Sierra Club
National Forest Management Act Restored
Last week, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California overturned Bush's final attempt to repeal key protections for national forests under the National Forest Management Act (NFMA). Read more here.
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Gray Wolves Regain Temporary Protection in Western Great Lakes
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reached a settlement agreement with plaintiffs in a lawsuit that had challenged the Service's removal of the Western Great Lakes sub-population of the gray wolf.
Read more about the settlement.
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Secretary of the Interior Testifies Regarding Climate Change and Public Lands at Senate Hearing
This past Tuesday, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held its first hearing regarding the upcoming climate legislation in the Senate. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar was one of the witnesses to testify before the committee.
His comments perfectly captured the impacts climate change is having on our public lands and the role that the Department of the Interior must play both in fighting climate change and helping our lands adapt.
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Sierra Club Moderates Briefing On Conservation of Western Big Game Migrations
Sierra Club Washington, DC Representative Bart Semcer moderated a briefing for congressional staff, agency and NGO leaders, on the conservation of western big game migrations. Hosted by Congressman Rush Holt (NJ) the briefing featured presentations by Freedom to Roam, the Western Governor's Association (WGA), the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and the Sierra Club, and covered the public/private partnerships being implemented to conserve the habitat corridors western big game will need to thrive in a warmer world.
The briefing supported the wildlife corridors initiative of the WGA (pdf), launched in 2007, and the WGA Western Wildlife Council which has noted that "[S]hifts in the timing of wildlife mating, migration and other life-history traits will continue to occur as climate conditions change . . . ."
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Department of the Interior Pushes For Renewable Energy on Public Lands
Last week, Secretary of the Interior Salazar announced the ongoing study of 670,000 acres of public land for the development of solar energy.
Read more and comment here.
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New Study Shows Need to Focus Fire Suppression Efforts on Protecting Communities First
A recent report shows that of the 44,000 fuel reduction projects in the Western U.S. under Bush's National Fire Plan in the past 5 years, only 3 percent were actually in the wildland-urban interface, the critical areas surrounding communities.
This finding reinforces what the Sierra Club has been saying all along, that the Forest Service needs to make protecting communities first the top priority of any fire policy.
Read more and comment here.
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Natural Resources Adaptation Funding in the House Energy Bill
Last week, the House passed the historic American Clean Energy and Security Act. The natural resources adaptation funding provision made it into the final bill mostly intact. This represents a significant first step and an important acknowledgment of the need for Federal and State land management agencies to focus on and incorporate the occurring and expected impacts from climate change on wildlife and our public lands.
However, the provision was not perfect. As we move over to the Senate there are two pieces which we will work to improve:
'Dedicated' Funding
Securing dedicated funding means ensuring that the full amount of money allocated to natural resource adaptation is truly spent on this purpose. The House bill does a fairly good job of preventing appropriators from diverting funds for purposes other than adaptation. However, it does not prevent appropriators from refusing to spend the money at all in the name of deficit reduction. The Senate version needs clear language that, like most other allowance allocations in the bill, the natural resources allocation is not subject to appropriations.
Increased Allocation for Adaptation
In the Senate bill we will continue to push for a 5% allowance value for our dedicated funding. This allowance would be worth an average of $4.3 billion annually over the 2012-2030 period. ACES, if passed, would make a large-scale investment in conservation, substantially more than has ever been won before in a conservation funding campaign.
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