Students rally for Robinson Forest outside UK Board meeting

   Despite finals week, more than two dozen UK students and activists from KFTC, as well as UK Greenthumb, Kentucky Heartwood, and Sierra Club members, came together to rally one last time this semester, just prior to the UK Board of Trustees meeting, to encourage board members to protect Robinson Forest and to move away from the proposal to log it.

   They lined the first floor of the Patterson Office Tower lobby and chanted, holding signs as the Board of Trustees entered one by one to attend the meeting high above on the 18th floor.

I'm glad that students are rallying together and showing opposition.  Robinson Forest isn't just an environmental issue for the people in Knott, Perry, and Breathitt Counties - it's a human rights issue,          - Joan Braun, a UK KFTC Member 

   Many members of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth from counties touched by Robinson Forest have participated in the campaign by writing letters, emails, and faxes to the UK Board of Trustees members, giving them a perspective from the communities that this logging will directly impact. 

By and large, it seems that the board has a tendency to ignore UK students and community - most recently on Robinson Forest, but also on UK workers that want to organize.  It's not a good trend.       - Joe Gallenstein, UK KFTC Co-Coordinator 

 
   Through conversations with board members, it seems unlikely that we'll be able to halt this particular experimental logging proposal, but the Board of Trustees has come back to the issue of Robinson Forest time and time again over the decades to look at strip-mining and/or logging different sections.  Many fear that the move to log parts of Robinson Forest is a prelude to another strip-mining action, first weakening the basis of the Lands Unsuitable for Mining status by reducing the environmental value of the forest, then challenging that protective status.

   Students say that if the board tries that, they'll be ready and the campaign this semester laid down a lot of the foundation for a powerful deterrent to mining. 

We have enough energy and enough fight in us to get our voices heard, no matter what they put in our way."      - Scott Beckmeyer, UK Greenthumb activist