Oppose "Fix" Our Forests Act

"Fix Our Forests Act" threatens Wilderness with more livestock grazing and manager-ignited fires.

ESWA opposes inclusion of the Fix Our Forests Act (FOFA) in any federal public lands package. FOFA is a direct attack on the ESA and NEPA, severely limits judicial review, and permits 10,000-acre clearcutting projects without an approval process.

Below is an appeal from our friends at Wilderness Watch:

On January 23, the falsely-named “Fix Our Forests Act” (H.R. 471) passed the U.S. House on a vote of 279-141. It now goes to the Senate. Senator Hickenlooper has proposed minor changes, but the bill remains a major threat to Wilderness Areas, where it would increase cattle and sheep grazing and widespread use of manager-ignited fire.

The “Fix Our Forests Act” will dramatically change how America’s national forests will be managed, and Wilderness won't be spared. The bill would override bedrock environmental laws and curtail public participation to mandate landscape-scale logging on federal lands, including industrial logging on up to 10,000 acres—or 15 square miles—categorically excluded from the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, under the rationale that cutting down trees across 15 square miles of forests has no significant impacts on the environment or wildlife.

For Wilderness, the bill would promote increased cattle and sheep grazing and widespread use of manager-ignited fire that will transform these places from wild landscapes “untrammeled by man” to human-dominated ones.

The fight to stop this bill now moves to the U.S. Senate and we need you to do two things to help defeat the bill.

First, send your two senators this email urging them to oppose the “Fix Our Forests Act.”

Next, call your senators at 202-224-3121 and tell them to oppose the “Fix Our Forests Act.” Tell your senators the bill is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt dramatically increase logging, roadbuilding, and livestock grazing on federal public lands by undermining our nation’s bedrock environmental laws.

Thank you for speaking up for Wilderness, public lands, and the wildlife that call it home!

TAKE ACTION