PROTECTING THE WILD PLACES WE CALL HOME.
[VOTE NO TO PROTECT FORESTS FROM EXPANDING FUELS REDUCTION]
Impacts on Lands
Public Lands Logging
Proposition 137 would divert half of its $175 million in Coloradan’s tax dollars—$83 million every year—to fund tens of thousands of acres of annual public lands clearcutting and industrial “fuels reduction” logging, often targeting mature and old-growth trees.
This logging would degrade and destroy natural forests—including within our most intact ecosystems—devastate the habitat of threatened and endangered species, compact and erode soil, create perpetual sedimentation of our watersheds and drinking water, increase carbon dioxide emissions and dangerous particulate exposure, and heat up and dry out local microclimates.
Habitat Destruction
Colorado’s policies on logging public lands fall directly in line with an executive order to expand timber production and the Department of Agriculture’s subsequent declaration to fast track getting out the cut across 59 percent of National Forests under the guise of wildfire , including in Roadless Areas, endangered species habitat, and old-growth forests.
Prop 137 would devastate Colorado’s wildlands and wildlife while not only doing nothing to protect communities from wildfire but likely increasing the threat to our homes, livelihoods, and lives.
Who We’re Up Against
The measure’s main backer, the $1.8 billion annual budget “working land” management NGO, The Nature Conservancy, has taken hundreds of millions in public funding to carry out industrial logging, livestock ranching, and other extraction schemes to hand over public resources to private corporations on public lands.
These deep-pocketed special interests are financing Prop 137’s logging after ignoring a letter from twenty Colorado conservation groups asking if there would be any limits whatsoever to the scale and scope of the public lands extraction they wish to finance…the letter didn’t even get a response.