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The Feather River Ranger District of the Plumas Nation Forest is now proposing to spray herbicides on thousands of acres of your public lands. These actions are risky and unnecessary. The time is now to stand together and demand that our public forestlands are managed with alternatives to toxic chemicals.

Californians for Alternatives to Toxics (CATs) is strongly opposing the "Slapjack Project" which plans to spray herbicides under the guise of vegetation management. 2,048 acres of brush and as much as 2,000 acres more of weeds are scheduled to be needlessly doused with toxic chemicals. The spray areas are in dangerous proximity to waterways, reservoirs, and residential areas (Forbestown, Challenge, Woodleaf, Clipper Mills, Feather Falls, and Dobbins). These actions will put both humans and the environment at great risk from toxic chemicals.

The Forest Service does not need to use herbicides for the Slapjack Project to be successful. Fuel breaks can be effectively maintained and invasive weeds successfully controlled by integrating prescribed burns, goats, pulling, digging, cutting, and re-vegetating with desirable and competitive native species.

Please find a sample letter below addressed to Slapjack Project ID team leader, Susan Joyce, of the Feather River Ranger District, protesting the proposed plan's heavy use of chemical treatments and lobbying to incorporate reasonable, non-toxic alternatives. If you would like to join CATs' efforts to stop toxic spraying on this project, please sign and mail the letter (or write your own), and/or call (530) 534-6500, or email the Plumas National Forest (comments-pacificsouthwest-plumas@fs.fed.us) and let them know that you don't approve of toxic chemical spraying in your national forestlands.

Please talk to your family and community members, pass this message along, and help rally against the use of pesticides in our national forests and public lands. The more people who speak out against these proposed spray plans, the more effective our voice will be.

On behalf of CATs, I commend you for your dedication to protect your health and environment from the unnecessary use of pesticides, and thank you for assisting in our efforts to minimize pesticide use in California. For more information regarding CATs' efforts to combat pesticide projects in our public forestlands please link see http://www.alternatives2toxics.org/publicforests.htm.

Sincerely,

Pete Harrison
Forestry and Public Lands Program Associate
Californians for Alternatives to Toxics

P.S. Offering to volunteer on noxious weed removal teams even a couple times a year could be the most influential action you could take to persuade the Forest Service to reconsider their current spray plans.