By viewing the NFC’s landscape aerial photographs, her birdeye’s view of the world and the tattered remains of the critical life-support system of our once great US national forests, can now be seen by all. The Native Forest Council’s stunning aerial views are a clarion call for real change now as they clearly demonstrate that it’s long past time to save what’s left of our forests and trees, soil , air and water, or we too shall perish as have many societies before us.

The Native Forest Council’s aerial photographs (which can be seen at http://forestcouncil.org/learn/aerial/index.html) reveal that even our country’s publicly owned forests are a war-torn mosaic of endless logging roads and clearcuts. These photographs portray the startling truth about the dishonesty of corporate logging in the United States. Importantly, they are irrefutable evidence that building more than 400,000 miles of roads in tax-payer owned forests to facilitate extreme overcutting has created environmental havoc, all without any inventory accounting whatsoever for our forests and streams that are being , damaged, lost or destroyed. One thing we can all agree on is that our forests and watersheds are not worth zero as claimed in the Forest Service’s accounting.

To look at these shocking images raises the question as to whether or not the Forest Service is aiding and abetting a grotesque fraud in the liquidation of public assets and nature’s services, risking human extinction or even genocide. The photographs of these denuded publicly owned lands illuminate the loss of our forested watersheds and their soil, air and water, human and wildlife habitat. More importantly, as industrial fiber farms and tree plantations take the place of natural forests, these monocultures are far more susceptible to insects, fire and disease. Dense or sickly rows of industrial seedlings and trees are a poor substitute for native forests honed and adapted by thousands of years of evolution by God and nature. Logging roads fragment, dry out and warm the forests. Combined with rampant clearcutting, they erode the soil, pollute the water, destroy fisheries and ruin natural life-support systems needed for wolves and bears, other important large and small mammals, birds, insects, human and other wildlife.

The American public has a right to see these composite images and begin a dialogue on the moral responsibility America’s citizens have to children and the future, now and forever.

You may access and see the photographic evidence for yourself at:

http://forestcouncil.org/learn/aerial/index.html

You may also go to http://earth.google.com or http://maps.google.com and using remarkable new technology see even more recent satellite imagery (2004-2005) with a great deal of maneuverability and the ability to zoom in and out.

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