WASHINGTON – A nationwide coalition of environmental groups released a new report today that identifies the national forests at greatest risk from logging and documents the Bush Administration’s attempts to eliminate public oversight of environmental laws. Greenpeace and the National Forest Protection Alliance (NFPA) released Endangered Forests, Endangered Freedoms in response to the Administration’s unprecedented attacks on America’s national forests. For the second year in a row, the Black Hills National Forest of western South Dakota made the top ten list of Endangered Forests.

"The Black Hills are home to an astonishing diversity of native plants and animals," said Jeremy Nichols of Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. "And yet in recent decades, the Forest Service has subjected this unique and fragile ecosystem to an unprecedented onslaught of chainsaws and bulldozers, with no regard for its natural treasures."

Forests were selected based on several criteria, including water quality, road construction, the presence of endangered and threatened species, timber sale volume and economics, and the percentage of remaining old-growth and roadless areas. In addition to the Black Hills, other Forests among the 10 most endangered were Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest (Ariz./N.M.), Bitterroot National Forest (Mont.), Chequemegan-Nicolet National Forest (Wis.), George Washington-Jefferson National Forest (Va.), Kootenai National Forest (Mont.), Mississippi’s National Forests (Miss.), Plumas National Forest (Calif.), Tongass National Forest (Alaska), and Umpqua National Forest (Ore.).

"Because the high plains, the boreal forest, and the eastern hardwood forest all meet in the Black Hills, this area is an ark that bears a unique collection of native plants and wildlife," added Nichols. "But animals like the northern flying squirrel, mystery vertigo snail, and northern goshawk are in imminent danger of disappearing as a direct result of mismanagement and unsustainable logging."

In the 1800s, the Fort Laramie Treaties ceded the Black Hills to the Lakota tribes, and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that later deals granting these lands to the United States were illegal and invalid. "For more than a century, the United States has failed to enforce these treaties, and the sacred Black Hills continue to be degraded and desecrated by all manner of exploitation and development," noted Charmaine White Face of Defenders of the Black Hills.

Dr. E.O. Wilson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning ecologist with Harvard University, joined the groups to call for an end to logging in these national treasures. "Scientists have reached a deeper understanding of the value of the National Forest System that needs to be kept front and center," said Dr. Wilson. "They represent a public trust too valuable to be managed as tree farms for the production of pulp, paper and lumber. The time has come to free national forests from political partisanship, and to use their treasures to benefit all Americans."

In recent years, controversy has swirled around forest fires in the Black Hills, which have been used as an excuse for accelerated logging. "Logging the last big, fire-resistant yellowbark pines in the Norbeck, Beaver Park, and Sand Creek roadless areas will not reduce the fire risk on the Black Hills," noted Bryan Brademeyer, Black Hills Regional Director for Native Ecosystems Council. "The problem has been the ongoing 'logging on demand' that over the past century has reduced the Black Hills National Forest to a fire-prone jack-pine thicket of saplings and poles."

The report lists specific actions taken by the Bush Administration to achieve its pro-logging agenda:

• limiting the public’s right to participate in decisions affecting their public lands;
• using stealthy administrative rule changes to undermine fundamental environmental laws, such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act;
• using the threat of wildfires to give timbers companies access to remote intact forests for logging;
• dismantling rules that protect forests from roadbuilding and commercial development; and
• turning over large tracts of National Forest land to logging companies under the guise of "Stewardship Contracting."

"Endangered Forests, Endangered Freedoms provides the American public with a detailed and scientific account of the current ecological state of the National Forest system," said Jake Kreilick, Project Coordinator of NFPA. "By citing direct evidence of environmental damage in 10 particularly endangered forests, it paints a grim picture of the Bush Administration’s mismanagement of our public lands."

"This fight is not just about saving trees," said John Passacantando, Executive Director of Greenpeace. "We are fighting for the principle that some places in this country are so special that they belong to all Americans. And we are fighting for the right of the people to have a say in the future of those places."

The National Forest Protection Alliance, which includes Greenpeace, is a coalition of 120 grassroots conservation groups from all over the U.S. committed to ending the commercial exploitation of federal public lands, beginning with the federal timber sale program. The report’s release coincides with National Forest Protection Lobby Week, in which activists from all over the country have come to Washington, D.C. to pressure Congress to protect and restore our national forests. In late June, NFPA and Greenpeace will be holding an "action camp" in Montana, a week-long training on nonviolent tactics and methods of protecting America’s endangered forests. The report is available at www.greenpeaceusa.org.