Thanks everyone for signing our petition. We appreciate your support.

It’s been two months since one of the last tiny handful of adult female grizzly bears in the Yaak Valley was brutally poached and mutilated, then dumped in a driveway. The killer or killers have still not been found despite a significant reward being offered. Now, even as the remaining twenty or so grizzlies sleep deep beneath the snow, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) is proceeding with the mega-project Black Ram timber sale in the heart of their habitat. This travesty of a sale MUST be stopped—help the Yaak grizzlies, please. The USFS purports to make the Yaak’s ancient forests “resilient” by clearcutting them. The proposed sale also will harm the Yaak’s last grizzlies’ habitat by clearcutting in designated grizzly core territory.

No place-specific climate science was applied to the lightweight report filed by the USFS, which last week mowed over objections by the public without answering any of them and sent off the recommendation to log ahead. Add your signature here to let the Biden administration know the Trump era of no science and giant clearcuts is over. The northwest corner of the Yaak should become the nation’s first Climate Refuge. The Yaak bears in hibernation now should not awaken in the spring to the rutted mud and burning gashes of Black Ram’s multitude of clearcuts.

The Black Ram timber project on the Kootenai National Forest (MT) would chainsaw 2,011 acres of clearcuts, cut 4,038 acres of forest for commercial logging, log nearly 600 acres of old forest, destroy habitat for the imperiled grizzly bear, and is based in part on a cookie-cutter climate analysis that denies the project’s impacts on carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas pollution. A decision is expected within days.

Ask the USDA to Stop Black Ram
Kevin Shea, Acting Secretary U.S. Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Avenue, S.W.
Washington, DC 20250 kevin.a.shea@usda.gov

Thanks again everyone for signing and helping protect these rare 25 grizzlies and their habitat.