Last Chance to Help Stop Blackwater (WV) Logging

TO FOREST SERVICE ON BLACKWATER CANYON TRAIL
LOGGING ROAD PROPOSAL!

From Judy Rodd, Director, Friends of Blackwater Canyon

Dear Friend:

The United States Forest Service has extended until February 3, 2003 a public comment period on the proposal by the timber company Allegheny Wood Products, owned by John Crites, to turn the scenic Blackwater Canyon Trail, on Monongahela National Forest land, into a commercial logging road. Thank you if you've already sent in a scoping comment!

The Forest Service has not decided - repeat, has NOT decided - whether or not to let Crites turn the Canyon Trail into a logging road. The Forest Service is currently only deciding what to study (this is called a "scoping" process) -- in order to make a decision at a later time about the road proposal.

During this short but important scoping process, it is critical that thousands of people tell the Forest Service to prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement ("EIS"). Lesser studies, like environmental assessments, do not look at a proposal in depth. Only with an EIS can the Forest Service properly evaluate all of the interconnected and cumulative impacts and threats of this most dangerous and unwise proposal.

Because so much is at stake, won't you please take just a few minutes - today - and continue your help in protecting the Canyon and its creatures? Go to http://www.saveblackwater.org/ and click on "Action Alert," and you can quickly create and send your comments by e-mail.

HOW TO CONTACT THE FOREST SERVICE:

1. *** Go to Save the Blackwater. Click on "action alert" and follow the directions. ***

2. Write: US Forest Service, Clyde Thompson, Supervisor, 200 Sycamore St., Elkins, WV 26241

3. Phone: (304) 636-1800, fax (304) 636-1875.