Wildlands” Web site.
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* Stegner submitted his seminal “Wilderness Letter” to the University of California at Berkeley’s Wildland Research Center, after what he termed considerable “prodding” from passionate outdoorsman David Brower.
“I want to speak for the Wilderness Idea as something that has helped form our character and that has certainly shaped our history as a people. Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it.
“Without any remaining wilderness, we are committed wholly, without chance for even momentary reflection and rest, to a headlong drive into our technological termite-life, the Brave New World of a completely man-controlled environment. We need wilderness preserved–as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds–because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health, even if we never once in ten years set foot in it. It is good for us when we are young, because of the incomparable sanity it can bring briefly, as vacation and rest, into our insane lives. It is important to us when we are old simply because it is there–important, that is, simply as an idea.”
DEDICATION:
IN LOVING MEMORY OF MONTANA’S “LIVING LEGEND”
Dr. Loren Kreck, Co-Founder of the
Montana Wilderness Association (MWA)
Dr. Loren Kreck, Co-Founder, Montana Wilderness Association
Dispatches from the Wildlands™
Paul Thomas Richards Keeping It Wild!
In Defense of America’s Public Wildlands
United by our common understanding that Montana’s wild country is its greatest treasure;
And, that once degraded or impaired, this wild country can never be restored or replaced;
And, cognizant of Thoreau’s belief that “In wildness is the preservation of the world;”
And, schooled by Aldo Leopold who long ago warned that wilderness can only shrink and not grow;
And, keenly aware of the definition of wilderness in the Wilderness Act of 1964 as being “untrammeled by man,” where “man himself is a visitor who does not remain;”
And, fully recognizing that the Northern Rockies ecosystem is the only functioning ecosystem in the lower 49 states where all native species still reside;
And, being of one mind in our desire and determination to protect and preserve what remains of our public wildlands to the greatest extent possible;
We hereby state our intention to work together to achieve the most inclusive and comprehensive protection under the law for all remaining publicly-owned de facto wilderness in Montana.
In full affirmation of the above and, after having been unsuccessful in our earnest efforts to improve Sen. Tester’s so-called “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act,” or “S. 1470,” we must now unanimously oppose this bill.
The bases for our opposition are exhaustively catalogued in separate analyses and papers, but we submit this foundational document to concisely articulate our chief objections. They are as follows:
1. The Tester bill specifically eliminates from mandated protection large portions of the late Senator Lee Metcalf’s wildlands legacy, Congressionally designated as Wilderness Study Areas in 1977 by his farsighted bill, S. 393. By eliminating this protection, the Tester bill opens these priceless public wildlands for road building, logging, and other development.
2. The Tester bill undermines the overwhelmingly popular Clinton Roadless Rule and Obama Roadless Initiative. Over one million acres of federally-inventoried roadless wildlands protected under the Roadless Rule and the Roadless Initiative would be classified as “Timber Suitable or Open to Harvest.” (See map).
3. The Tester Bill surrenders decisions about our National Forests to a handful of local bureaucrats and extraction-oriented corporations, thereby promoting fragmentation of America’s national public lands legacy into locally controlled fiefdoms.
4. The Tester bill undermines the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by imposing unrealistic and arbitrary requirements that preclude the Forest Service from accurately assessing environmental impacts of road building, logging, habitat loss, water degradation, weed infestation, and other costs of developing public wildlands.
5. The Tester bill mandates unsustainable logging quotas regardless of environmental costs, thereby jeopardizing safeguards provided public lands by the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, National Forest Management Act, Wilderness Act, and Federal Land Policy and Management Act.
6. In its effort to isolate decisions to log wildlands from national attention, the Tester bill disenfranchises public lands stakeholders, by overriding legitimate science-based forest planning that involves full public information and participation. It deprives the public of our rights to be included in irreversible decisions concerning our own land.
7. The Tester bill mandates cutting at least 100,000 acres over 10 years. It dictates at least 7,000 acres be logged per year for 10 years in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. In recent years, the Forest Service has set its sustainable cut level for the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest at 500 acres per year. In past years, when the Forest Service was dedicated to “getting the cut out,” an average of 3,213 acres per year was logged, from 1954 to 1996, in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. On the Three Rivers Ranger District of the Kootenai National Forest, Tester’s bill mandates logging of 3,000 acres per year for 10 years in fragile Yaak grizzly bear habitat, already severely damaged by decades of overcutting. While logging at least 100,000 acres would be compulsory, the Tester bill contains no accompanying mandates for restoration, leaving all post-logging reclamation and forest restoration optional.
