Former U.S. Forest Service Employee Spotlights The Damage The Endangered Species Act Has Caused The Northern Rockies

The following letter was sent as testimony to the Montana Legislature in support of H.B. 321, which called for nullifying the federal Endangered Species Act in Montana. It was sent by former U.S. Forest Service employee Ken Guy. And while this bill did pass the Second Reading with a 61 to 39 vote, it is expected to die. This is one of the pieces of legislation that Governor Schweitzer has deemed a waste of the state legislature's time, and which he would not sign if it did reach his desk.

Ken Guy says it like it really happened. He knows...because he was one of those dedicted foresters who were forced to do whatever the Department of the Interior wanted.

Very eye openning. - Toby Bridges, LOBO WATCH



From: Ken Guy
To: senator@tester.senate.gov; max@baucus.senate.gov; tom.schultz@mail.house.gov
Subject: Endangered Species Act
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 15:06:58 -0600

This letter is in response to the State Legislators in Helena who are considering the nullification of the Federal Rare and Endangered Species Act. I believe it should be nullified and these comments are intended to help them decide to nullify the thing. I thought you might be interested.-----------Ken
________________________________________

From: guys2006
To: krayton@kraytonkerns.org
Subject: Endangered Species Act
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:56:47 -0600

Legislators: These comments refer to the Federal Endangered Species Act. I would like these comments read and included.

I am a retired Federal Forest Service employee. I was the one to establish a Grizzly Bear Coordinator position and a Wolf Coordinator position in the Regional Office of the U.S. Forest. (We knew not what we did.) Following this the Feds with the environmentalists passed the Rare and Endangered Species Act. Following that we stopped management activities anywhere near the wolfs and the bears so as not to disturb them. Following that the Forest Service went downhill, closing off more and more land for the rare and endangered, and the forests are now essentially closed and hardly a stick of timber is being cut and sold. Now the economy and thousands of jobs are gone, both federal F.S. jobs and private industry jobs. They can't return until the infrastructure is returned, that is, the mills and the loggers etc. I believe this to be the objective of the Act and the intended outcome. It used to be the those wanting the forests' to be closed would do local things like pouring sand in the gear boxes of the heavy logging equipment on evenings and weekends, pound spikes in the trees to break band saws, chain themselves across the roads to stop logging trucks and so on. This was all after the Bitterroot Scandal where there was a citizen uprising against clear cutting in the early years of the 1960's. The F.S. stopped the practice except for some small acreage locations. I called those trespassers at the time radical environmentalists. They did lots of other damages too, such as shoot out the windmill gear boxes on grazing allotments, drain water from cattle water tanks and troughs, then post no trespassing signs on govt. property in an attempt to keep others off Government property and so forth.

You see, there are National Forests that were set aside for "use", and then National Parks set aside for "recreation".. They would like to see all the "use" activity stopped. The Rare and Endangered Species Act along with the National Environmental Policy Act and a group of similar Acts were joined in to finish off and "Kill" the Forest Service. The Forest Service is now gone....oh, there is still a clerk in there to answer the phone. The new efforts seem to be to set aside large areas to create more wilderness.

The Environmentalists have made ghost towns throughout the Pacific north " west. We at one time cut 2.2 MM board feet of timber per year and provided KV funds to schools, and to communities in Montana . We operated the F.S. like a business and provided over two billion dollars per year to the General Fund. So I ask you, is that what you want now, no jobs, no thriving economy, bug killed trees and a red forest, and a dead Agency.

But then it's going on all over the country here and elsewhere. This is the Treasure State . But our treasure is locked up by the environmentalists and can't be used. All in the name of environmentalism....coal, oil and gas, the use of water, forage, wild life, recreation, mining, and you name it, it ain't being used.....look at California, the counties of Bakersfield and Fresno, the breadbasket of the U.S. for vegetable crops, and they can't use water for irrigation any longer. I have seen the country and it's all brown grass where once there were vegetables as far as the eye could see. So I ask you, Is that what you want? Is that representing us the people. We have to decide.

Do we want the Snail Darter little fish and the Kangaroo Rat to rule,....the Polar Bear supposedly disturbed, as by their own studies to show that we are killing the planet. Do you believe their data any longer? I believe there are about 70% of us out here that think the planet is being killed but not by the average citizen. Stop the wolves etc. and stop the Rare and Endangered Species Act. I'll be 80 soon and I have never seen it so bad. You folks did it to us along with the other legislators. Now we expect that you may want to correct past practices. The original environmentalists were the foresters.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

Ken Guy


This Goes Hand-In-Hand With The Following Post...