After the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released the long-awaited Draft Management Plan for the Headwaters Forest Preserve, BACH jumped into work to bring the public, other organizations, and experts on restoration and wildlife into the process. A massive outreach and public-education effort was launched that included an email listserve, fact sheets, newsletters, website, tabling, presentations and meetings so that people would understand the draft plan and be armed with talking points to develop relevant comments. We conducted a postcard campaign to keep the Preserve as a wildlife preserve, with as few intrusions by human activity as possible. Our work culminated in the submission of detailed comments to BLM, along with comments from our murrelet experts that laid out the rationale for minimizing recreational use of Headwaters, particularly protecting the inner core of pristine old growth forest, which actually makes up less than half of the 7500-acre Preserve. The cut-over area surrounding the core that is now in public hands will heal with careful restoration work taking place over the next few years. Great thanks are due to our hard-working Headwaters Preserve Working Group and all the biologists, foresters, and other experts that fed into the process, from Humboldt to Santa Cruz. We are very lucky to have BLM staff in Arcata who seem to listen to those people who have fought for this forest for over a decade. We await the final plan, due out early in 2003. It's not over yet ? stay tuned!
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