From Audubon.org
One of America’s most precious and endangered habitats is under siege — again.
Contrary to its own policies, the Obama Administration is rushing through a massive old-growth timber sell-off in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska — the largest sale of its kind in decades. This industrial level logging could put many vulnerable bird species at risk.
Audubon has joined with other conservation groups in federal court to stop this malicious sell-off of America’s globally important coastal temperate rainforest.
The ancient coastal woodlands of the Tongass are home to many bird species that depend on old-growth forests for their survival. Native species include nearly a third of the world’s Red-breasted Sapsucker population and at least 20% of the global population of pacific-slope flycatchers. Marbled Murrelets — listed under the Endangered Species Act in Washington, Oregon and California — are old-growth-dependent birds that rely on Tongass old growth to support healthy populations.
Perhaps most at-risk from the so-called Big Thorne timber sale is the Queen Charlotte Goshawk, an old-growth dependent raptor. Only 300 to 700 breeding pairs of these birds survive in the wild. The proposed timber sale would degrade goshawk habitat, perhaps past the point of no return.
The Big Thorne timber sale would put 120 million board feet of old-growth trees literally on the chopping block. What’s worse, this is only the first of four massive logging incursions proposed by the US Forest Service.
Four years ago, the Obama Administration said it was bringing to an end the era of massive and destructive logging in the Tongass. This latest sale, sadly, is a giant step in the wrong direction.
Exposing the Big Game 
I am sick about this, The Tongass give away was part of the last bipartisan “compromise” in the budget bill! 75,000 acres for logging the last refuge of the Alexander Archipelago wolf, also being considered for listing under the ESA. This folks is what tragedy looks like. If you have never seen a rainforest clear cut, it made me fall to my knees and weep. I saw it in BC about 12 years ago and will never forget the devastation. As we move forward into irreversible climate change we need ot be revitalizing forests not cutting them down for home depot lumber. WTF
anyone have any ideas about where to write or to organize to oppose, please post and sign me in
I hope it can be stopped in court. All of this Administration’s talk about climate change is just that – talk. Logging our last remaining temperate rain forests, weakening the ESA, selling oil leases for the next 30 years, no action on Keystone, how is this preparing for climate change?
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