As a follow up to the April 28th forum on "Protecting our Veterans and Our Forest," Transylvania Partners for Democracy is sponsoring this SAVE OUR FOREST petition.

SAVE OUR FOREST PETITION

We, the undersigned citizens of Transylvania County, oppose the recent executive orders and policies of the Trump Administration that will have a devastating impact upon our nearby forests and parks. 

President Trump’s Executive Orders, 14225, 14153, 14241, 14270, 14276 and 14285, eliminate environmental safeguards to allow private corporations to dramatically expand timber production and mining extraction on public lands and national parks here in western North Carolina and across America.

Even as these policies increase demands  on the National Forest Service and National Park Service, the Administration has instituted a 22 per cent reduction in their budgets, resulting in drastic cuts to programs and personnel that will degrade public access to our parks and dismantle environmental management, conservation and science-related programs that help to preserve the remarkable old-growth forests and complex eco-systems surrounding us here in Transylvania County and throughout the nation. 

In addition to opening public land to corporate interests, the Trump Administration has also proposed the transfer of dozens of our national parks to the states which would then be allowed to sell them to private interests, a plan for privatization outlined in Project 2025.  

The Pisgah National Forest and nearby parks and forests are critical to our financial well-being.  They attract more than 10 million visitors a year and contribute $200 million to Transylvania County’s economy.  But, if we see them defined only by their economic value, we have become the cynic described by Oscar Wilde: someone who knows “the price of everything and the value of nothing,"   As the National Park Service director wrote during World War II,  above all else, our parks and forests are America’s common inheritance, places that allow us all to  “grow mentally and spiritually as well as physically.”

We call upon our political representatives at the local, state and national level to save our forests for future generations from this administration’s reckless policies.