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NEWS RELEASE June 10, 2009 Landmark Federal Legislation Introduced to Protect Wildlife Bill seeks to ensure healthy wildlife populations on Forest Service, BLM lands
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The first landmark conservation legislation in over 30 years was introduced today in the U.S. House of Representatives, a bill that would require federal agencies to maintain healthy populations of wildlife on public lands. “All across Wyoming, our public lands and open spaces have seen an unprecedented onslaught of industrial development, threatening blue-ribbon trout streams like the Miracle Mile, elk and deer populations, and important recreation areas,” said Mike Guy, a Red Desert hunter. “This new bill will provide lasting benefits for Wyoming’s hunters and anglers.” Titled ‘America’s Wildlife Heritage Act,’ the bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI) and Walter Jones (R-NC) and supported by the Your Lands, Your Wildlife Campaign. The bill directs the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to maintain sustainable populations of fish and wildlife when carrying out management activities in national forests, grasslands and on BLM lands, which have had little in the way of wildlife protections in the past. “There ought to be a law requiring that Wyoming’s native wildlife will have sufficient habitat to thrive on our public lands alongside other uses of the land, and soon there will be,” said Duane Short, Wild Species Program Director with Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “In Wyoming, maintaining viable wildlife populations has been a major problem on public lands, especially where the BLM has approved massive gas and coalbed methane projects in sensitive habitats, with total disregard for the consequences to sage grouse, big game, and native fisheries.” “There are over 18,000 union workers in Wyoming who look at Wyoming’s open spaces and prime hunting and fishing opportunities as a basic right, a key to the quality of life that makes working in Wyoming worthwhile,” added Kim Floyd of the AFL-CIO. “The management of our public lands has gotten completely out of balance here in Wyoming with the latest boom in drilling, but now this bill will impart some balance and require that industrial development is compatible with the needs of wildlife. Without healthy habitats and viable populations of wildlife and fish, hunting and fishing would be doomed.” In addition to requiring the Forest Service to sustain viable populations of fish and wildlife in a well-distributed manner throughout BLM and Forest Service planning areas, the bill would also direct the agencies to designate Focal Species and monitor their population trends and habitats so that agencies will know when habitat impacts are causing wildlife to decline, triggering corrective action. Changing global climate make it ever more important to ensure that wildlife populations on public lands have sufficient habitat to maintain themselves. This bill provides and early-warning system to identify population declines and ensures that habitat protections will actually occur, creating the potential to prevent large-scale wildlife declines that lead to Endangered Species listings and extinction of rare and sensitive wildlife populations. The bill also required different agencies to coordinate in the management of wildlife habitat in cases where wildlife populations move across management boundaries. “As stewards of the people’s lands, one of the most important responsibilities of the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management is to ensure that America’s fish and wildlife continue to thrive,” said Peter Nelson, Defenders of Wildlife’s federal lands program director. “America’s Wildlife Heritage Act gives land managers the tools they need to accomplish this fundamental stewardship mission.”
Contact information:
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Biodiversity Conservation Alliance P.O. Box 1512, Laramie, WY 82073 (307) 742-7978 - carmi@voiceforthewild.org |