In a virtual straight party-line vote, the House of Representatives passed an extreme bill that terminated funding for dozens of important environmental programs.
On the chopping block:
- The Interior Department's Wild Lands policy that would restore millions of acres of wilderness-quality public lands in the West.
- 30 percent of the EPA's budget -- crippling its ability to regulate greenhouse gases.
- Half the funding for cleaning the Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound, Long Island Sound, the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain.
- Funding for Endangered Species recovery efforts, Clean Water Act enforcement for thousands of streams and wetlands.
- Funding for the Forest Service to manage and enforce off-road vehicle use on our national forests.
- Half the Forest Service's funding to improve drinking water by removing old, unused logging roads from our forests and to maintain needed roads and trails.
What's left untouched? $4 billion in annual oil, gas and coal subsidies.
Now, the budget fight, which could destroy a host of environmental laws and policies, is moving to the Senate. Tell your Senators to reject draconian cuts to America's environmental safety net and to protect the Wild Lands policy.
Dear [Decision Maker],
I am appalled at what the Majority of the House of Representatives has attempted to do to our nation's environmental laws. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's new Secretarial Order 3310 on Wild Lands would restore the importance of wilderness among the many values of our public lands. I fully support Secretary Salazar's Wild Lands policy, and hope you will do all you can to prevent the House-passed language from being included in the final continuing resolution for this year.
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I also urge you to reject the Continuing Resolution passed by the House Majority. This is an extreme assault on conservation funding, not just for the Wild Lands policy but for a host of America's bedrock conservation laws. These cuts will do little to change the long-term deficit but represent a radical abandonment of a century of bipartisan support for conservation and environmental protection in America.
