The plant and animal communities of the Medicine Bow National Forest are facing a number of serious threats, which the Forest Service has, unfortunately, refused to address. For this reason, concerned citizens have come together to create their own management plan-a common sense alternative to the Forest Service status quo. The plan, entitled Keep the Medicine Bow WILD, is designed to protect and restore this incredible forest.

Plants and animals are not being given the protection they need.

• River otter, lynx, white-tailed ptarmigan, wolverine, gray wolf, grizzly bear, Audubon's big horn sheep, and American bison have all been driven to extinction on the Medicine Bow.
  
  
• Other plants and animals, like the Laramie columbine, the boreal toad, and the Colorado River cutthroat trout are close to extinction on this forest.

Logging on the Medicine Bow is damaging the environment and is diminishing the forest's wildness.

• The Medicine Bow is the most heavily logged national forest in the Southern Rocky Mountains.
  
  
• More than two-thirds of the forest have been heavily impacted by clearcuts and logging roads.
  
  
• Clearcutting is the most damaging type of logging and is not accepted by the public. Yet clearcutting is the rule and not the exception on the Medicine Bow.

Logging on the Medicine Bow National Forest is "fragmenting" the forest, cutting it up into smaller and smaller pieces.

• Forested migration and habitat corridors are being systematically cut down inside the Medicine Bow, and between this forest and the Colorado forests located immediately south.
  
  
• Many animals, like northern goshawk and pine marten, require large areas of continuous forest for survival. These animals are not able to find the nesting habitat, security, or food they need in the small patches left between clearcuts and logging roads.

The Medicine Bow is being damaged by irresponsible recreation.

• In the spring and summer, careless off-road vehicle users drive through riparian areas and wetlands, needlessly damaging wildlife habitat and harming water quality.
  
  
• Currently, snowmobiles can travel almost anywhere on the Medicine Bow-off road and often within sensitive biological areas, harming forest plants and animals living beneath the snow.
  
  
• Snowmobile use has more than doubled in the past few years on the Snowy Range. The Forest Service has taken no steps to address the environmental impacts associated with this new snowmobile boom.