The Washington Post has found Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) lied not once, but twice recently, greatly exaggerating how much federal logging in Montana is being held up by environmentalist lawsuits!

This well-researched disclosure is important! It shatters the underlying myth and scapegoating upon which efforts by Congress, some State Legislatures, some "conservation" groups, and industry are trying to increase logging on federal public lands, even if it means turning control or title of those lands over to the States!

Conservation groups enforcing America's bedrock environmental protection laws in court is not the problem industry allies say it is! Senator Tester and others are simply going to have to find a new myth and a new scapegoat in order to do the timber industry's bidding!

Tester last week told Montana Public Radio "Unfortunately, every logging sale in Montana right now is under litigation. Every one of them." The Washington Post finds "there are 97 timber sales under contract in Montana's national forests. Of that number, just 14 have active litigation, so about 14 percent. But only four of the sales are enjoined by a court from any logging."

When Tester was again questioned by MTPR, he suddenly became "unavailable" for the week and his staff shifted to talking timber volume, claiming "Nearly half of the awarded timber volume in Fiscal Year 2014 is currently under litigation." The Washington Post finds this to also be a lie, finding only about 10% of the timber volume under contract is halted by litigation.

The Washington Post has awarded Tester "Four Pinocchios," its worst rating for telling a "whopper" - in this case two whoppers.

Click "Read Full Article" below to read more about how such lies are the false premise upon which even some "conservation" groups are basing their collaboration with industry to increase logging on federal public lands.

Our Winter 2015 newsletter outlines why we must intervene NOW to protect America's wilderness and conservation legacy - and how you can help!

Montana Wilderness Association and Headwaters Montana are selling out wilderness quality lands in the northern Swan Range, an indicator of even larger problems in the conservation movement!

This newsletter describes how bedrock environmental laws based in social justice, anti-materialism and public challenges to government are being sidelined and replaced by social favoritism, giving consumers everything they want, and paying any price for access to government officials.

If you read only one newsletter in 2015, let it be this one! We need your help getting the conservation movement back on track!

Click here to view or download our Winter 2015 newsletter.

Here is the table of contents:

Please DONATE NOW to help us turn things around!

Fish, wildlife, wilderness, and people are counting on us - and you!

Swan View Coalition wishes you a Happy New Year from high atop the Swan Crest!

We greatly appreciate your support of our work protecting the Swan Range and the greater Flathead River Basin from development and human misconduct!

We are currently involved in both public education and lawsuits to help protect bull trout, fisher, lynx, wolverine, grizzly bear, elk, and more.

These are the wildlife and wild places that have made Montana and American public lands famous, yet these sanctuaries are still threatened!

There are two days left to make a year-end contribution securely online or by sending a check to 3165 Foothill Road, Kalispell, MT 59901! Your gift is tax-deductible!

We had a great 30th year in 2014 and will continue fighting to secure quiet, calm habitats for fish, wildlife and people in 2015 and beyond!

With your support the sky is the limit!

THANK YOU!

Swan View Coalition wishes you a Happy Solstice and Holidays!

Whichever hemisphere you live in, today's Solstice offers an opportunity to reflect on our relationship to the natural world.

We hope you'll take ten minutes to watch this wonderful and empowering video.

"We are All One" shares an Indigenous Native American Prophecy that links all of life and the future of our planet.

We each hold the power to make a difference, in part by regarding "natural resources" as family rather than commodity.

We wish you the best this Solstice and Holiday Season!

The Holidays 2014 issue of Swan View's News celebrates the life of Martin Litton, our 30th anniversary, and asks you to support our uncompromising defense of America's wild lands!

Click here to view or download our Holidays 2014 newsletter.

Here is the Table of Contents:

Please DONATE NOW to support our work and help us raise the $20,000 needed to meet our year-end budget!

THANK YOU for your support!

Grassroots environmental groups from across the country have issued a letter to the U.S. Senate demanding the removal of damaging public land give-away "riders" attached to the must-pass Defense Authorization Bill!

The "rider" package has far too many give-aways of public lands and resources to merit support for its very meager designations of Wilderness.

Yes, the North Fork Flathead River and Rocky Mountain Front deserve protection from oil, gas and minerals mining - but not at the expense of removing protection from Wilderness Study Areas in eastern Montana near Otter Creek and the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge to benefit the coal, oil and gas industries!

Nor should these bills be packaged in the dead of night with provisions to give 70,000 acres of the Tongass National Forest to Sealaska Corporation for logging, nor granting National Forest land in Arizona to a foreign-owned mining company, among other horrible provisions!

Please take a quick minute TODAY to phone Senator Harry Reid (202-224-3542) and the Senators from your state (find phone numbers here).

Simply tell them you oppose the inclusion of public land provisions in the Defense Bill and want them removed!

Take action today before the Senate acts tomorrow!

Swan View Coalition is among the 47 organizations that signed the letter to the Senate, which you can read here.

