Mountain Resource Group

There is an easy phone call you can make that will have bearing on the retention of over 2500 acres of trees on land belonging to the elite Bohemian Club, a private retreat for politicians, celebrities, foreign royalty and corporate honchos, located along the Russian River.  The Bohemian Club's acres include redwood, Douglas fir and hardwood trees. The forests provide habitats for northern spotted owls, marbled murrelets and rare plants. The Bohemian Club wants to log these acres for income.

The male-only members of the Bohemian Club and their high priced PR firm are trying to get around the acreage requirement for an NTMP.  Just like San Jose Water Company did in our case, the Bohemian Club boys also applied for the NTMP dishonestly, owning too many acres to quality for that permit. Thanks to NAIL's success with this issue in fighting the logging plan here, this type of dishonesty is now under public scrutiny.  To get around it the Bohemian Club is now trying to push 160 of their acres into a donated conservation easement so they can be under the limit and avoid environmental scrutiny as they log in perpetuity.  The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is the group that is agreeing to partner with The Bohemian Club.

For details please go to www.SFGate.com. As you will see from this article, NAIL is supporting the opposition to this NTMP logging plan.  The Sierra Club also opposes this logging plan as do some members of The Bohemian Club itself.

The easy step you can take would be to contact the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and express yourself regarding their involvement in such a dishonest tactic, citing the backlash it will cause against their organization and the fact that by doing so they are killing trees, not saving them.  With enough public outcry against this shady tactic, it could be stopped.  Let the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation hear the following from you:

1) By accepting this easement they are risking the trees not saving them.  Current fire science has proven that cutting down the big trees in a forest  poses a greater chance of large scale forest fire.  If the foundation accepts this easement they are allowing that kind of logging to go on and that kind of fire risk to occur.

2) Do they want to be known as a foundation that allowed a private men's club to get around  proper environmental impact studies just to make money off of trees?  This will cause The Elk Foundation a great deal of negative publicity and affect future donorship

Toll-free: 1(800) CALL ELK (225-5355)

Your involvement in this process is important.  Public outcry whenever possible will play a huge role in changing these types of tactics.

Thank you all.
Your NAIL Steering Committee