The challenges posed by unemployment and climate change create a powerful opportunity to revitalize our economy while restoring the backbone of our wellbeing: our natural heritage. Safeguarding our natural resources — our forests, rivers, prairies and other wildlands — in a warming world will protect and create jobs across the country today, while investing in our country's future.
An overlooked opportunity to sequester carbon on National Forests rests with its massive road system.
Preliminary analysis by TWS has indicated that returning unneeded Forest Service roads back to a natural state would be equivalent to revegetating an area larger than Rhode Island. We estimate that carbon storage from decommissioning and revegetating unneeded roads on our national forests is 39.5 — 48.5 million metric tons.
The Forest Jobs and Recreation Act will permanently protect nearly a million acres of spectacular backcountry throughout western Montana, including nearly 700,000 acres as wilderness. This includes some 25 spectacular places conservationists have fought hard to preserve for decades. In addtion, the bill:
These charts detail the total number of acres leased for energy production on federal public lands versus the total producible acres. Data covers the years 2001 - 2008.
This five-part presentation by our Director of Economics, Pete Morton, provides a cautionary tale for those proposing to increase natural gas drilling – based on the lessons learned from the recent natural gas drilling boom in the Rockies.
This map shows how the designated West-wide energy corridors run directly to existing and proposed coal fired power plants, facilitating the continued reliance on this dirty fossil fuel.