Tell the Forest Service to protect the Clearwater River Basin from resource extraction

South Fork Clearwater River | Lisa Ronald

The Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest in north central Idaho recently stripped protections from 700 miles of rivers in the remote and wild Clearwater River Basin – while also proposing a four-fold increase in commercial logging – endangering clean water and threatening to degrade critically important habitat for imperiled salmon, trout, and steelhead.

The Forest must provide new direction on how to conduct commercial logging, mining, and other extractive activities while protecting clean water and healthy fish and wildlife habitat. We need your help in asking the U.S. Forest Service to revise its Comprehensive River Management Plan (CRMP) for the Wild and Scenic designated Lochsa, Selway, and Middle Fork Clearwater rivers, and issue a forest plan amendment showing how it will protect rivers across the Clearwater Basin from the harmful effects of logging, dam building, and mining.

Take action today and tell the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest to issue new guidance to protect rivers from increasing extractive activities.

About You

First Name

Last Name

Email Address

Mobile Phone (optional)

By entering my mobile number and checking this box, I agree to receive recurring text messages from American Rivers. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to cancel.

Address

City

State

Zip Code

Personalize Your Letter

Supervisor

Jon

Word

Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest

Dear Supervisor Word,

In the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest’s 2025 forest plan revision, the Forest Service stripped wild and scenic eligibility protections from 700 miles of rivers and the remote, wild watersheds they flow through. Many of these rivers, including the North and South Forks of the Clearwater and the headwaters of the Lochsa, have been protected for nearly 30 years. Now, these rivers and riverside lands will be subject to a four-fold increase in commercial timber harvest and associated road-building, as well as the risks from mining and new dams.

Without new direction that ensures logging and other projects don’t harm river values, extractive activities could degrade scenery, impound free-flowing streams, and smother spawning gravels in silt, harming native fish such as bull trout, westslope cutthroat trout, Chinook salmon, and steelhead. The Forest should issue new guidance on protecting ecologically and culturally valuable streams by doing the following:

- The Forest must revise its Comprehensive River Management Plan (CRMP) for the Wild and Scenic designated Lochsa, Selway, and Middle Fork Clearwater rivers that will, among other things, provide guidance on how to design vegetative management projects such as logging and prescribed burning in ways that maintain the values for which these rivers have been protected since 1968. 
- For the 700 miles of rivers it is no longer managing as wild and scenic eligible under its new forest plan, the Forest must provide project-level guidance that formally documents how other plan components will protect these rivers from the harmful effects of extractive activities. This guidance should be issued as a forest plan amendment, rather than in an unofficial or optional form, to ensure enforcement within the numerous projects that will occur under the 20+ year lifespan of the new land management plan.

Scientists have referred to the Clearwater River Basin as the “Noah’s Ark” for Chinook salmon, steelhead, westslope cutthroat trout, and bull trout because its higher-elevation streams will remain cold enough to sustain healthy fish populations even as the climate warms. The Forest Service must ensure adequate safeguards are in place to protect water quality and outstanding river values in the face of increases in extractive industry across the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest.

Sincerely,

{user_data~First Name} {user_data~Last Name}
{user_data~Address}
{user_data~City}, {user_data~State}
{user_data~Zip Code}
{user_data~Email Address}