The release of the details of the Bush Administration's budget revealed
the first attempt by the White House to gut the Endangered Species Act
(ESA), America's premier wildlife protection law.  The Bush budget contains
an extinction rider that will give Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton,
who has called the ESA unconstitutional, sole discretion over whether or
not imperiled species and their habitat will be conserved under the ESA.

Because of the work of activists such as yourselves this anti-environmental
proposal was not included in the Interior Appropriations Bill passed by the
House of Representatives last week.  Your calls, letters, e mails and faxes
to your Representatives let them know that Americans value their wildlife
heritage and that you would not stand for letting President Bush take it
away from you by gutting the ESA.

The Bush Administration is now on Capitol Hill putting pressure on your
Senators to include the extinction rider in the Senate Interior
Appropriations Bill.  This bill is expected to be voted out of committee
this Thursday. Your calls, faxes and letters to your Senators are needed
now to help maintain a strong ESA to secure the future of America's natural
heritage.

Please contact your Senators today!

Ask them to:

1)   Oppose the efforts of the Bush Administration to prevent the public
from holding public agencies accountable that fail to enforce the law by
listing species under the ESA and protecting their critical habitat.

2)   Increase the level of appropriations to protect species and their
critical habitat under the ESA.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
estimates that $120 million is needed to eliminate the backlog of species
awaiting the Act's protections and prevent them from sliding further
towards extinction.  The $8.47 million proposed by the Bush administration
to do this job is a token sum that will continue to prevent the agency from
effectively conserving our natural heritage.

If you do not know who your Senator is go to
http://whistler.sierraclub.org:8080/takeaction/toolkit/get_connected.jsp
where you can look them up online.

Call your Senators at: (202) 224-3121

SAMPLE LETTER

The Hon. ______
United States Senate
Washington DC 20515

Dear Senator ________:

I am writing to strongly urge you to oppose the Bush Administration's
budget proposal to make the listing of species under the Endangered Species
Act and the identification of their critical habitat subject to the
exclusive discretion of the Secretary of the Interior.  This provision is
an example of the worst kind of anti-environmental rider.

In addition, I urge you to support a significant increase in funding for
the listing of imperiled species and the identification of their critical
habitat under the ESA.

The administrations proposed budget continues a trend of dangerous
under-funding of endangered species and critical habitat identification
programs under the Department of the Interior.  This trend has denied
deserving species the protections of the ESA and contributed to the
extinction of no less than 39 species over the past 20 years.  The
requested $2 million increase in the Fish and Wildlife Service budget for
the listing and critical habitat identification programs is not adequate to
address the backlog of species listings and critical habitat designations.
By the Service's own estimate, a minimum of $120 million is necessary to
eliminate these backlogs and allow the agency to effectively conserve our
natural heritage.

To help ensure that American does not lose any additional species due to
funding shortfalls and the resulting backlog, conservationists have been
forced to rely on impartial courts as an arena of last resort.  Over the
past 10 years, court actions have resulted in protecting valuable parts of
our natural heritage including Atlantic and Pacific salmon stocks, the
Jaguar and the Canada lynx.  Instead of addressing the funding shortfall,
the administration has chosen to promote an anti-environmental rider that
would effectively end this type of citizen involvement in the process.

The administration has proposed as part of its budget a measure that would
effectively deny citizens access to the courts to conserve species by
prohibiting the government from using any funds to comply with court orders
encouraging a species and its critical habitat to be protected under the
ESA.  This measure would also make all future listing and critical habitat
decisions subject to the discretion of the Interior Secretary, thereby
increasing the politicization and reducing the scientific rationale behind
species conservation measures.

Enforcement of the Endangered Species Act is critical to conserving our
nation's natural heritage.  I urge you to work to oppose all efforts to
weaken this important conservation law and to work to increase funding for
the listing line item in the FWS budget so that the wave of species
declines and extinction facing our country can be arrested.

Sincerely,

John / Jane Conservationist
**********************************

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND

When Congress passed the Endangered Species Act in 1973 it gave citizens
the right to hold federal agencies accountable that fail to enforce the
ESA, including
agencies that refuse to protect imperiled species and their habitat under
the law. Access to impartial courts has led to the conservation of species
such as the Jaguar, Canada lynx, Pacific and Atlantic salmon stocks and
other valuable parts of our natural heritage.

In recent years, the government has sought to reduce the number of species
protected under the ESA by limiting the amount of money it could spend on
the "listing" program whereby species are designated as either Threatened
or Endangered.  The result has been the creation of a backlog of over 200
species awaiting the Act's protections.  In many of these cases Sierra Club
and other conservationists have taken the government to court in order to
list these plants and animals and prevent them from sliding further towards
extinction. Time and time again, the courts have recognized the sound
science behind our arguments and ordered the government to protect species
in the safety net of the ESA.

To appease the timber, oil, mining and livestock industries that have
consistently objected to protecting species under the ESA, the Bush
Administration is seeking in its budget to prevent the government from
spending any money to comply with court orders to protect imperiled species
and their critical habitat under the ESA.  President Bush also wants to
give Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who has argued that the ESA is
unconstitutional, sole authority to determine which species will receive
the protections of the law and which will fade into the blackness of
extinction.  By seeking to drastically slash an already underfunded
endangered species protection program and hand its implementation to one of
its most vocal opponents, the Bush Administration has laid out a plan for
extinction.