This is not a joke! This graphic is from the Flathead National Forest’s proposed 272-square-mile Mid-Swan Landscape "Restoration" Project, which would intentionally fragment the forest further by building more roads and removing 60,000 log trucks full of trees over the next 15 years!
UPDATE 10/14/20 - With the DEIS comment period now closed, here are links to some major comments opposing the Mid-Swan Project:
Click here for comments by Swan View Coalition and 11 others.
Click here for comments by Friends of the Wild Swan.
Click here for comments by Wilderness Watch.
Click here for comments by six retired Forest Service Wilderness Specialists.
Click here for comments by WildEarth Guardians and Center for Biological Diversity.
THANK YOU to all of you that sent in comments on this egregious project!
Click here for a press release issued by Wilderness Watch, Swan View Coalition and Friends of the Wild Swan.
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Your emails objecting to this “restoration” scam are needed by October 13! Below are suggested comments for your email to comments-northern-flathead-swan-lake@usda.gov. Include “Mid-Swan Project” in the subject line:
1. Further fragmenting forest habitat in the already highly fragmented Swan Valley is not “landscape restoration” and doing so in threatened lynx habitat violates the revised Flathead Forest Plan, as admitted in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS).
2. The Project would build over 40 miles of new roads even though the area is already highly fragmented with 567 miles of Forest Service logging roads and another 578 miles of state and private roads. Storing or decommissioning a handful of those roads still leaves the majority of those road templates on the landscape to harm grizzly bear, bull trout, other fish and wildlife.
3. Restoring this landscape to historic conditions would remove all of the logging roads, but the DEIS does not analyze such an alternative at all, not even as a point of comparison.
4. Nor does the DEIS look at reducing the road network to levels where research shows they no longer significantly harm threatened grizzly bears, as was required under former Forest Plan Amendment 19. Those thresholds still apply to effects analyses like the DEIS!
5. The “no new road” alternative in the DEIS still builds new roads and retains all but 40 miles of the existing road network. It does not provide the adequate range of alternatives required by the National Environmental Policy (NEPA).
6. The DEIS does not disclose the specific locations of the timber sales that will cut down trees to fill 60,000 log trucks over the next 15 years. Once those specifics become known, the public will have no NEPA process to review the estimated impacts of those timber sales. The courts have already ruled this violates NEPA!
7. The Project is an arrogant attempt to dominate the natural landscape with taxpayer subsidized make-work projects. The DEIS claims that 85% of the area needs logging or other forms of human manipulation, including 36,000 acres of designated and recommended Wilderness where natural processes are by law supposed to unfold on their own and without mechanical intrusions.
8. To restore this landscape, remove the logging roads, not the trees!
If you’d like to read this “restoration” scam yourself, click here for the 500+ page DEIS and other documents.
Click here for our 6-page photo comparison of two Swan Valley fires demonstrating that logging and road building do not prevent the spread of wildfires!
Click here for more detailed "talking points" with citations to Mid-Swan DEIS page numbers.
Thank you for taking a few moments to let the Forest Service know you care about keeping native forest ecosystems intact!
