Black Ram
Short Film About Black Ram Forest Logging Project in the Yaak. For more info on how to help visit: http://yaakvalley.org/stop-blackram/
The Kootenai National Forest is among the ancestral homelands of the Kootenai-Salish peoples. It is home to the largest sector of unprotected public forest in the lower 48 (roughly the size of Yellowstone National Park). This extremely remote area of Northwestern Montana has been designated as one of six critical habitats necessary for helping grizzly bears reestablish stable population numbers. It is also the headwaters of the Yaak River.
The Black Ram project is a 95,000 acre logging contract aimed at clear cutting the most ancient area of the Kootenai. Sections that have never burned, containing 800 year old larch trees, generations of hemlock, western cedar and 350 year old spruce. The Black Ram has been approved with no environmental impact statement.
The Black Ram is a public lands issue. Because our old growth trees are absolutely necessary medicine in the face of climate chaos it does not matter where we live. What happens to this forest has the potential to influence how forests are managed elsewhere. By helping to support efforts to stop the Black Ram we are supporting the growth of a different kind of culture. One that holds trees as relatives and knows that their value is not in board feet, but in what they stand to teach us about how to live with the earth rather than on top of her. This is essential learning that humans need to engage particularly at a time when our ability to live with earth is under deep scrutiny. We are in this together. With the trees. We must collectively choose a different path.