Please Attend Flathead Forest Plan and Grizzly Bear Meetings!

It's time to reaffirm wildlife protection, not abandon it!

The Forest Service is holding open houses in Kalispell and Missoula, June 20 and 22, to unveil its Draft EISs for a revised Flathead Forest Plan and grizzly bear management amendments on four other Forests.

Fish and Wildlife Service is holding a hearing in Missoula July 7 to take public comment on grizzly bear de-listing in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem that includes these five Forests!

While you have until October 3 to comment on how five National Forests, including the Flathead, propose to manage the NCDE grizzly bear, NOW is the time to start learning about it.

At either the Kalispell or Missoula open houses you'll be able to look at maps much larger than you'll find on-line and ask questions of Forest Service staff. Both are from 2 - 6 pm and don't involve formal presentations, so you can attend as long or little as you wish. The Kalispell open house is at the Forest Supervisor's Office, 650 Wolfpack Way. The Missoula open house is at the Hilton Garden Inn, 3720 N. Reserve Street.

You can read two pages about the various documents and open houses here and can download the planning documents here. 

We want to keep Flathead Forest Plan Amendment 19 from Alternative A to retain the best management of roads to protect grizzly bears, bull trout and other fish and wildlife. But we want the much larger areas of recommended wilderness that are included in Alternative C, which was written in part to reflect our Citizen reVision alternative and would finally ban motorized vehicles from the old trail network in the Krause Basin Wildlife Management Area pictured above!

We'll have more specific recommendations for your comments later in the summer. But make no mistake about it, Alternatives B, C and D as currently proposed would greatly reduce the broad protection of grizzly bear habitat from what is in the current Forest Plan, pave the way for their de-listing from the federal Endangered Species Act and result in sport killing of them under Montana State hunting management!

To help right away, you can SIGN UP NOW for a ten-minute slot to speak out July 7 in Missoula against this weakening of grizzly bear management and against plans to de-list them! Swan View Coalition will be speaking first-up at the FWS hearing, which runs from 1 - 4 and from 6 - 8 pm at the Double Tree Hotel, 100 Madison Street. Simply .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) to schedule a time slot to speak. You can also submit written comments to FWS by July 22 to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or to Grizzly Bear Recovery Office, USFWS, University Hall, Room 309, Missoula, MT  59812.

You can learn more about the July 7 hearing here and you can email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if you want suggestions for what to say or write to FWS.

Don't be intimidated by all this - we are here to help you navigate the bureaucracy and do good things for fish and wildlife! THANKS FOR YOUR HELP!

 

 

This article published on June 16, 2016 • [Permalink]