Contact Information
Keep the Medicine Bow WILD Alternative

A Threatened Forest
Much of the northeastern portion of the Sierra Madre Range of the Medicine Bow National Forest has been impacted by clearcutting. But important stands of forest remain. These last stands provide habitat to rare and imperiled animals like the boreal owl, pine marten, and northern goshawk. They help to protect hillsides and water quality from erosion. And, over time, they would become part of an important forested corridor that would allow sensitive wildlife to roam freely throughout the Sierra Madre Range.

A Giant Timber Sale
Regrettably, the Forest Service wants to log 2,200 acres of these last stands, an area the approximate size of 357 city blocks, in the mammoth-sized Blackhall-McAnulty timber sale. Making matters worse, the timber sale would include 240 acres of clearcuting, which means that every tree would be cut down in an area about the size of 240 football fields. Because trees grow so slowly on the Medicine Bow, we would need to wait hundreds of years for them to restore themselves and reach old-growth stature.

But, the sale would have other terrible consequences. It would destroy wildlife habitat and “fragment” the forest, or carve the forest into such small pieces that sensitive wildlife could no longer find safe passage through the area. In fact, this timber sale is within a wildlife corridor proposed by the Keep the Medicine Bow WILD Citizens’ Forest Plan, which would allow sensitive animals like pine marten, elk, and lynx to move freely between core wildlife areas.

Together, We Can Stave Off this Timber Sale and Protect the Medicine Bow
Right now, the Forest Service, under the anti-environmental Bush Administration, is under immense pressure to log as much of the Medicine Bow as quickly as possible. Only by raising our voices together again and again can this pressure be countered. Please send in a letter or email to the agency (postmarked by May 9) urging it to withdraw the proposed Blackhall / McAnulty timber sale. In your letter, you my also want to consider including the following points:

• End clearcut logging. Clearcut logging is the most environmentally harmful type of logging. Already, far too much of the Medicine Bow has been destroyed by this practice. It simply shouldn’t be done anymore.
• Restore, not destroy wildlife corridors. The forests of the Sierra Madre Range on the Medicine Bow National Forest once stretched across the landscape unbroken. Wildlife corridors must be restored on the Medicine Bow to protect the animals that need this type of habitat to survive. The Blackhall / McAnulty timber sale must not go forward because it would obliterate the area’s only potential wildlife corridor and isolate the Bear Mountain Roadless Area, which provides critical wildlife habitat, from the rest of the Medicine Bow.
• Naturally occurring fire, beetles, and mistletoe should not be used as an excuse to log. The forests of the Medicine Bow evolved over tens of thousands of years with fire, mistletoe, and pine beetle. Logging will never eliminate these processes and will only destroy the Medicine Bow's ecosystems.
• Build no more new roads. The Medicine Bow National Forest already has 3,000 miles of roads. The new roads proposed in the Blackhall / MacAnulty Timber Sale are harmful to wildlife, harmful to water quality, and are simply not needed.

Thank you for speaking out to protect the Medicine Bow. Your letter or email can be sent to:

District Ranger Scott Armentrout
Medicine Bow National Forest
PO Box 249
Saratoga, WY 82331

or

sarmentrout@fs.fed.us