Click here to read Montana Environmental Information Center's assessment of the rider's impact to eastern Montana.

Click here to read the Missoulian article about the late-night horse-trading by which Montana Senators Tester and Walsh, along with Representative Daines, made even more 11th-hour compromises to the already heavily compromised Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act - with no pubic hearings whatsoever.

Click here to read more details about the "Cost of Compromise" in the Missoula Independent!

Click here to read the 449-page Defense Bill public lands rider!

Make no mistake, these types of public land give-aways will become the norm by which big Wilderness groups get a little bit of Wilderness without telling you the true and unacceptable costs - unless you put a stop to it!

We are blessed with a beautiful Swan Range that is home to rare fish and wildlife. Thank you for your help protecting them!

Did you know the Swan Range is reported to have a higher density of rare wolverine than Glacier National Park?

Your support of our work has removed unlawful snowmobile trails and bridges from the Swan Range and our Citizen reVision of the Flathead Forest Plan protects more wolverine habitat than any other!

Your support helped us end the trapping of wolverine in Montana and is helping us use the courts to secure protection for them under the Endangered Species Act!

We thank you, the wolverine thank you - as do the grizzly bears, bull trout, pine marten, fisher, westslope cutthroat trout, pileated woodpeckers, and all the other critters that depend on clean water, wild country and big old trees.

May your Thanksgiving include time with family and friends - and maybe a hike on the wild side!

Your short email TODAY can help restore threatened bull trout via a better Recovery Plan!

When bull trout were listed as a threatened species in 1999, their numbers had already been reduced by 60%.

Yet the Revised Draft Bull Trout Recovery Plan would allow another 25% of local populations to disappear!

That's NOT recovery, and Fish and Wildlife Service needs to hear that from you loud and clear!

Please send a short email TODAY to fw1bulltroutrecoveryplan@fws.gov (comments due by December 3)!

Tell FWS to establish firm population, habitat and monitoring standards in its Recovery Plan that will ensure bull trout thrive in all areas they are found today and that will restore them to significant portions of their former range.

Click here for a more detailed 3-page alert prepared by Friends of the Wild Swan.

Click here to download a copy of the Revised Draft Recovery Plan.

THANK YOU for taking a moment to help protect the clean, cold waters needed by bull trout, other native fish and people!

(Photo credit: Joel Sartore/National Geographic Stock with Wade Fredenberg)

Your quick email is needed TODAY to avert a snowmobile disaster being planned for Jewel Basin and the northern Swan Range!

The Flathead National Forest wants to add its Anna Creek Cabin on the West Side Reservoir Road to its Cabin Rental Program.

But snowmobilers also want the West Side Reservoir Road snow-groomed in winter for quicker snowmobile access to the Anna Creek and Jewel Basin areas - even though snowmobiling is illegal in the Jewel Basin Hiking Area!

The inevitable result will be an increase in snowmobile violations of Jewel Basin and a flood of snowmobile activity in the essential habitats of grizzly bear, lynx, wolverine, and other sensitive wildlife in the northern Swan Range!

Please write a quick email to the Flathead at comments-northern-flathead-hungry-horse-glacier-view@fs.fed.us .

Urge the Flathead to 1) not rent the Anna Creek Cabin during wintertime and 2) not allow snow-grooming of the West Side Reservoir Road!

This is a disaster in the making and you can help stop it in its tracks! Please comment TODAY even though comments will be accepted until November 26!

Click here for the Flathead's letter inviting comments, though it is misleading in saying the area around the cabin is open to snowmobiling and by not mentioning simultaneous pressure to groom the road for quicker snowmobile access.

See the map above: the high country above Anna Creek Cabin is the Jewel Basin Hiking Area, which is closed to snowmobiles! Anna Creek Cabin is no place for a snowmobile base camp!

We've seen this deplorable situation develop along the Continental Divide, where grooming of the Skyland Road and wintertime rental of the Challenge Cabin is contributing to illegal snowmobile trespass into the Great Bear Wilderness and the Badger-Two Medicine, including near females grizzly bears with cubs just emerging from their winter dens. When required by its own Forest Plan to shut down the Skyland area, the Flathead instead simply shifts snowmobiling to the equally sensitive northern Swan Range!

We simply can't let this happen in the Swan Range!

Our Fall 2014 edition of Swan View's News describes our recent accomplishments and continuing challenges in protecting wildlife, wilderness and people!

It includes news of our recent lawsuit victory in the Swan Valley, calculates the carbon footprint of snowmobiling, asks you to write a quick note to keep DNRC and Stoltze Lumber from logging the Broken Leg and Crater Notch Trails, and announces our 30th Anniversay membership meeting for November 16th!

Remember to support our work by Nov 30 and Cinnabar Foundation will match your donation, doubling your money!

Click here to view or download our Fall 2014 newsletter.

Here is the table of contents:

Please DONATE NOW to support the critical work described in our newsletter!

Fish, wildlife, wilderness, and people are counting on us - and you!