Number: 1989-09
WHEREAS, working to ensure the sound management of our Nation’s forests is a high priority for the National Wildlife Federation and its affiliates; and
WHEREAS, ongoing management and planning activities of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) influence the long-term health and productivity of our National Forests; and
WHEREAS, the rangelands of the National Forest System are subject to growing public awareness and concern over their management due to changing lifestyles, economic factors and environmental pressures; and
WHEREAS, the USFS has, in response to these changing times, concerns and pressures evaluated new measures to manage rangelands whereby livestock grazing will become a tool for improving vegetation and the promotion of ecological diversity; and
WHEREAS, increasing importance is being placed on non-commodity forest values by a growing number of Americans, yet the USFS’s budget and management priorities clearly have favored timber harvesting and non-renewable resource extraction; and
WHEREAS, maintenance of biological diversity is critical to ecological health of our National Forests; and
WHEREAS, the USFS’s practice of building roads into unroaded and sensitive areas to access economically and environmentally unsound timber sales and other extractive activities is bad policy;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the National Wildlife Federation in annual meeting assembled March 16-19, 1989, in Arlington, Virginia urges the USFS to emphasize the protection of fish and wildlife habitats, and the conservation of soil, water, trees, and plants in budget and policy decisions; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the National Wildlife Federation encourages the USFS to acquire, where appropriate, additional lands to protect their forest resource values by inclusion in the National Forest System; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the National Wildlife Federation calls upon the USFS to protect biological diversity by managing the remaining ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest — a unique and diminishing resource — to protect their irreplaceable ecosystem values and preventing the conversion of diverse ecological communities on National Forest lands to single-species tree farms; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the National Wildlife Federation supports the Forest Service’s “Change on the Range” initiative.