Help the Forest: Email Comments to Supervisors and Attend the Meeting Wednesday!

Forest friends:

It’s rare that we reach out to you two weeks in a row, but we need your help to protect the Cleveland National Forest!

The County Board of Supervisors will meet THIS Wednesday, June 25, to set guidelines which will determine the fate of the forest.

Last week, we contacted you with information about the Forest Conservation Initiative (FC), which was overwhelmingly approved by voters in 1992 to establish 20 uninterrupted years of forest protection. It was widely supported by the public, local governments, and high profile individuals, and has fulfilled its purpose of protecting the health and stability of the forest.

However, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors will meet THIS Wednesday, June 25, 9:00 a.m., at the County Administration Center, 1600 Pacific Highway, Room 310, San Diego, CA to consider plans to replace these longstanding protections, and we need your help.

The FCI is the first item for discussion. Click HERE for a PDF of the agenda and HERE for the Staff Report.

The Cleveland National Forest Foundation has strongly urged the San Diego County Planning Commission, and now the Board of Supervisors, to consider the environmental and legal concerns of removing FCI protections. There is an excellent piece posted at Voice of San Diego today by renowned climate change expert Dr. Michael Soulé, also urging the County to re-adopt the FCI. Please share this piece and the opportunity to help with your friends!

If you would like to help, please plan to come speak at Wednesday’s meeting!

Letters of support for the Forest Conservation Initiative can also be sent via email to the Supervisors and Board Clerk.

Feel free to use this draft language, and adapt it to discuss why preserving the Cleveland National Forest is important to you:

Dear Supervisors:

San Diego proudly protected its forest by a resounding vote of the people when it passed the Forest Conservation Initiative in 1992. Land within the Cleveland National Forest should remain protected.

Since the FCI was adopted, the San Diego region has experienced the impacts of devastating wildfires, and we are only now beginning to understand the impacts of climate change to our local water supply and fire conditions.

If the forest is not protected by a re-adoption of the protections as they were implemented by the Forest Conservation Initiative, San Diego’s growing population WILL sprawl into newly developed lands within the forest boundary. The increased fire danger, diminishing water supply, and impacts to habitat will endanger human life and wildlife. This is unacceptable.

I urge you to direct staff to include all the protections initially embodied in the Forest Conservation Initiative at your June 25 meeting by including the standards set by the FCI in the EIR for the General Plan Amendment.

Sincerely,

Emails can be directed to the following addresses:

[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

Please send your emails as soon as possible for consideration by the Board, and feel free to copy me on your comments at [email protected] for CNFF’s records.

Feel free to email this to friends. You can also share this link via email, Twitter, or Facebook.

For the future,
Duncan McFetridge
Director
Cleveland National Forest Foundation
Po Box 779
Descanso, California 91916
619-659-8962
Web: cnff.org
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Twitter: twitter.com/transitsd