We need your help TODAY to stop Congress from attaching damaging logging riders to the pending must-pass spending bill!

Pro-logging members of Congress, including a number of western democrats, are attempting to boost logging, boost "collaboration" and weaken public environmental review of logging projects.

This is being done by attaching controversial, secretive "riders" to the upcoming must-pass Appropriations Bill!

The Forest Service supports streamling the National Environmental Policy Act to speed up logging projects, largely delegating NEPA's widespread public involvement to small groups of local collaborators. Companion authority to increase Congressional funding of  private "collaborative partners" is also being sought!

In other words, Congress is trying to take another giant step behind closed doors to buy "public support" for damaging logging projects, leaving most American citizens behind!

Please call the Capitol Switchboard RIGHT NOW at 202-224-3121! They will direct your call so you can leave a message for your Senators and Representatives to not allow logging riders to be attached to the Appropriations Bill! 

Or, you can find your Senators' Contact Information HERE and your U.S. House of Representative's Contact Information HERE!

Please also call the White House at 202-456-1111 to help insure President Obama does not follow the Dept. of Agriculture and Forest Service down this disasterous path!

You can read about the pending riders to the Appropriations Bill at http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060029355 .

THANK YOU for taking a few minutes to ACT TODAY!

Our Holidays 2015 newsletter celebrates spirited grass-roots conservation, faith, passion, and the support of our members!

We include encouraging words from Thich Nhat Hanh, Pope Francis, First Nations, and American Indian Tribes.

We report on Keith Hammer receiving the prestigious Macfarlane Plank Award from Friends of the Clearwater, thank you for meeting Cinnabar's Challenge Grant with your donations, and ask for your help raising $16,000 in December to meet our year-end budget!

Here's our newsletter's table of contents and you can click here to view or download it as a pdf:

We hope you enjoy the newsletter and will continue to support our work!

Fish, wildlife, wilderness, and people are counting on us - and you!

Swan View Coalition wishes you a Happy Thanksgiving!

We give thanks for a wonderful places to live, nearby public lands that are such a huge part of them, and to all of you that help us keep it that way!

May your Thanksgiving include lots of time with family and loved ones!

This is the last call to have your donation matched by Cinnabar Foundation!

Won't you DONATE NOW to help us restore quiet habitats for fish, wildlife and people? Your donation will do double-duty if received this week!

And don't forget our Annual Membership Meeting is Sunday, November 22, at 4 pm. Join us at the Mountain Brook School Library, 2353 Foothill Road, for a quick recap of our accomplishments and election of officers. At 5 pm we'll have a potluck dinner and no-alcohol social hour, followed by a regularly scheduled Swan Range Community Music Jam Session. So come on over and stick around for some good fun and music!

Nearly two-thirds of our work is supported by individual donations from people just like you, so please hit the DONATE NOW button today or send a check to 3165 Foothil Road, Kalispell, MT  59901!

Thank you!

Only a few weeks left to have your support of our work doubled by Cinnabar Foundation!

Won't you DONATE NOW to help us restore quiet habitats for fish, wildlife and people? Your donation will do double-duty if received soon!

And don't forget our Annual Membership Meeting is Sunday, November 22, at 4 pm. Join us at the Mountain Brook School Library, 2353 Foothill Road, for a quick recap of our accomplishments and election of officers. At 5 pm we'll have a potluck dinner and no-alcohol social hour, followed by a regularly scheduled Swan Range Community Music Jam Session. So come on over and stick around for some good fun and music!

Nearly two-thirds of our work is supported by individual donations from people just like you, so please hit the DONATE NOW button today or send a check to 3165 Foothil Road, Kalispell, MT  59901!

Thank you!

Facts are getting in the way of attempts to blame fires on a lack of logging and to blame a lack of logging on environmental lawsuits!

Greenwire reports Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell told a U.S. House Subcommittee hearing on the matter Thursday that only 5% of Forest Service timber sales were taken to court this year, while 16% of the timber sales failed because the timber industry simply refused to buy them!

And an abundance of research shows the importance of not trying to replace or follow fire with logging: "There is substantially less high-intensity fire now than there was historically, prior to fire suppression policies, and this post-fire habitat deficit is worsened by extensive post-fire clearcutting on national forests and private lands, and by landscape-level mechanical 'thinning' designed to further suppress fire, making snag forest habitat the most endangered forest habitat type in the U.S."

However, these facts hardly sway Congress as it works alongside the Forest Service and industry to perpetuate the lie that public forests are sick and need a logging "cure!" Congress and the Forest Service are, in fact, paying collaborators that help perpetuate these lies! (See our recent newsletter and our letter to editors in this regard. Click here for more details and supporting documents showing how the Forest Service is paying collaborators.)

