On Sunday, May 26 at 10 a.m. you’re invited on a guided hike through public forests threatened by the “Lower North-South Vegetation Management” outside Sedalia. The 3-mile, slow-to-moderately-paced hike will include identifying birds and rare, medicinal, and edible plants threatened by logging, along with evidence showing how this project will harm wildlife and the climate, all while increasing the risk of wildfire spreading to local communities.
Hike leaders include:
Audrey Boag is a consulting naturalist whose studies of the vocalizations, behaviors, and habitat requirements of songbirds and raptors have served to further awareness and protect habitat in Front Range parks and private properties.
Gwen Kittel is a botanist/ecologist who specializes in native plants, conservation ecology, and wetland and riparian ecosystems.
Rocky Smith, Forest Management Analyst.
Josh Schlossberg, Colorado Organizer for Eco-Integrity Alliance.
Bet you didn’t know that millions of acres of Colorado’s biodiverse, carbon-storing forests are on the chopping block? That’s because much of this unprecedented logging is being rushed through behind the scenes under the guise of an “emergency,” a false premise debunked by the vast majority of peer-reviewed science, while agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service and County Parks and Open Space keep the public in the dark.
One of the most egregious is the “Lower North-South Vegetation Management” scheme, 116,600 acres of logging (including clearcuts up to 40 acres) in the Pike-San Isabel National Forest in Jefferson and Douglas Counties, 87,000 acres falling within seven protected Colorado Roadless Areas.
According to the Forest Service, intensive logging would take place in “the largest and least human-impacted area remaining in the Rampart Range, [which] forms…a critical core area for wildlife at the edge of the rapidly growing Interstate 25 urban corridor” as well as in a “near-pristine example of a Colorado front range transition zone between montane and plains ecosystem.”
Declaring this fake emergency means bypassing parts of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and skipping analysis of impacts to resident wildlife listed under the Endangered Species Act, including the Mexican spotted owl, Pawnee montane skipper, Preble’s meadow jumping mouse, and threatened Canada lynx.
Since only a handful of media outlets have chosen to cover the impending “Colorado Chainsaw Massacre,” the only way to find out what we’ve got to lose is to see for yourself.
RSVP for location by emailing eia@eco-integrityalliance.org
Eco-Integrity Alliance 