WILDERNESS UNDER SEIGE
Cathy Finney / Jamie Williams - The Wilderness Society
I wanted to make sure you saw Jamie’s message last week—it couldn’t be more important. Congress is consistently pushing forward with an anti-conservation agenda, and we urgently need your support to stop this trend of irresponsible legislation.
Your gift today will be immediately put to use to protect our nation’s wildlands from unrestrained drilling, logging and unchecked development.
Sincerely,
Cathy Finney
Director of Membership
The Wilderness Society
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Congress is moving forward on a slew of bills that would open up public lands to unregulated development—including drastically increased drilling for oil and natural gas without any safeguards—and reckless logging in sensitive areas.
This legislation undermines decades of conservation protections and puts some of our nation’s most treasured wildlands at grave risk.
We need your help now to stop this assault on our public lands.
One bill, passed by the House in November, called the “Protecting States’ Rights to Promote American Energy Security Act” would open it up for a free-for-all, removing federal safety guarantees for drilling on public lands. These loosened safety and environmental protections would put huge swaths of land and water at risk for contamination.
Another bill, the “Federal Lands Job and Energy Security Act,” goes so far as to prioritize drilling on public lands above all other considerations—including recreation, conservation and development of sustainable energy.
And the “Yosemite Rim Fire Emergency Salvage Act” would use the destruction left by last year’s Yosemite Rim Fire to justify large-scale logging in some of northern California’s wildest places.
This legislation stipulates that salvage logging begin immediately, even if current protections prohibit it. That means that nearly 260,000 acres of federal lands will be up for grabs. More outrageous, according to the USDA Forest Service’s own report, the majority of scientific evidence shows that salvage timber operations actually slow the recovery of fire damaged lands and exacerbate fire-related damage. Large scale salvage logging increases subsequent fire hazards and can have a devastating impact on the many animals that call these lands home.
We cannot let this irresponsible legislation move forward. Your support now is critical if we are to protect our nation’s precious wildlands from unrestrained drilling, logging, and unchecked development.
We must continue to work together to stop legislation like this. Please be generous.
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