Cover done in Photoshop CS6

1. September 2015 Share It! Quarterly Summer 2015 & 1
Summer 2015
Aug./Sept. 2015
Vol 6/Issue 3Summer 2015
September 2015
Vol 6/Issue 3
any western U.S. Forest Service and
BLM lands are burning, and in turn,
are burning private properties and
destroying many watersheds and
landscapes. The burnt landscape is obvious,
the loss of homes and wildlife habitat are too.
And while our eyes and throats are burning
and our lungs congesting, what might not be
obvious are the emissions generated from these
hundreds of fires. These emissions are
causing health problems for not only those of
us living in the west, but due to the catastrophic
fires raging, the smoke is moving into the
mid-west too.
There are many contributing factors to this
year’s monstrous forest fires; excess fuel on the
ground, thick brush, over-populated trees,
drought, inability to access fire origins,
the list goes on. However, it would be
difficult to argue that if our forests had
been actively managed, the devastation
would have been significantly less.
And why are our forests not managed?
Could it be environmentalists filing one
lawsuit after another to stop timber
sales? In Western Montana, Idaho
and other parts of the west, there are
two individuals who are responsible
for the majority of anti-logging
lawsuits, Montana’s own Michael
Garrity and Sara Jane Johnson.
Prior to Garrity receiving the 2014 “Grassroots
Activist of the Year Award” from the Fund
for Wild Nature, Jeffrey St. Clair (Counter
Punch) wrote the following about Garrity:
“One of us stood out, though. He was lean,
sinewy and sported the implacable, no bullshit
gaze of an auditor at the IRS. His name was Mike
Garrity and he was by far the most dangerous
figure on the mountain that night, except,
perhaps, for the young grizzly that had been
sighted rummaging through a berry patch
just up the slope earlier in the week.
Garrity was a professional killer. He
killed timber sales and mining projects,
grazing allotments and oil wells,
dams and ski lodges. Garrity was the
executive director what had long been
my favorite environmental group,
the Alliance for the Wild Rockies: an
outfit as fierce, lean, unflinching and
fleet-footed as Garrity himself.”
Cover Story
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