For far too long, the Medicine Bow National Forest has been managed almost exclusively to benefit logging corporations, at the expense of wildlife and wildlands. To turn the tide, local residents have drafted their own management plan, based on over 400 scientific studies, to protect and restore this amazing forest and all the diverse wildlife that make it their home. The Keep the Medicine Bow WILD Plan will:

Only 7% of the Medicine Bow is currently protected as wilderness. Many of the forest's untamed areas, like the wild Rock Creek Canyon and the ancient ponderosa pine forests of Laramie Peak, should be preserved for wildlife and the enjoyment of future generations. The Keep the Medicine Bow WILD Plan will protect these and other special places by managing all of the forest's roadless areas as wilderness or other special designations.

Clearcutting is the most environmentally damaging type of logging and is not accepted by the public, yet it is still the rule and not the exception on the Medicine Bow. The citizens' plan will end clearcutting, and allow only less damaging types of logging.

On the Medicine Bow, the last remaining islands of continuous forest are isolated in a sea of clearcuts and logging roads. The citizens' plan will restore habitat connections to allow wildlife to move freely into new areas and migrate between their winter and summer homes.

The forests of the Rocky Mountains evolved with natural processes such as mistletoe, pine beetle, and fire for millions of years. And if these processes are eliminated, the forests becomes less a forest and more a tree farm. To keep the Medicine Bow forests wild and healthy, the Citizens' Plan will restore natural processes to their rightful place within this forest ecosystem.