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OUR MISSION
Our goal is to ensure ecological management of our National Forests by ending the federal timber sales program and eliminating its system of perverse economic and political incentives that undermine science and threaten native wildlife and forest ecosystems.
ABOUT THE JOHN MUIR PROJECT
The John Muir Project is dedicated to ensuring ecological management of our federal public forestlands—management whose goal is to provide optimal ecological conditions to support and restore the full complement of native biodiversity in these forest ecosystems, which have been severely degraded and damaged by decades of commercial logging and suppression of wildland fires. JMP recognizes that the federal timber sales program is the primary obstacle to true ecological management of our national forests and other federal forestlands. Land managers’ budgets and salaries depend in large part upon timber sales receipts generated by logging projects on our public lands, and logging corporations, who get rich by purchasing government timber for pennies on the dollar, aggressively lobby Congress to continue the U.S. government’s commercial logging program on our federal lands. This highly politicized system of perverse incentives forces otherwise well-meaning agency managers to ignore or subordinate the needs of native wildlife species in favor of lucrative commercial logging projects. Ecological science is routinely either ignored or misrepresented by federal land managers in their attempts to publicly justify destructive timber sales as being somehow ecologically benign or beneficial. Old growth trees are felled, and often entire forests are razed or heavily degraded by the resulting logging. Post-fire timber sales clearcut entire watersheds, removing tens of thousands of acres of vital post-fire habitat (standing snags, downed logs, and patches of shrubs, conifer regeneration, and hardwoods) upon which so many wildlife species depend. Science itself is undermined. JMP believes that the federal timber sales program must be ended in order for ecological management of our national forests and other federal forestlands to occur. The John Muir Project utilizes forest legal defense work, scientific research, and public education to ensure that our National Forests are managed for ecology, recreational enjoyment, and scientific study.
OUR HISTORY
The John Muir Project is a project of Earth Island Institute, a
nonprofit environmental organization founded by David Brower. Earth
Island Institute was founded in 1982 with the mission of developing
and supporting projects that counteract threats to the biological
and cultural diversity that sustains the environment. These Projects
create a consortium of grassroots campaigns that operate independent
from one another yet benefit from collective experience and ideas.
Earth Island provides these Projects with administrative support
and operates as their fiscal sponsor. In the Spring of 1997, under
the guidance of David Brower, Mr. Chad Hanson and Mr. David Orr became
part of the Earth Island consortium when they launched the John Muir
Project.
About John Muir
OUR APPROACH
Three principles guide our work:
We look at the big picture. By examining the entire timber sale
program instead of just one fragment, we can see how costly and destructive
it is, and our solution becomes clear: end the program. Through this
approach we have changed the debate from "how much should our
national forests be logged" to "should they be logged at
all."
We look at all the angles. Forest policy in the United States is
equal parts unethical, environmentally destructive, personally disempowering,
and fiscally irresponsible. Our Project staff can address the public's
concerns and questions in all of these areas, and then work to meet
our achievable goals.
We want the public to be involved. For policy to change, people
must feel a connection to those lands being held for them by the
government. We strive to educate and empower communities, working
with schools, churches, and families in addition to other political
or environmental groups. We want the decision-making power over public
lands in this country to move from Congress to local neighborhoods.
OUR STAFF
CONTACT US
The John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute
P.O. Box 697
Cedar Ridge, CA 95924
Phone: (530)273-9290
Fax: (530)273-9260
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