Wildlife Weekly Wrap-Up

Keeping the Beach (Safe) for the Birds
This Memorial Day, we’re calling t on visitors to enjoy the beach, but be careful around nesting birds. When boaters or beachgoers approach nesting birds too closely, parents are flushed from their nests, leaving chicks and eggs vulnerable to predators, overheating in the summer sun, crushing under foot (in the case of beach nesters), or falling and drowning in water beneath the nest (in the case of tree nesters). A single, ill-timed disturbance can destroy an entire colony. So, have a great time at our national parks, refuges and seashores this Memorial Day Weekend, and keep your distance from birds’ nests so we can enjoy them again next spring! Please think twice about birds and other wildlife when recreating this weekend.

Public Lands Day is Official in Colorado!
On May 17, Colorado became the first state to establish a Public Lands Day, recognizing the value of some 24 million acres of public lands in Colorado. The dedication is welcome news in what has been a series of attacks on our public lands, water and wildlife. In January, armed extremists conducted an illegal armed standoff at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. This was followed by a series of Congressional actions that would have given away ownership or control of tens of millions of acres of public lands across the country. Most recently, Representative Robert Bishop (R-UT) attempted to attach a damaging rider to the Puerto Rican debt relief bill that would have divested 3,100 acres of Vieques National Wildlife Refuge from the public domain. Thanks to your efforts, these efforts have been stymied to date—including removal of the Vieques provision from the debt bill. Perhaps if more states established their own Public Lands Day, these senseless attacks on our public lands heritage will cease for good.

Inappropriate Appropriations
The House Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Subcommittee has released its draft FY 2017 Interior appropriations bill, and it includes a number of harmful riders that would undermine protections for our air, land, water and wildlife. Some of the most egregious additions would overturn two federal court decisions and strip Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for gray wolves in the Great Lakes region and Wyoming. Other riders would block potential ESA protections for the greater sage-grouse, approve mining of ancient groundwater reserves in California and attempt to undermine wildlife safeguards for logging on important forest lands. Once again, the House is using the Interior appropriations bill, which is intended to fund government programs to conserve wildlife and public lands, to instead attack species, undermine environmental protections and give away our natural resources to big business. Stay tuned as this bill and the Senate version move forward.

A “Zombie Apocalypse”
Energy Bill The House of Representatives passed an energy bill this week rife with anti-wildlife, anti-public lands riders that are a disaster for our nation’s natural heritage as well as wildlife abroad. It contains the House sportsmen’s bill― legislation that would overturn two federal court decisions and strip Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in the Great Lakes and Wyoming (which mirror anti-wolf provisions in the Interior appropriations bill), block rules for cracking down on the illegal trade in African elephant ivory, and bar conservation measures for wolves, bears and other iconic carnivores on over 100 million acres of federal land in Alaska. But that’s not all: the energy package also includes an entire bill that, under the guise of responding to California’s drought, would dramatically weaken protections for salmon, migratory birds and other fish and wildlife in California’s Bay-Delta estuary, and threaten thousands of fishing jobs in California and Oregon. Finally, the energy bill includes language that would undermine forest safeguards, opening the nation’s forestlands to increased logging and destruction.

Defenders President Jamie Rappaport Clark compared the bill to zombies, calling it “an army of previously passed House bills that died in the Senate, but here they are again, back from the dead and out to cause the destruction of our nation’s wildlife and public lands.” Defenders is working with conservation champions in Congress to ensure that these provisions never make it to the president’s desk.