RESTORE: The North Woods focuses on three major priorities — create new national parks across America, save natural forests from logging and other development, and protect native wildlife and habitats from exploitation. The following is a brief overview of these three priorities, and links where you can learn more about them.
America is losing native wildlife and habitats, climate-stabilizing forests, and public open space to development at an alarming rate. A bold expansion of our National Park System could help address all three of these crises. RESTORE is leading an effort to assist new park initiatives across the country, to build a grassroots national parks coalition, and to rally public support for action to expand our parks.
Climate scientists confirm that fighting climate change requires not only reining in fossil fuel burning, but also maximizing maximize carbon storage by protecting more standing forests. Yet, most of our forests are open to logging. The U.S. Forest Service seeks to “restore” an area of national forests larger than New York and Missouri combined by logging them. RESTORE is opposing destructive logging on state and federal lands, and supporting new laws to give them permanent protection.
Biologists are calling for as much as 50 percent of the Earth to be preserved to avoid mass plant and wildlife extinctions. One-third of American species are vulnerable. But less than 6 percent of the conterminous United States is safely within national parks and other nature preserves. RESTORE is working to protect imperiled wildlife by preserving their habitats and using laws such as the Endangered Species Act to promote their recovery.