8. The Tester bill fails to address at least $100 million in costs to U.S. taxpayers that would be incurred by the Forest Service for subsidizing “below-cost” timber sales and power plants for the few specially-privileged timber corporations involved. The bill interferes with free enterprise, by mandating that five favored private mills be subsidized with perpetual supplies of National Forest trees, at huge economic costs to taxpayers. The bill ignores the financial realities that the United States currently face: Economic crises and a lumber “depression,” with new home construction down 70 percent and demands for lumber down 55 percent.
9. By forcing unsustainable industrial-scale logging upon our public lands, the Tester bill would irrevocably harm essential habitats of species that characterize the wild nature of the northern Rockies, such as the gray wolf, bull trout, cutthroat trout (Montana’s official state fish), otter, mountain goat, mountain sheep, elk, arctic grayling, northern goshawk, boreal owl, pileated woodpecker, ferruginous hawk, Montana vole, sage thrasher, wild bison, peregrine falcon, bald eagle, pine marten, fisher, lynx, wolverine, and grizzly bear (Montana’s official state animal).
10. The “wilderness” areas in the Tester bill are fragmented and unconnected islands of largely “rocks and ice,” with limited biological integrity and no potential for sustaining biodiversity. The minimal “wilderness” designated in the bill fails to protect different elevation habitats and their dependent species with core areas, buffer zones, and connecting biological corridors. The bill promotes numerous abuses that are clearly in violation of the 1964 Wilderness Act, including motorized access into and through “wilderness,” military aircraft landings in “wilderness,” possible “wilderness” logging, and other intrusions that violate the principles of Wilderness.
Due to these severe deficiencies, we intend to see that the Tester bill is not endorsed by Congress. Instead, we will constructively stand for a scientifically-sound, ecologically-based Wilderness Bill that preserves the greatest amount of our priceless and rapidly-vanishing public roadless wildlands in Montana.
We, the following members of the Last Best Place Wildlands Campaign, are conservation organizations and citizens dedicated to wildlands protection, Wilderness preservation, and the sound long-term management of our federal public lands legacy.
Our coalition includes small-business owners, scientists, educators and teachers, health care practitioners, hikers and backpackers, hunters and anglers, wildlife viewers, outfitters and guides, veterans, retired Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management officials, ranchers and farmers, craftspersons, and community leaders – all stakeholders committed to America’s public wildlands legacy.
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Editor’s Notes:
1. This “Keeping It Wild! In Defense of America’s Public Wildlands” Declaration, detailed analyses, and extensive commentary on the Tester bill are located at: http://testerloggingbilltruths.wordpress.com/ .
2. This Declaration has been endorsed by more than 55 grassroots conservation groups that comprise the Last Best Place Wildlands Campaign. For the latest listing of groups, further information, or to sign up your group, go to: http://testerloggingbilltruths.wordpress.com/ .
3. Individuals can sign this “Keeping It Wild! In Defense of America’s Public Wildlands” Declaration by going to: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/keeping-it-wild-in-defense-of-america39s-public-wildlands .
4. Tester, the timber industry, and “conservation” collaborationists have used so many terms for this bill, the public has no idea how to refer it. Due to this plethora of names, the bill’s purposefully obfuscatory text, and its many loopholes; confusion is rampant. The Tester bill is suffering accordingly.
The Tester bill’s official number is “S. 1470.” Tester, the timber industry, and Big Green (or Gang Green) “conservation” collaborationists have interchangeably used: “Tester Forest Jobs and Recreation Act,’’ “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act,” “Tester Forest Jobs Bill,” “Forest Jobs Bill,” “Forest Jobs and Stewardship Bill,” and the “Tester Forest Jobs and Stewardship Bill.”
Editors and reporters, who should know better, mistakenly call it the “Tester Wilderness Bill.” This is a grave misnomer! Tester himself is very clear that his legislation is NOT a wilderness bill!
“Because there are many components to the legislation, calling it a ‘wilderness bill’ is a mischaracterization,” writes Tester. “It is a ‘forest jobs and stewardship’ bill.” Editors and reporters have also called S. 1470 the “Tester Forest Management Bill” and the “Tester Public Lands Legislation.”
