United States House of Representatives

Washington, DC 20515

Re: Oppose H.R. 2936, an Attack on Our Forests, Environmental Protections, and Public Input

Dear Representative:

The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) works to turn environmental values into national priorities.  Each year, LCV publishes the National Environmental Scorecard, which details the voting records of members of Congress on environmental legislation.  The Scorecard is distributed to LCV members, concerned voters nationwide, and the media.

LCV urges you to vote NO on H.R. 2936, the Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017, which would severely undermine bedrock environmental laws and ultimately harm, rather than protect, our national forests. This bill would allow for environmentally devastating projects without the necessary environmental checks required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), dramatically expanding exclusions ideally meant only for non-controversial forest management practices. Among several environmentally harmful provisions, the bill includes language that would allow for harmful logging and road building in currently protected areas and even a section that would effectively repeal the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument’s protections under the Antiquities Act.

By promoting commercial logging on a massive scale at the expense of sound environmental review and exempting huge projects without adequate safeguards, this bill represents another attempt by the radical leadership in Congress to meddle in the science-based decision making process that should be made by experts at the U.S. Forest Service and other land management agencies under existing law. Furthermore, by reducing public participation through the NEPA process, waiving the ability for citizens to challenge harmful logging projects in court, and limiting the rights of citizens to recover attorneys’ fees when they prevail in court, this bill curtails the public’s ability to engage in our forest management process.

The goal of our nation’s forest management should be to make forests more resilient to the impacts of climate change, drought, and excessive wildfires, but this bill does nothing to achieve those goals.

We urge you to REJECT H.R. 2936. We will strongly consider including votes on this bill in the 2017 Scorecard.  If you need more information, please call my office at (202) 785-8683 and ask to speak with a member of our government relations team.

Sincerely,

Gene Karpinski

President