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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.
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.
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.
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 . . . ."
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.
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.
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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