Help Stop Forest Service Meddling in the Palisades Wilderness Study Area!

The Forest Service (FS) is accepting comments on its ill-conceived proposal to burn up to 1.7-plus-million acres of the Targhee National Forest in Wyoming via the approval of a Categorical Exclusion (CE), meaning without proper environmental analysis or public input. The Targhee is part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and critical habitat for native wildlife such as wolves and grizzly bears. The FS’s prescribed fire would impact the Palisades Wilderness Study Area (WSA), plus Recommended Wilderness and Inventoried Roadless Areas.

Please speak up today for the Palisades Study Area! Comments are due December 30.

The Forest Service’s plan would trammel the Palisades WSA despite the agency’s obligation to manage the area to preserve its wilderness character, which includes not interfering with natural processes. Additionally, it is unclear to what degree helicopter use or mechanical treatment (read cutting of trees)—both of which are generally excluded in Wilderness—would occur in the WSA.

The Jedediah Smith and Winegar Hole Wildernesses are not included in this burn plan, but the FS could ignite fires up to the wilderness boundaries of these areas as well. The impacts of this action—which could include helicopters or other motorized transport or use of chainsaws to cut trees adjacent to Wilderness—are not considered in the Categorical Exclusion.

If these impacts to the Palisades WSA, and potentially to the Jedediah Smith and Winegar Hole Wildernesses, weren’t bad enough, the project area is far too large and the information far too limited for the Forest Service to make any kind of informed decision using a Categorical Exclusion as it did.

Please speak up today and ask the FS to abandon its plan for prescribed fire and other impacts to the Palisades WSA.