hat we do: The Sierra Club's Forest Protection & Restoration campaign works to protect and restore healthy forest ecosystems and sustainable local economies, preserve our National Forests, and protect communities from the danger of fires.

Environmental Update Main

Overview Wildfires 101 Roadless Forests Illegal Mine Threatens Wild Forest Get Involved Reports More About Forests Recommended Reading

Environmental news, green living tips, and ways to take action: Subscribe to the Sierra Club Insider!

Update: Sierra Club's Monumental Legal Victory Saves Forest with World's Largest Trees

In June, the Sierra Club scored a huge victory in our decade long struggle to protect Giant Sequoia National Monument. Here's the background: The monument was set aside by President Bill Clinton, but unfortunately he chose the U.S. Forest Service to administer the area. Since the Bush Administration took over, we have seen a steady stream of proposals to continue destructive commercial logging within the monument. In the past two years, we have won a series of legal victories against the Forest Service and the timber industry, blocking a pro-logging Monument Management Plan and four large timber sales from going forward. The timber industry originally refused to take no for an answer, and prepared an appeal of our victory in the logging case. However, last month it dropped its appeal ending this latest threat of commercial logging in the monument.

This recent development concludes our successful litigation and secures our resounding victories. We should all celebrate, but we can not rest easy until we have a new Giant Sequoia National Monument Plan in place that protects the monument's natural values rather than the timber industry's profits. We also believe that the Forest Service has proven it cannot be trusted to manage this monument in a manner that protects the natural environment. The National Park Service has demonstrated on the adjacent Sequoia National Park a better way to manage for a healthy sequoia ecosystem. This is why we will continue our campaign to transfer the monument to the National Park Service. We wish to thank our local volunteer leaders who have fought in the trenches for years to defend these giant sequoia groves and the surrounding ecosystem; our great legal team who skillfully brought us this series of legal victories; and the hundreds of thousands of Sierra Club members nationwide who raised their voices and gave us their financial support to make this victory possible.

Feature: Let's Protect Communities First

Whatever our differences with the timber industry, the Forest Service and the Bush Administration on other forest management issues, we should all agree that every community at risk deserves protection and that the highest priority is providing protection where it is needed most: in the Community Protection Zones.

Wildfires 101

Feature: The Tongass - Waste, Fraud and Abuse in America's Rainforest

At nearly 17 million acres, an area the size of West Virginia, the Tongass National Forest is the largest reserve of coastal temperate rainforest in the world. Stretching for more than 500 miles along the southeast coast of Alaska, the Tongass covers an island landscape fragmented by narrow inlets and glacier-carved fjords.

Today, the U.S. Forest Service is continuing a pattern of waste, fraud and abuse in the Tongass. For over 50 years, private timber companies have targeted the biggest ancient trees in our country’s largest National Forest. One of the most disturbing things about this history of clear-cutting and reckless destruction is that it has all been subsidized by American tax dollars.

On January 12 2007, the US Forest Service proposed a new draft management plan that leaves the majority of roadless old growth forests open to commercial logging. The Tongass National Forest is now the only National Forest in the country where roadless areas are not protected from logging and road construction. The irony is that the new plan is required by a court decision that found the Forest Service had illegally doubled the estimate of market demand for timber. This poor analysis was driving them to propose to log over 250 million board feet in wild forests although the timber industry had only bought less than 50 millon board feet on average over the last six years. The Bush administration should be focused on protecting all of the wild roadless forests of the Tongass -- not proposing more logging schemes at taxpayer expense.

Take Action! Help Stop Taxpayer Subsidies for Logging Wild Alaskan Forests
Factsheet: Congress Should Hold the Line Against Logging Subsidies
Factsheet: Example of Forest Service Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

Book: The Last Stand: The War Between Wall Street and Main Street over California's Ancient Redwoods
By David Harris

The Last Stand is a compelling American saga of greed gone wild and a small town divided over a precious natural resource. David Harris is a journalist whose work has regularly appeared in Rolling Stone and The New York Times Magazine.

More about this book | Buy online

Other books about Forest Protection & Restoration.