futures.
Tim Smith
Dear Josephine County Stop the Wilderness Expansion Team:
First, let me give a short review since some of you have come on board later in our campaign. Congressman DeFazio and Senator Ron Wyden are the two sponsors to convert our timber and mineral rich Federal
Land into Wilderness to expand the current existing Wild Rogue Wilderness Area. From the beginning of our efforts to stop this madness, we decided Wyden was a hopeless cause as far as contacting him.
Since we began, Nature Resources committee members Jack Swift and Margaret Goodwin have both established some friendly contacts both in the House and the Senate. Yesterday, I received this
information(see below) from one of our Committee members. As a result, we need you to first email Wyden's office(go to his web site to do this on his contact section) that you and the majority of the Josephine County citizens do not want that Wilderness Expansion. Talking points are: More Wilderness will not increase Tourism. More Wilderness will restrict access by eliminating motor vehicles and even bicycles from being use on any existing roads. Especially, the older Americans will be shut out from using the land as they have customarily done in the past. The land does not meet the Federal Criteria for Wilderness Designation. There is too much Wilderness already in Josephine County. The proposed land is O & C Land and putting it in Wilderness will
only prevent us from using that land later for timber production. That proposed land has millions of dollars of gold deposits beneath the surface. It is perhaps in the range billions of dollars, but we will not know until more
studies have been done. Stop the process until the studies can be done. Tellurium, a 'green' mineral, has been found in the Benton Mine. This is an important material used for the manufacture of Solar Panels. 43% of the
Tellurium used in the US comes from China. We need a solid US supply in case we are ever cut off from overseas supplies. The County Commissioners were not contacted for involvement prior to S. 2001 being introduced. Use any other argument you can think of.
Secondly, we need as many letters and post cards mailed as soon as possible to Wyden's Washington Office registering our objections to the Wilderness Expansion S.2001.
In addition, Natural Resources Committee member Trenor Scott has recommended that we email the same objections to Wyden's Portland Representative. She has not heard from us yet on this matter.
Her name is Mary Gautreaux and the email
address is [email protected]
Team members, we are getting closer to Victory each day. We just need to keep at it. Any effort you make will help. I will be doing my emails and post card today.
Respectfully Yours,
Ron Glynn
Chair of the Natural Resources
Committee
Josephine County Central Committee
Subject: Letters to Wyden
....'s staff asst.) contacted me today to stress the importance
of getting as many people as possible to write to Senator Wyden opposing th
Rogue Wilderness Expansion Act, before the bill goes to a "markup meeting." He
said it's important for Wyden to be familiar with all the issues that we're
concerned with so that, when they're brought up in the markup meeting, he knows
they came from his own constituents.
I told him we haven't really been
focusing our efforts on Wyden because we know there's no chance of changing his
mind. .... said that Wyden seems to think all the stakeholders are in agreement
with him. I told him that Wyden knows better, he's just saying that for the
record, but ....... emphasized again how important it is for us to lobby Wyden
directly on these issues.
So it might make sense to send out an e-mail
blitz to all our anti-Wilderness allies and get them to write to Wyden this
week.
His Washington contact information is:
The Honorable Senator Ron
Wyden
221 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC
20510-3703
Phone: (202) 224-5244
Fax: (202) 228-2717
His local contact information is:
The Honorable Senator Ron Wyden
Federal Courthouse
310 West 6th St, Room 118
Medford, OR
97501
(541) 858-5122