To: Julie King, Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor and Tom Tidwell, Chief of the National Forest
Tell the Forest Service not to build roads through old growth forests
Dear Julie King of the Bitterroot National Forest and Tom Tidwell of the National Forest Service:
Old growth is the most precious part of our forests. To build roads through them, removing trees and upsetting their fragile ecosystems, is a crime, plain and simple. Once you build the road, you have destroyed the integrity of the old growth and lost a precious place forever. In Montana, it is an even greater loss because trees take so long to grow in the dry climate. The old growth in our nation and especially in Montana must be cherished and protected not ravaged.
Please abandon your plans to build roads through old growth in all current and future logging projects.
Old growth is the most precious part of our forests. To build roads through them, removing trees and upsetting their fragile ecosystems, is a crime, plain and simple. Once you build the road, you have destroyed the integrity of the old growth and lost a precious place forever. In Montana, it is an even greater loss because trees take so long to grow in the dry climate. The old growth in our nation and especially in Montana must be cherished and protected not ravaged.
Please abandon your plans to build roads through old growth in all current and future logging projects.
Why is this important?
I am starting this petition because naively, I believed that old growth was sacred and that the forest service would never build roads or log in such a precious place. At a recent field trip looking at a huge logging project in Western Montana, I asked the economist if they would build roads through old growth. He said yes without batting an eye. I also discovered that they are running roads in old growth and a known Goshawk nesting sight in another project. I thought the Forest Service was a steward of the forest. I thought they wanted to care for it and protect it. But instead, the Montana forests are forced to produce board feet based on logging mandates made by politicians and timber lobbyists. So they must get it in any and every way possible which includes destroying old growth.