Resident upset over out-of-state 'watch dog' environmental groups

Boundary County officials and business leaders should be applauded for representing this county's interests in the distant Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Their adversaries are formidable. The Wild West Institute and the Lands Council are small, but they are well connected and funded, and staffed with young, very well educated, highly motivated ideologues.

These groups apparently oppose virtually any kind of silvicultural practice on public lands.

They have shown themselves to be deeply distrustful, if not hostile to local decision making on local resource issues.

Our forestlands are perhaps our single most important economic and natural asset- most people don't live and work here because this is Boundary County, not Kansas.

It is in the best public interest and an environmental necessity that we have forests that are healthy, reasonably firesafe, properly stocked, and productive in the twenty-first century.

I see two central issues revolving around this Mission Brush thinning project:

The first is that these projects are designed to improve forest environment and need to be defended as such, especially in such venues as the Ninth Circuit. Otherwise you are gonna lose most every time.

The claim made by the Lands Council that thinning 4,000 acres (the size of a moderately sized farm) would "deeply harm the region's ecosystem" is blatantly untrue and should be vigorously challenged.

I also think that these self described environmental groups need to be held accountable.

Especially, the spotlight needs to be shone on who they actually represent, and their agenda, which is very arguably neither practical or environmentally friendly.

Elected officials and government employees are accountable to the public- why not these groups?

Which brings up issue number two.

These self styled environmental watchdogs can claim, in effect, to represent the local public on local environmental issues in lawsuits which they,in fact, initiate.

This is because we have no local standing committee on forestland issues representing a cross section of the community.

We need such an organization to discuss issues, arrive at broad concensus, and advise elected officials and government agencies.

I think such a committee is the best thing the KVRI could do for this community-

Thank you,

Cleve Shearer

Bonners Ferry