LETTER OF INTERESTDear Plumas Board of Supervisors and Portola City Council,In the last several weeks, awareness of USFS' harmful actions have come to light after national media coverage: Please read the following crucial article that recently appeared in Mother Jones: We Are Bombarding America's Forests With Roundup– Scientists are wary of glyphosate. MAHA loathes it. And our yearlong investigation shows California is spraying it everywhere Listen to Reveal NPR Coverage of the issue: Poisoning the Forest for the Trees Youtube update on Sierra-at-Tahoe Spraying: Mother Jones' Nate Halverson returns to investigate roundup in Tahoe, confirming spraying at Sierra-at-Tahoe Protect Tahoe Group that recently formed to stop the spray: https://protecttahoe.com/ Over $30m is set aside for herbicides to be sprayed (including near Plumas communities) as part of the USFS “Community Protection Project Central and West Slope.” Spraying around the town of Challenge has already begun, and neighbors who we are in touch with are very angry about the impact on their health and properties. You may support logging as it's been done in previous decades, we realize there is support for the timber industry locally, but what we are dealing with is 20x larger than any previous project, and includes vastly greater quantities of toxic, carcinogenic herbicides. This threatens the health of residents and visitors to Plumas County. Roundup exposure is associated with Non Hodgkins Lymphoma, a form of blood/ lymph cancer that leads to great suffering and miserable deaths. The ability for people to use outdoor space in Plumas County is at risk. You can see the great roundup scar by going to Google maps— it is the brown, deadened area, largely on private land, but including Lassen NF, north and west of Lake Almanor, where the forest has been prevented from regenerating on its own. Thank you for your past objection to the USFS re. the herbicide issue on the CPP project. We encourage the board to do more, to warn residents what is planned, get more details from the USFS about quantities and timing, demand that federal officials halt further spraying, and to exert your full authority to protect public health in an emergency. Many of the herbicides planned to be sprayed are not able to be tested in water supplies, further placing residents at risk from unknown contaminants. We're all for effective wildfire mitigation, such as defensible space pruning and home hardening, but this project is not about that- it is using wildfire fears as cover for the wholesale, industrial conversion of wild forests, which are crucial for wildlife and water / carbon storage, to endless expanses of poisoned tree farms. The multiple-use character of Plumas Forests is at risk, with grim repercussions for tourism, housing prices, wildlife and community health. Our lawsuit against the USFS on the CPP project is pending, with a hearing scheduled in the fall. We are your allies in protecting public health in the county, and beyond. I hope we can work together on stopping the aspects of this project that we share opposition to. Please let us know if you have any questions. best, Josh Josh Hart Director and Spokesperson Feather River Action! FeatherRiverAction.org josh@featherriveraction.org Submitted: 05/28/26 Article By: Sierra Booster |