SFK Sign-on Letters

19 April 2018

Joint comment letter to Los Padres National Forest on a timber project in an inventoried roadless area without benefit of any environmental review.

21 March 2018

Sequoia ForestKeeper supports renegotiating NAFTA to increase civil and environmental protection

15 February 2018

SFK and 39 other organizations encourage Gongress to protect roadless areas.

14 February 2018

Seventy-five Minnesota, regional and national groups, including Sequoia ForestKeeper, the League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Parks Conservation Association, and Sierra Club, have signed this letter opposing the advancement of HR 3115 or any similar legislation in the Senate.

26 January 2018

Sequoia ForestKeeper comment on the BLM 90-day scoping 211 mile Alaska Road EIS - Notice of Intent and Extension of Time To Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for the Proposed Ambler Mining District Industrial Access Road, Alaska.

12 January 2018

Letter which SFK is a signatory from California Chaparral Institute to CalFire about their DEIR for fuel treatments for the state’s proposed Vegetation Treatment Program (VTP). With so much loss of life and property during the 2017 fire season, the prescriptions don't protect people and seriously rob wildlife habitat.

22 November 2017

Petition to President Trump, Secretary of the Interior Zinke, and members of Congress from 20 organizations requesting Interior work to reduce the impacts of grazing on public lands. A petition was placed on petitions.whitehouse.gov but President Trump has removed the public's access to the goverment website.

23 October 2017

Multiple organizations strongly opposes HR 3115 that seeks to compel the U.S. Forest Service to exchange 6,650 acres of contiguous National Forest land with PolyMet Mining Corp. for a proposed open pit copper-nickel sulfide ore mine. The PolyMet mine is deeply controversial and poses a threat to water quality, exceptional wetlands, endangered species, and Treaty-reserved rights and resources. Recent polling shows that a majority of Minnesotans are opposed to the proposal.

26 June 2017

Letter from 39 organizations voicing strong opposition to H.R. 2936, the “Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017”. The bill overwhelming assaults the nation’s public lands and waters, and environmental laws. The bill severely undermines the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), eliminates citizen opportunities to seek judicial relief, allows millions of acres of currently protected roadless areas vulnerable to harmful road building and logging, reallocates funds under the Secure Rural Schools Act away from environmental restoration to timber production, dismantles interagency consultation integral to the Endangered Species Act, and puts national monuments designated under the Antiquities Act at risk. Among its problematic provisions, the bill creates multiple sweeping NEPA waivers; limits consideration of alternatives to the preferred action and no action alternatives; imposes 2-month deadlines on certain environmental assessments; and undermines citizens’ ability to enforce the law.

8 June 2017
Multiple groups expressed their opposition to HR 1873, Electricity Reliability and Forest Protection Act.

18 May 2017
Support for Assembly Joint Resolution 15 – Protecting California’s national monuments and the integrity of the Antiquities Act. These organizations wrote to California legislators Assemblymember Aguiar-Curry and Senator Dodd to thank them for championing an effort to re-state California’s ongoing commitment to national monuments. The groups urge the legislature to pass Assembly Joint Resolution 15 (AJR 15) in time for the June 8th anniversary of the Antiquities Act. On May 5, 2017, the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) announced a review of certain national monuments designated or expanded since 1996 under the Antiquities Act of 1906 in order to implement President Trump’s Executive Order 13792 dated April 26, 2017. The Secretary of the Interior will use the review to “determine whether each designation or expansion conforms to the policy stated in the Executive Order and to formulate recommendations for Presidential actions, legislative proposals, or other appropriate actions to carry out that policy.”1 The DOI notice identified twenty-seven National Monuments under review – including seven in California – and has invited comments to inform their review.

10 April 2017

This letter to the California Air Resources Board is to address their Proposed 2017 Climate Change Scoping Plan Update (“Proposed Plan”). The signers are fourteen individuals representing ten organizations and groups that work directly with low-income residents and residents of color who are disproportionately impacted by industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and climate change. Our comments reflect our concerns that climate change solutions must protect all Californians, starting with those already overburdened by air pollution and climate change.

4 April 2017

Letter to Senator Charles Schumer requesting that he call for a roll call vote for Sonny Perdue's nomination to lead the US Department of Agriculture. Governor Perdue is a long time anti-consumer and pro-industrial agriculture and chemical corporate business person.The undersigned organizations oppose his nomination.

14 November 2016

A letter asking Congress not to repeal rules protecting native wildlife on Alaska’s National Refuges and Preserves.

August 4, 2016

In this letter sent today to the State Water Resources Control Board (State Board) and the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) eleven organizations including SFK raised a fundamental concern with the process for exempting drinking water sources from the protections of the Safe Drinking Water Act in order for oil and gas companies to inject wastewater into aquifers.
“The use of already depleted groundwater aquifers to dispose of oil field wastewater is a wasteful, unreasonable use of water. The State Board has a duty to nullify this wasteful, unreasonable use of our aquifers, and to recalibrate and rebalance the groundwater system in light of current and likely future droughts and other threats posed by climate change.”

May 9, 2016

This letter from 81 non-profit organizations, opposes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) proposal to remove grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) as threatened from the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA).

April 6, 2016

One hundred fifty-six organizations sent this letter urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to initiate proceedings to develop and adopt sufficiently protective new water quality standards for the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary, because of the continuing failure of the California State Water Resources Control Board to follow the Clean Water Act.

March 28, 2016

This letter from 74 conservation organizations, applauds the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) proposed changes to regulations governing Alaska refuges as part of the proposed rule titled “Non-subsistence Take of Wildlife, and Public Participation and Closure Procedures, on National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska.

March 23, 2016

Some mountain bikers are attempting to amend and weaken the Wilderness Act. Sequoia ForestKeeper was one of 116 conservation organizations from across America that asked Congress to oppose attempts to amend and weaken the Wilderness Act and Wilderness protections by allowing bicycles in designated Wilderness. For over a half century, the Wilderness Act has protected wilderness areas designated by Congress from mechanization and mechanical transport, even if no motors were involved with such activities.

January 27, 2016

Amicus Brief about East Reservoir Project in Kootenai National Forest - Amici’s (impartial advisers to the court for this particular case) interest in this matter is twofold. First, this case illuminates one of the most relevant issues in public lands today, local influence over forests that belong to the American public. Amici have an interest in ensuring that local interests and influence, which ultimately serve certain private interests, will not be given undue weight in an assessment of the legal merits of East Reservoir project -- a project that will heavily impact lands owned by the American people and their interests. Second, National forests, including the Kootenai National Forest, offer some of the most intact ecosystems which exist in the West, and often serve as the last refuge for threatened or endangered species such as the Lynx and the Grizzly Bear at issue in this case. Amici have an interest in ensuring that the East Reservoir Project will not unnecessarily damage this ecosystem and will adequately protect threatened and endangered species in compliance with the law.

http://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=34594

January 12, 2016