Your email is needed today to push back on 25 commercial Special Use Permits (SUPs) being issued on the Flathead National Forest!
Only you can help stop the commercial overcrowding of the Flathead NF, which is poised to permit 100-person backpacking trips, 400-person ultra-marathons, and more!
Click here to read about the 100-person Highlander backpacking event being promoted by the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce in order to bring more tourists to an area already overrun with tourists! They hope the event is expanded in future years!
Click here for the Flathead's summary letter inviting public comments by May 26, 2023.
Click here for more detail on each of the 25 commercial Special Use Permits.
Click here for our May 15 letter objecting to this "shotgun approach" to SUPs and requesting a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the Flathead's SUP and recreation programs.
Send your email to comments-northern-flathead@usda.gov by May 26 and consider making these points:
1. Quit allowing commercial outfits like Croatia's Highlander to sell $700 positions in its 100-person event before the public has even been allowed to comment on the idea!
2. Quit trying to mask the impact of these events on wildlife and other forest users by bragging that participants will pick up their own trash!
3. Quit allowing commercial businesses to make money off of promoting the crowding of our National Forests!
4. Quit dumping two dozen SUP proposals on the public and expecting people to research and comment on them within two weeks!
5. Prepare an adequate EIS for the Flathead's SUP and recreation programs and allow the public the required months to comment on it!
Include comments about any of the individual SUPs you have time to become familiar with.
These are public lands, not commercial lands for private profit - and only you can help push back on this commercialization!
Thank you for taking a few moments to comment!
