Another Bush Rollback Dear WWF Conservation Action Network Activist: We need your help to fend off yet another rollback by President Bush of environmental protection programs. This time he is targeting new hard rock mining rules that went into effect after almost five years of exhaustive public comments and hearings. He is proposing to revert to the inadequate previous rules and is allowing the public only 45 days to comment on his proposal. The old rules did not protect ground and surface water, did not require the mining industry to clean up its own messes, and provided regulators little ground for denying permits. Please go to http://takeaction.worldwildlife.org/ to send a free message urging the director of the Bureau of Land Management not to roll back the rules. Please act now; the comment period ends on May 7. The hunt for gold and other precious metals undermines biodiversity in countless ways--fragmenting habitat; drawing down streams and springs; and contaminating, and sometimes killing, wildlife from exposure to toxic mining waste. Hard rock mining is a particular threat in the Klamath-Siskiyou ecoregion of southern Oregon and northern California where miners hold hundreds of claims on lands covered by the new rules. Identified by WWF as globally outstanding, this ecoregion provides habitat for many rare and endemic plants and threatened wild salmon populations and needs the protections provided by the new rules. We need an enormous outpouring of comments to stop the rollback. Please forward this alert to your friends and urge them to take the action by visiting the Conservation Action Network at http://takeaction.worldwildlife.org/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - For SC email list T-and-C, send: GET TERMS-AND-CONDITIONS.CURRENT to [log in to unmask]