Sometimes a little bit of arm-twisting can yield big results.

Earlier this year, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a version of the 2018 Farm Bill that would have opened wide swaths of national forests to clearcutting with little or no environmental review. Boosters of those provisions claim massive logging is needed to reduce fuel loads in fire-prone forests.

FSEEE fought back. We urged you to contact your senators and tell them that national forest management should not be dictated in a Farm Bill. Despite the assertions of Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, our national forests are not “crops.”

Many of you did just that. And your senators listened.

On Monday, Senate and House negotiators released a compromise version of the Farm Bill that omitted those disastrous forest management provisions, and instead stuck closely to a Senate version of the bill. A 253-page explanatory document contained the sentence “The Conference substitute deletes the House provision” a whopping 64 times.

President Trump is expected to sign the bill into law in coming days, even though Perdue lamented “missed opportunities in forest management.”

Many thanks to all of you who helped us turn back these damaging proposals.

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