Forest Watch is the practice of citizens monitoring the agencies that permit and promote commercial extraction on public lands. The Allegheny National Forest (ANF) is more threatened now than ever before from a combination of oil and gas activity, new roads in parts of the forest once considered remote, more logging and clearcutting, and new invasive species of exotic insects and plants.

The Allegheny Defense Project Forest Watch program compiles citizens’ field observations and synthesizes this with agency planning documents, online map resources, interagency information and grassroots advocacy to work towards an end to industrial logging in our national forests.  

Laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) direct management agencies like the USFS to include public comments and input in their decisions. This power of participation offers us opportunities to protect habitat and watersheds in ways that are not available to us on our state forestlands, although these are also publicly owned.