Grassroots conservationists have leaned towards more truthful monikers, such as “Tester Logging Bill,” “Tester Logging-Without-Laws Bill,” and “Tester Wildlands Logging Bill.”
“Tester Logging Bill” is now the term most utilized by the general public, with the more accurate “Tester Wildlands Logging Bill” preferred by grassroots wildlands supporters.
5. After securing input from Last Best Place Wildlands Campaign groups, Paul Edwards, a Montana rancher who, years ago, wrote episodes of the television series “Gunsmoke,” penned the first 516-word draft of this Declaration.
6. With continued participation from Last Best Place Wildlands Campaign, Paul Thomas Richards, a professional writer and editor from southwestern Montana’s Boulder Valley, wrote two dozen subsequent drafts, including this final 1034-word “Keeping It Wild! In Defense of America’s Public Wildlands” Declaration.
Dispatches from the Wildlands™
©2010 Paul Thomas Richards
Paul Thomas Richards 30 Brown’s Gulch Road
Boulder, MT 59632
Paul@PRMediaConsultants.com
John Rosenow, Chief Executive
Arbor Day Foundation
100 Arbor Avenue
Nebraska City, NE 68410
April 3, 2010
Dear Mr. Rosenow and Fellow Friends at Arbor Day Foundation,
Have you ever thought of incorporating the best available science into your work?
Your recent letter from Chief Executive John Rosenow requesting my membership renewal says:
“I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures on the news of horrendous forest fires that have devastated many of our nation’s forests. The fact is, our treasured National Forests are being destroyed as never before, not only by fire, but also by disease and insect infestation.”
None of this is true. Mr. Rosenow’s statements are scientifically indefensible. Even novices know that forest fires are an absolutely ESSENTIAL part of forest renewal, particularly in our forests of the West.
Our National Forests are NOT being destroyed by fire, disease and insect infestation! How does Mr. Rosenow deal with the reality that our forests have gotten along fine WITH fires, diseases and insect infestations for untold millions of years?! In fact, natural healthy forests can not possibly survive without fires, diseases and insect infestations!
Hysteria, paranoia, and fearmongering may have helped recruit funds for your organization in the past, but it is now time to evolve beyond this crass baseness. Leave the hysteria, paranoia, and fearmongering and the resultant disempowerment of our human community to the likes of FOX “News.”
Let’s be positive. Let’s look at the facts:
1. Fires rejuvenate our forests. Just look at Yellowstone National Park!
2. Diseases and insect infestations create vital habitat and food for birds and many other species.
3. Standing dead trees and downfallen logs create incomparable habitats for countless plant and animal species.
4. Downfallen logs retain moisture and allow growth of many things, such as 12,000 species of mosses or 3,500 species of grasses, that could not otherwise thrive. Mr. Rosenow, please ask yourself: How could we possibly have lynx, without the habitat and security of downfallen trees and their resultant production of food necessary to rabbits, mice, and other essential prey?
5. Despite what the emotional claims in your letter asking for my membership renewal, the threats to our National Forests are NOT fires, diseases, and insect infestations. The data are in. Science has confirmed that the most dire threats to our National Forests and all indigenous old growth are roading, logging, mining and other industrial development, and domestic livestock grazing.
6. It is roading, logging, mining, and domestic livestock grazing – NOT fires, diseases, and insect infestations – that destroy our National Forests, eliminate crucial wildlife habitats, radically diminish biodiversity, and severely degrade our public watersheds.
7. Our National Forests need to be National Forests, not private tree farms for timber corporations or private feedlots for anti-wildlife corporate agri-biz!
8. Instead of being converted to genetically inferior monoculture tree farms that are more susceptible to pathogens and insects, our National Forests must engender thriving and diverse indigenous plant and wildlife communities.
9. Public lands, especially National Forests, National Grasslands, and National Parks, must be restored to healthy and natural states of biodiversity and resilience.
10. As we finally begin to wisely manage our National Forests to create optimum situations for indigenous plant and wildlife species, we MUST support the vital roles played by fires, diseases, and insect infestations!
Mr. Rosenow, scientific ignorance bodes ill for the future welfare of our National Forests. I sincerely hope you, your board, and all Arbor Day Foundation members are open to biotic reality and the dramatic changes that respecting indigenous species and biodiversity will entail within our organization. The sooner these changes come, the better.
