Students, activists prove key in historic forest preservation act

Barr is an organizer and campaign coordinator for UCLA
CALPIRG.

By Kathleen Barr

President Clinton announced a historic preservation plan on
Friday that will protect 60 million acres of our national forests
from further road-building, logging, mining and other destructive
activities. National forests are an invaluable part of our heritage
and our environment, and this announcement is a victory for all. As
Jim Lyons of the U.S. Department of Agriculture declared,
“There are certain landmark events in the history of
conservation; this clearly is one of those.”

California Public Interest Research Group here at UCLA, along
with other student PIRGs and environmental groups nationwide, has
been working for the past several years to ensure the preservation
of national forests for future generations. CALPIRG would like to
congratulate and thank every student who played a role in saving
our wild forests, whether by volunteering, interning, pledging or
signing a poster. Student activism demanded that the government
protect our wild areas, mobilized the public and won a victory for
the entire country.

The road to this forest preservation victory has been long. The
plan originally laid out by the forest service allowed most types
of logging to continue in our forests, and did not include any
protection for the 19 million-acre Tongass National Forest in
Alaska, America’s last rain forest and one of the most
magnificent wild places in North America. In response, CALPIRG
launched a massive campaign to show President Clinton that
Americans really care about preserving their public lands.

Last year, CALPIRG and its coalition partners in the Heritage
Forests Campaign delivered over 1.5 million public comments to the
president in support of conservation, which is by far the greatest
number of public comments ever received by the government on any
environmental issue. Students across the country played a huge role
gathering postcards and signatures to send to the president,
educating their communities through media and public forums, and
also called the White House directly to demand a strong roadless
policy.

During the fall quarter, students sent in 500 postcards and
gathered 600 signatures urging wilderness preservation, and held a
one-day phone call blitz, during which 180 UCLA students called the
White House to demand a strong forest policy. UCLA CALPIRG students
did an incredible job educating their school and the Los Angeles
community about the importance of wilderness preservation and
political activism.

As a result of determined work by students and activists across
the country, President Clinton listened to the public voice and
announced a substantially stronger Roadless Area Conservation Rule
this Friday. But while this is a landmark conservation victory, his
announcement is not the end of the fight.

Even before the decision was announced, special interest groups
and their political allies promised to contest the plan.
Representative John E. Peterson (R-PA) declared, “I will do
everything in my power to stop it,” while Shawn Keough,
executive director of Associated Logging Contractors, recently
said, “To allow a policy like this to go unchallenged would
be a travesty.”

To allow special interests to overturn a preservation plan
overwhelmingly supported by the public would be the true travesty.
In order to prevent this, CALPIRG will keep fighting the good fight
for the public interest.

CALPIRG works each quarter on environmental, consumer and other
public interest issues; we are able to win and sustain victories
such as the forest decision because of the involvement of UCLA
students. Students interested in interning for credit or
volunteering with CALPIRG this quarter should contact us in 320
Kerckhoff Hall or call 310-289-6595. Please join us out on Bruin
walk today from 10-2 p.m. to celebrate the forest victory with
refreshments.