Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)

Hi Mark;

Congress just put wolves and bears in the crosshairs.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill to strip protections from wolves, bears and other carnivores on Alaska’s precious wildlife refuges.

If approved, it would allow wolves and pups to be killed in their dens; bears could be shot by aerial gunners or have their bones snapped in brutal traps.

Please support the Center for Biological Diversity’s Predator Defense Fund to shut down this disgraceful bill.

It’s the opening salvo in a cruel war on wolves and other wildlife that Congress will wage this year. Right-wing politicians have made it clear that wolves, bears and endangered species across the country will have a dark future under Trump.

For decades the Center has led the fight to save America’s wildlife. We know the next four years will be a bare-knuckle fight to protect these animals — and we’ve got the track record to prove it. Please make a gift to the Predator Defense Fund and help us fight and win for wildlife.

Alaska’s amazing wildlife refuges are supposed to be devoted to protecting wild creatures — and Alaska is our last great stronghold for abundant, wild predator populations. In the coming months, its refuges will be home to newborn wolf pups and bear cubs — but if Congress has its way, those pups’ and cubs’ homes will be laced with traps and menaced by helicopters and rifle shots.

This newest bill takes malicious persecution to a new level. Help defeat it with a gift to the Predator Defense Fund and make sure Alaska’s bears and wolves have a chance to survive.

For the wild,

Kierán Suckling
Executive Director
Center for Biological Diversity
@KieranSuckling

 
P.S. We’re already in the fight of a lifetime under the new White House and the most anti-wildlife Congress we’ve ever seen. Help us beat them back with an automatic monthly donation.

Please share this message with your social networks.

Mark—

As attorney general of Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt

sued the Environmental Protection Agency 14 times.

He’s also repeatedly called for its elimination.

Thanks to President Trump and 52 senators, Scott Pruitt will “lead” the EPA.

Now we are hearing of proposed drastic cuts in the EPA’s budget—such large cuts that the Agency’s vital work would undoubtedly suffer.

I shudder to think what comes next…

President Trump stepped up his attack on federal environmental protections Tuesday, issuing an order directing his administration to begin the long process of rolling back sweeping clean water rules that were enacted by his predecessor.

The order directing the Environmental Protection Agency to set about dismantling the Waters of the United States rule takes aim at one of President Obama’s signature environmental legacies, a far-reaching anti-pollution effort that expanded the authority of regulators over the nation’s waterways.

The contentious rule had been fought for years by farmers, ranchers, real estate developers and other industries, which complained it invited heavy-handed bureaucrats to burden their businesses with onerous restrictions and fines for minor violations.

Obama’s EPA argued that such claims were exaggerated and misrepresented the realities of the enforcement process of a rule that promised to create substantially cleaner waterways and with them, healthier habitats for threatened species of wildlife.

The directive to undo the clean water initiative is expected to be closely followed by another aimed at unraveling the Obama administration’s ambitious plan to fight climate change by curbing power plant emissions.

“It is such a horrible, horrible rule,” Trump said as he signed the directive Tuesday aimed at the water rules. “It has such a nice name, but everything about it is bad.” He declared the rule, championed by environmental groups to give the EPA broad authority over nearly two-thirds of the water bodies in the nation, “one of the worst examples of federal regulation” and “a massive power grab.”

While the executive orders are a clear sign of the new administration’s distaste for some of the highest profile federal environmental rules, they also reflect the challenge it faces in erasing them. Both the climate and the clean water rules were enacted only after a long and tedious process of public hearings, scientific analysis and bureaucratic review. That entire process must be revisited before they can be weakened. It could take years.

And environmental groups will be mobilized to fight every step of the way. “These wetland protections help ensure that over 100 million Americans have access to clean and safe drinking water,” California billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer said in a statement. “Access to safe drinking water is a human right, and Trump’s order is a direct violation of this right.”

The executive orders are compounded by the administration’s release of a budget blueprint that includes deep cuts at the EPA. Even if the process of changing the environmental rules is slow, the Trump administration will aim to hasten their demise by hollowing out the agencies charged with enforcing them.

At the same time, it is working with Congress to immediately kill some environmental protections under an obscure authority that applies to regulations enacted within the final months of the previous administration.  A rule intended to limit water pollution from coal mining has already been killed by Congress, which is now weighing whether to jettison rules that force gas drilling operations on federal land to capture more of the toxic methane they emit.

Trump vowed Tuesday that he would continue to undermine the Obama-era environmental protections wherever he sees the opportunity, arguing they have cost jobs. “So many jobs we have delayed for so many years,” Trump said. “It is unfair to everybody.”

Many industries take issue with that interpretation. Tuesday’s order, for example, was met with a swift rebuke from sport fishing and hunting groups. They said the clean water rule has been a boon to the economy, sustaining hundreds of thousands of jobs in their industry.

“Sportsmen and women will do everything within their power to compel the administration to change course and to use the Clean Water Act to improve, not worsen, the nation’s waterways,” a statement from a half-dozen of the organizations said.

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