We need your help stopping the perverse waste of your tax dollars trying to replace ecologically beneficial backcountry forest fires with subsidized, ecologically destructive logging!

Click here to Donate Now and your contribution to our work will be doubled by Cinnabar Foundation!

Thank you!

Our Summer-Fall 2015 newsletter looks at the politics of logging and wildfires, and tracks the millions of dollars the Forest Service is paying its collaborative "partners!"

That's right, the Forest Service is using Congressional funds to pay its collaborative "partners" millions of dollars, some of whom are then asking Congress for more money and urging it to ignore those who "oppose collaborative approaches to forest management!"

Yet, midstride in complaining about too little logging of public lands and blaming it on presumably "non-collaborative" conservation groups, the entire Montana Congressional delegation is now urging the Forest Service to slow down and extend logging contract deadlines due to a glut of timber on the market!

Remember to support our work by Nov 30 and Cinnabar Foundation will match your donation, doubling your money!

Here's our newsletter's table of contents and you can click here to view or download it as a pdf:

We hope you enjoy the newsletter and will continue to support our work!

Fish, wildlife, wilderness, and people are counting on us - and you!

A celebration of Bruce May's life will be held Sunday, June 7, 2015 at the Whitefish Community Center, 121 Second Street, Whitefish, MT, from 3-6 pm!

Join Bruce's wife, Elaine Snyder, family and friends in this celebration and potluck dinner.

Bruce was a fisheries biologist with Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks and an avid volunteer, helping stop the proposed Kootenai Falls Dam and helping secure better protection for fish, wildlife and wildlands in Northwest Montana!

Bruce died April 23, 2015. Click here for his full obituary.

Our Spring 2015 newsletter provides a bit of background and 7 points we'd like you to consider making in your comments on the Proposed Revised Flathead Forest Plan by May 15!

It also invites you to join us for an inspiring Wilderness Slide Show and Book Signing by Frederick Swanson on May 13!

You can use the PDF version of the newsletter to cut and paste your comments to the Flathead, or you can CLICK HERE to download, print, sign, and mail a FORM LETTER!

You can also click here to listen to our Montana Public Radio interview on why these comments and bold, science-based proposals like our Citizen reVision are so important!

Here is the newsletter's table of contents:

Please DONATE NOW to help us continue digesting 500-page federal documents into short newsletters and single-page action alerts!

Fish, wildlife, wilderness, and people are counting on us - and you!

Please take a moment NOW and write an email to the Flathead National Forest, which wants to institutionalize and highlight ORV use of the wildlife-rich Krause Basin in its new draft Forest Plan!

Send a quick email to flatheadplanrevision@fs.fed.us and make the following points:

1. The 1988 Noisy Face Recreation Plan intended to phase out ORV use of Krause Basin by prohibiting ORV races, reducing ORV routes by half, and requiring that remaining ORV routes "will not be marked on the ground."

2. The 1995 Flathead Forest Plan Amendment 19 finds that the Krause Basin area has more than twice the density of motorized routes allowed and only half of the grizzly bear security required by Forest Plan standards.

3. It is high time to close the ORV routes to motorized vehicles to provide adequate security for grizzly bear, calving elk, wolverine, and lynx.

4. These routes and wildlife habitat can better accommodate lower-impact uses by foot, ski and mountain bike that have become increasingly popular, while maintaining peace and quiet in the adjacent Foothills Road neighborhood.

5. The new draft Forest Plan's Management Area 7 "Focused Recreation Area" emphasizing "motorized trails" is absolutely unacceptable for Krause Basin and contrary to the goal of limiting human uses to those that don't trash wildlife security (as are Swan Lake Ranger District's plans to illegally mark the ORV routes on the ground)!

Click here to download a petition that makes the above points, sign it along with a handful of your friends and associates, then mail it to us at the address provided on the petition.

The Forest Service has had 26 years to reduce ORV use and abuse to levels that protect fish and wildlife. Now it wants to head in the opposite direction and at the expense of lower-impact, quiet recreation! DON'T LET THEM!

Click here to find more details on the history of legal protections for Krause Basin, on pages 4-6 of our 60-day notice of intent to file suit in this matter.

PLEASE ALSO ATTEND the Forest Plan meeting/open house Tuesday, March 17, from 5:30 - 7:30, at the Flathead Forest Supervisor's Office, 650 Wolfpack Way, west of Costco and Glacier High School!

While we handle the legal stuff, YOUR VOICE IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY TO SHIFT THE POLITICS IN FAVOR OF QUIET RECREATION, FISH AND WILDLIFE!

We'll issue several more alerts over the next two months as we dig deeper into the new proposed Flathead Forest Plan!

THANK YOU!