1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

Dear Senator Schiff, I am a Lake Tahoe resident writing to ask for your help with a matter of serious public health, environmental integrity, and government accountability: the U.S. Forest Service’s plan to spray glyphosate across tens of thousands of acres of the Caldor Fire burn area surrounding Lake Tahoe — near Sierra-at-Tahoe, the PCT, campgrounds, and homes in Meyers. I hike, ski, camp, and forage in these forests. I am asking you to stand up for the people and places that cannot advocate for themselves. This decision is built on corrupted science. The foundational safety study underpinning the Forest Service’s environmental review was retracted in December 2025 after being exposed as ghostwritten by Monsanto employees — the manufacturer of glyphosate. Bayer, which acquired Monsanto, has now paid over $12 billion in legal settlements to cancer patients harmed by the product. There is a documented, decades-long pattern here: Monsanto identified scientists willing to produce favorable findings, suppressed unfavorable research, and inserted itself into the peer-review process — all to protect a multibillion-dollar product at the expense of public health. That a federal agency is proceeding with a major land management decision based on this compromised science — after the retraction — is a failure of oversight that demands a congressional response. I am asking you to: • Call for a Senate investigation into the Forest Service’s reliance on industry-influenced science in its glyphosate environmental assessments. • Demand a pause on spraying in the Lake Tahoe Basin until independent, unconflicted research can be reviewed. • Champion funding for alternatives — prescribed burns, manual forest management — that protect our land, our wildlife, and our communities without enriching corporations that have spent decades deceiving regulators. Our forests, our animals, and our people deserve a government that puts their wellbeing first. I trust you to be that voice. With appreciation,