Instead of continuing to plant exotic species where they don’t belong and to condemn the very natural processes that ensure the vitality of forests, it is now time for the Arbor Day Foundation to begin incorporating the best available science.
The Arbor Day Foundation has certainly done some good, particularly for areas, such as Nebraska, where indigenous trees, forests, and dependent species were obliterated by white settlers. Who could oppose new forests and shelterbelts planted and supported by the Arbor Day Foundation and its dedicated supporters? For that reason, in the past, I have been proud to be a member of the Arbor Day Foundation.
But, as a native of the Northern Rockies Ecosystem, the LAST remaining functioning ecosystem in the lower 49 states where all native species still reside, I must now ask the Arbor Day Foundation to stop being so shallow concerning the needs of functioning forest ecologies and start helping heal the Earth.
Mr. Rosenow, it is time for the Arbor Day Foundation to abandon its shameless promotion of alien plant species as biotically-meaningless eye candy and face up to basic realities of continued existence of life on Earth.
The Arbor Day Foundation MUST give up its unfortunate, destructive, and outdated addiction to and promotion of exotic species. To restore the countless ecosystems that white people have damaged almost beyond repair in North America, the Arbor Day Foundation must now instead focus upon indigenous trees, shrubbery, and plants.
By changing its focus from exotic eye candy to restoring indigenous trees, shrubbery, plants and fungi, bugs, and birds, the Arbor Day Foundation will help restore indigenous forests. And, by the gradual restoration of functioning indigenous forests, the Arbor Day Foundation will bring back indigenous species, many of them now at the brink of extinction.
With revitalized forests will come plentiful wildlife, pure watersheds, abundant fisheries, and the reemergence of amphibians and reptiles who have so quietly and bravely faced doom the last quarter century.
Instead of irresponsibly condemning them, it is now time for the Arbor Day Foundation to embrace the natural processes of fires, diseases, and insect infestations on our National Forests and other public lands.
Instead of perpetuating ignorance, like that demonstrated in Mr. Rosenow’s above quote, it is time for the Arbor Day Foundation to actively help inform the public about scientific necessities involved with forest renewal.
First, we’ve got to protect that which hasn’t yet been broken. The Arbor Day Foundation must help stop all roading, logging, domestic livestock grazing, and industrial development of our few remaining National Forest and BLM roadless wildlands that still retain biological integrity.
It is time for the Arbor Day Foundation to endorse and actively promote legislation such as the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA), which officially protects the remaining National Forest roadless wildlands in the Northern Rockies by designating them Wilderness. (Please see the enclosed information about HR 980, the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, sponsored by 103 Members of Congress. This information is from my recent Congressional testimony before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests.)
As it incorporates the best available science, the Arbor Day Foundation can lead efforts to protect every single remaining acre of natural forest wildland in National Forests, National Parks, National Grasslands, Bureau of Land Management roadless areas, and state-owned lands.
Second, where the wild has been unwisely broken, what could possibly be a better task for the Arbor Day Foundation than to begin reassembling the pieces? I see the Arbor Day Foundation playing a pivotal role toward the reestablishment of indigenous forests, comprised of indigenous species, where all natural processes are appreciated and allowed. (Yes, Mr. Rosenow, this most certainly includes fires, bugs, and diseases).
When the Arbor Day Foundation accepts this timely and essential new mission, I will be proud to re-up my membership.
Mr. Rosenow and other friends at Arbor Day Foundation, my e-mail address is below. Please contact me if you want to discuss any of the above. I would like to work with you to restore damaged forest ecosystems throughout North America and to protect the few remaining roadless wildlands and dependent indigenous species we have left.
As a native rural Montana elder with a whole lifetime of experiences concerning our National Forests and other public lands, I will be happy to help you redirect the focus of the Arbor Day Foundation toward more productive, Earth-friendly, scientifically-responsible activities that promote indigenous species, biodiversity, biological integrity, and natural ecosystems restoration.
All my best,
Paul Richards
Member # 878-008-1660, Arbor Day Foundation
Paul@PRMediaConsultants.com
www.PRMediaConsultants.com
www.Richards2006.us
More Dispatches from the Wildlands™ at: http://blogs.alternet.org/paulrichards/.
Dispatches from the Wildlands™ ©2010, Paul Richards
