Your email to the Flathead National Forest will help stop more of these logging road landslides from trashing fish and wildlife habitat!

Please send a quick email to Shawn Boelman at sboelman@fs.fed.us and tell him you want old logging roads decommissioned to protect water quality, fish and wildlife - not simply closed and ignored.

The Flathead already has 2,000 miles of roads like this one in Sullivan Creek demoted to Maintenance Level 1 Basic Custodial Care, where they don't receive the care needed to keep their ditches and culverts from plugging and then washing the roads into your trout streams!

(Another 1,400 miles are open to public motor vehicle use and have their own costly maintenance issues).

The Flathead is accepting public comments on its draft Travel Analysis Report, which would simply abandon even more old logging roads rather than carefully decommission them to remove culverts and sediment source problems.

Click here to visit the Flathead's Travel Analysis Report web page.

Click here to read our comments on the Travel Analysis Report.

Click here to read our additional comments on the Travel Analysis Report, made in light of our discovery of slumps in the Sullivan and Quintonkin Creek roads.

Click here to read the Hungry Horse News Article about our discovery of the recent Sullivan Creek landslide.

Click here to read our press release about the Sullivan Creek landslide.

Click here for our letter to state and federal agencies urging that all old logging roads in Sullivan Creek be decommissioned.

Click here to read the Flathead's "Assessment of the Sullivan Creek Mass Failure," which claims it was nature's fault.

Click here to read our response to the Flathead's "Assessment of the Sullivan Creek Mass Failure."

Click here to read the Flathead Beacon's article about the Flathead National Forest still insisting it is an innocent bystander and intends to ignore this road as it continues to collapse, rather than promptly fixing more potential problems further up the road!

Click here to see our video of the Sullivan Creek landslide.

Swan View Coalition and its president, Keith Hammer, were recently featured in the Flathead Beacon!

Did you know Keith Hammer is a former logger and Forest Service employee (as are other members of the board of directors)?

Click here for a really good article about the history and background of Swan View Coalition and co-founder Keith Hammer!

Our Summer 2014 edition of Swan View's News describes how new Forest and Travel planning rules dovetail with the Wilderness Act of 1964!

It explains how now, more than ever, we need to advocate for more Wilderness designations and wildland recovery!

Be among the first to DONATE NOW and Cinnabar Foundation will again double your money!

Click here to view or download the Summer 2014 newsletter.

Here is the table of contents:

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

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

The Hungry Horse News has reported on our contention that areas to be logged on the Flathead National Forest should not be nearly doubled in trade for a bit of recommended wilderness!

This is what would happen under the Whitefish Range Partnership Agreement and the Flathead is proposing to similarly increase logging areas (the suitable timber base) forest-wide.

If you haven't already, please send a quick email to Flathead Forest Supervisor Chip Weber at flatheadplanrevision@fs.fed.us and tell him you oppose relaxing protections for threatened grizzly bears and threatened lynx in order to increase the suitable timber base - under the Whitefish Range Partnership or elsewhere on the Forest!

F.H. Stoltze Lumber Company, a Whitefish Range partner, sued the Flathead in 1976 when it tried to decrease its suitable timber base to better protect water quality and because "taxpayers couldn't afford road building costs necessary to cut old growth" that extensively! And now it has partners Montana Wilderness Association and Headwaters Montana saying "all parts of the [Whitefish Range Partnership] Agreement must move forward together," which is otherwise known as horse trading!

Fish, wildlife and people cannot afford to have the Flathead's suitable timber base inflated once again and they need more than a handful of roadless lands protected as wilderness!

Again, please email the Flathead Forest Supervisor at flatheadplanrevision@fs.fed.us and tell him fish and wildlife need all roadless lands recommended for Wilderness and a reduced suitable timber base to protect critical habitats, not a bunch of horse trading!

If you recently received an alert from Montana Wilderness Association and Headwaters Montana, we urge you to NOT endorse the logging increase called for in the Whitefish Range Partnership Agreement.

