June 13, 2002
from Rick Bass
Sorry to have been out of the loop for so long! It's a wet cool June--the
first Western tanager sighted June 11. A fair year for long-toed
salamanders. The does are birthing their fawns, the mosquitoes are in full
roar. There are some discussions, disagreements, with the local Forest
Service about proposed fire salvages following the fires of 2000--about
which trees are fire-killed, and which have survived--and local
environmentalists will be monitoring these results. We're concerned that
clearcutting all trees, live and dead, will lead to worse overstocking of
fine-fuels (and greater arididty) than simply removing the fire-killed
only, and are very concerned about the spread of weeds, in clearcuts.
The Roadless Initiative, which would have protected the Yaak's
15 little "gardens" of public roadless lands, was overturned by a federal
judge in Idaho who said it was a "band-aid" approach, and the Bush
administration failed to defend the roadless rule in court. So--no
surprise--letters are needed. Please write to the following people--as
well as your own Senators and Representatives--and tell them that you want all
of the nation's last roadless lands protected, and the last 15 little
wild gardens in the Yaak, particularly.
Dennis Rehberg
U.S. House
Washington, D.C. 20515
Senator Conrad Burns
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
Senator Max Baucus
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
Bob Castaneda, Supervisor
Kootenai National Forest
1101 Highway 2
Libby, MT 59923
Dale Bosworth, Chief
U.S. Forest Service
P.O.Box 96090
Washington, D.C. 20090
Yaak Valley Forest Council (a local pro-roadless group)
155 Riverview
Troy, MT 59935
I hiked up into the Flagstaff roadless area earlier this month, in the
Yaak, and looked down over the expanding town of Libby, and across the
river to the narrow spine of the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, and back
north to the dark little basin of the Yaak, with its 15 little pockets of
unprotected wilderness, and thought what a hard place it is, in this
century, to be a bear--how difficult the paths of travel have become, in
an increasingly fragmented landscape.
Please write a short letter today, and send a copy of it to those
addresses. Thanks again--
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