Jay Inslee: “I want to add two messages to talk about our incredible public lands that we have in this country that we ought to think…”

“I want to add two messages to talk about our incredible public lands that we have in this country that we ought to think about. The first is the area in our Forest Service lands, which is such a treasure. People all around the world come to see our forest areas, but they run a risk now because the Bush administration has threatened to essentially reduce the protections for our Forest Service lands and our pristine unroaded, uncut forests. I wanted to alert people to the potential of protecting these pristine forests and ask my colleagues to join us as cosponsors in the Roadless Area Conservation Act, which the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert), a Republican, and myself are prime sponsors of. We now have 175 cosponsors. The reason this act is so important is that it would codify the existing area, roadless area rule, a rule that was adopted with the positive comments of over 1.2 million Americans who basically asked the Federal Government to protect the parts of the United States forest areas that have not been subject to having roads built on them yet.”