As the alert indicates, the substantial increase in the Flathead National Forest's "suitable timber base" would require the removal of Endangered Species Act protection of the threatened grizzly bear.

Here's what the alert does not detail about the Agreement:

1. Existing protection of grizzly bear habitat would then be relaxed to allow more logging!

2. The Agreement would "challenge existing lynx management strategies" to increase the suitable timber base in this threatened species' critical habitats also!

The Flathead National Forest seized on this idea the moment it was announced and has proposed to increase the suitable timber base forest-wide, not just in the Whitefish Range!

Don't let the government use your endorsement of the Whitefish Range Partnership as a vote to "de-list" the grizzly bear and weaken protections for griz and lynx forest-wide.

Tell Forest Supervisor Chip Weber you don't support the Agreement's proposal to increase logging at the expense of grizzly bear, lynx and other wildlife - email flatheadplanrevision@fs.fed.us !

Click here and a bit more on why this is such a bad idea will appear below.

Swan View Coalition testified before a Federal Advisory Committee on May 29, 2014, detailing how "collaboration" on the Flathead National Forest is being used to marginalize the best available science and those who use it to protect fish and wildlife. Click here to read Keith Hammer's testimony.

Hammer's testimony includes links to sources indicating the Whitefish Range Partnership intended to front-load the Flathead National Forest's Forest Plan revision collaborative by being "first out of the chute." His testimony and that of F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber's Paul McKenzie (a Partnership member) showed that the Partnership's proposal to nearly double the lands slated for logging in the Whitefish Range was indeed applied across the Forest during the Forest-wide collaborative and involves relaxing standards for the protection of threatened grizzly bear and lynx habitat.

Our Winter-Spring 2014 edition of Swan View's News announces our 30th anniversary, the Wilderness Act's 50th, and invites you to join our Citizen reVision of the Flathead Forest Plan!

It also describes how corruption at the Udall Foundation, a federal agency charged with managing collaboration and conflict resolution, has helped poison the Flathead Forest Plan "collaboration."

Click here to view or download the Winter-Spring 2014 newsletter.

Here is the table of contents:

Please DONATE NOW to support the critical work and investigations described in our newsletter.

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

Please send a quick email today to help secure Wilderness in the Northern Swan Range!

Email the Flathead Forest Plan Revision Team at flatheadplanrevision@fs.fed.us .

Urge them to recommend Wilderness designation for all roadless lands in the Northern Swan Range in their new Forest Plan!

Thank you!

Visit our swanrange.org page for more information.

Please take one minute, one click to support our proposal for Flathead Forest Plan revision - the "Citizen reVision!"

We've sent a proposal to the Flathead National Forest that would create a Forest Plan favoring the conservation of fish, wildlife, wild lands, and quiet recreation over the excessive logging and mechanized recreation that have put many species on the path to extinction.

Clicking here will set up your email message to the Flathead National Forest, its planning contractor Meridian Institute, and to us so we can add you to the list of folks supporting the Citizen reVision! Just add your name and any further comments to your email, then hit "send."

Or simply email keith@swanview.org and we'll take care of things for you!

Our Citizen reVision would promote human health and address climate change by leaving more carbon-storing trees in the forest and by cutting back on the miles of roads and motorized vehicles wasting fossil fuels.

You can read or download a two-page summary of the Citizen reVision here.

You can read or download the entire Citizen reVision here.

Thank you for taking a moment to support fish, wildlife and quiet recreation on the Flathead National Forest!

"Many foresters have long assumed that trees gradually lose their vigour as they mature, but a new analysis suggests that the larger a tree gets, the more kilos of carbon it puts on each year."

This new study reported in the journal Nature helps counter the Forest Service and industry argument that logging native and old forests will help sequester more carbon in the younger vegetation and help reduce global warming.

Even more work remains to be done, however, to convince the Forest Service and industry to leave dead trees in the forest to continue sequestering and recycling carbon. The Department of Agriculture recently awarded a $10 million grant to five universities and Northern Rockies research stations to figure out how to turn dead trees into biofuels. Read the Missoulian article here and our response to it here.

It is time to work with nature, not against it!