**Your Calls are Needed to Stop the Bush Logging Plan! Please call our
Senators Harkin and Grassley as soon as possible Wednesday at (202) 224-3121
and urge them to oppose the Healthy Forest Initiative.**

TALKING POINTS
The message is simple. Just tell the staff person you speak with that you
are calling to urge the senator to vote to *oppose* the Healthy Forest
Initiative and FOR the Leahy, Boxer, Bingaman and Cantwell amendments to
H.R.1904.

As early as Wednesday the Senate could vote on a slightly altered version of
the Bush Administration's ill-named Healthy Forests Initiative. The
Cochran-Wyden-Feinstein deal does little to improve upon the original
version of the Healthy Forests Initiative, also know as HR 1904, and still
fundamentally fails to require agencies to prioritize protection of homes
and communities in a way that we believe is critical to ensure protection of
at-risk communities.

In fact, the bill will allow federal agencies to spend up to half of the
funds authorized in the bill on *projects located far away* from at-risk
communities. Moreover, the bad compromise deal supported by  Senators
Cochran, Wyden, and Feinstein still seeks to interfere with the independent
judiciary, cut the heart out of the National Environmental Policy Act, and
undermine the public's legal rights to meaningfully participate in decisions
affecting our public lands.

We are concerned that the measure will open the forests to new logging yet
do little to protect the thousands of Americans whose homes and communities
stand next to forests. Several U.S. Senators have promised to offer
amendments to ease some of its worst provisions and to provide real help to
protect citizens against forest fire. We must tell you that odds are tough
for these amendments, but there's a chance we might prevail if we can reach
enough members of the Senate. That's where we need your help. Please take a
moment today to contact our U.S. Senators.

Like every other American, you have doubtless seen images of the
terrible brush fires sweeping through Southern California.
They've been frightening, destructive and deadly. The impulse to
help is strong and human and worthy. Less worthy, though, is the
insistence of some members of Congress to use this tragedy to
ram a bad fire bill through Congress. They claim the legislation
would have prevented the Southern California fires. We know, and
they know, that it would have done no such thing.

The fires are burning not just on federal land but on private
land. And they are burning in vegetation (chaparral) that would
never be thinned and would probably not be subjected to
prescribed burns, either. In sum, these are not public land
forest fires.

There are four amendments in particular that can greatly improve
the legislation now before the Senate (good amendments):

--Sen. Patrick Leahy's (D-VT) amendment to strike the bill's
provisions that interfere with our established national system
of judicial review; those provisions are unwarranted and unwise.

--Sen. Barbara Boxer's (D-CA) amendment to direct that 70
percent of the money the bill authorizes must be spent where it
can truly help: within a half-mile of communities and within
roughly 130 feet of homes.

--Sen. Jeff Bingaman's (D-NM) amendment to appropriate $100
million per year to fund fuels reduction projects on the
non-federal land that makes up nearly 85 percent of places where
our homes meet the trees, the "wildland-urban interface" as it
is called.

--Sen. Maria Cantwell's (D-WA) amendment to strike from the bill
the provisions that cut the heart out of NEPA.

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