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General Announcements
- 7/28/10 ... Senate Abandons Clean Energy and Climate
As DC temperatures topped 100 degrees and oil continues to despoil the Gulf of Mexico, the Senate turned its back on comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation. This appalling lack of leadership fueled by Big Oil lobbyists and obstructionists in the Senate must not go unnoticed.
Hold Your Senators Accountable! Contact Them Now!!!
- 7/25/10 ... The latest issue of
The Audubon Advisory is currently available. Check it out.
- 6/25/10 .... CONTACT HARRISBURG NOW
Governor Rendell has proposed to gut all special environmental funds in the state budget. Specifically, he has proposed taking a total of $182 million from the state’s special funds, with the bulk -- $132 million -- coming from environmental funding. The Governor is essentially proposing to shut down the:
- Keystone Recreation, Park and Conservation Fund
- Growing Greener (the Environmental Stewardship Fund)
- Farmland preservation program and more.
If this proposal moves forward -- and it will unless conservationists push back hard -- there will be NO state money for community parks, open space protection, farmland preservation, community-centered environmental restoration, watershed protection and other conservation efforts. There will be NO Growing Greener grants, NO Keystone grants, NO allocations for counties for farmland preservation.
Tell your state senators and representatives to take a stand against any budget that would cut these critical sources of funding. Instead of raiding environmental funding, the General Assembly should raise additional funds by levying a severance tax on natural gas drilling, with a significant portion dedicated to Growing Greener.
PLEASE ACT IMMEDIATELY:
- 1ST ACTION - Call your state representative and senator and demand that they stop the raid on environmental funding. Tell them that these funding sources are critical to your community’s well being. Tell them that environmental programs have already undergone far more than their fair share of cuts in recent years.
- 2ND ACTION – Follow up with an email and old-fashioned letter.
- 3RD ACTION – Get as many people as you can to do the same. We have to put immediate pressure on legislators and keep the pressure up as the budget enters a critical negotiation stage.
- 6/14/10 ...
STOP THE SERENGETI HIGHWAY
Serengeti National Park is undoubtedly the best-known wildlife sanctuary in the world, unequalled for its natural beauty and scientific value. Approximately 70 larger mammal and some 500 avifauna species are found there. With more than two million wildebeest, half a million Thomson's gazelle, and a quarter of a million zebra, it has the greatest concentration of plains game in Africa. The wildebeest and zebra moreover form the star cast of a unique spectacular - the annual Serengeti migration. The Serengeti h osts the largest and longest overland migration in the world. This migration is one of the ten natural travel wonders of the world. Around October, nearly 2 million herbivores travel from the northern hills toward the southern plains, crossing the Mara River, in pursuit of the rains. In April, they then return to the north through the west, once again crossing the Mara River.
The new Arusha-Musoma highway will cut right through important migration routes in the Serengeti National Park ! Construction is due to start in 2012. These plans must be stopped !
Please sign a petition voicing your opposition to the highway.
- 6/10/10 ...
It is mind boggling that 47 senators voted against the scientific finding that global warming represents a danger to human health. But we are thankful that 53 Senators, all Democrats, voted to defeat Sen. Murkowski's attack on the Clean Air Act. This victory would not have been possible without thousands of messages and phone calls pressuring senators. Thanks to those efforts, the Clean Air Act remains intact for now.
Defeating Murkowski's ploy to stop the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases is a big win. But it may be a fleeting one. In securing the votes to defeat the Murkowski resolution, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid struck a deal to allow another vote on a new attack on the Clean Air Act which is being promoted by coal state Democrat, Sen. Jay Rockefeller.
Sen. Rockefeller's bill would effectively have the same result as Murkowski's resolution, though under the guise of delaying EPA action for years rather than definitively blocking it.
Pressure needs to continue to be put on the Senate to ensure they do not bend to the oil and coal lobbies and roll back one of the best tools we have to regulate greenhouse gases and fight climate change.
- 5/21/10 ... Gulf Coast Oil Spill
ABA Gulf Coast Conservation Coordinator, Drew Wheelan, is on the ground in Louisiana following this tragic disaster. To read Drew's blog posts and watch video footage from the area, visit the Gulf Coast Coverage page on the ABA website . Learn what you can do to help.
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