You’re invited on a guided hike through a beautiful—but imminently threatened—ROADLESS AREA on your public lands on Sunday, November 9 @ 12 pm, led by Eco-Integrity Alliance’s Josh Schlossberg, Forest Management Analyst Rocky Smith, and other ecological experts!

This 3-hour, 6-mile roundtrip hike over moderate terrain traverses an ecologically crucial montane ecosystem in the Pike National Forest 1 hour southwest of Denver, currently threatened by Colorado’s biggest logging sale of the century.

We’re talking about the U.S. Forest Service’s so-called “Lower North South Vegetation Management,” which involves a mind-boggling 116,000 acres of aggressive logging—47,000 acres of “treatments” in supposedly protected Roadless Areas—including clearcuts up to forty acres in size.

First time you’re hearing about this? Not a surprise, as not only hasn’t a single Colorado media outlet reported on the impending destruction, several published outright DISINFORMATION falsely claiming Colorado Roadless Areas are “safe from Trump’s axe” as the administration rolls back the “Roadless Rule” across National Forests. To the contrary, Colorado’s Roadless Areas, currently under a separate rule, are still open to aggressive logging, as the proposed Lower North South project proves.

What’s more, this biodiverse, carbon-storing forest—which includes mature and old-growth stands—is crucial habitat for wildlife listed under the Endangered Species Act, including the Mexican spotted owl, Pawnee montane skipper, Preble’s meadow jumping mouse, and threatened Canada lynx.

And it’s all part of a fake “emergency” under which the U.S. Department of Agriculture has placed 112 million acres—59% of all National Forests—on the chopping block in the wake of the Trump administration’s executive order for “Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production.”

We really hope you can come out to this Roadless Area on YOUR public lands that YOUR government wants to spend YOUR tax dollars to log and see what we have to lose if we don’t take action now!

If you can make it, please RSVP at coloradosmokescreen@proton.me with the number of people in your party. We’ll email you the meeting location the first week of November.

PLUS! Depending on the interest, after the hike from 4 pm – 5:30 pm we may be hosting an Eco Arts Potluck at an organic farm at the edge of the proposed logging project (15 minutes from the trailhead on the way back to Denver). Attendees can share a meal along with a nature-related song, poem, dance, or passage from a book (or just watch/listen). Let us know if you’re interested by putting hike + potluck in your message!