15 May 2013
As long time followers know, Defenders has been working hard to shape National Forest conservation policy for decades, including non-stop campaigning for the last several years to make sure new forest planning regulations conserve and recover forest dependent wildlife. To ensure that these new rules translate into real on-the-ground protections for wildlife and forest ecosystems, [...]
Posted in Climate Change, Federal Policy, National Forests, Public Lands0 Comments
15 May 2013
For much of the past two years, Defenders has been actively engaged in the Forest Service’s development of a new rule to guide planning within the National Forest System. We submitted extensive comments on last year’s proposed rule, but that was hardly the end of our involvement. The Forest Service is now in the process [...]
Posted in Climate Change, Federal Policy, National Forests, Public Lands0 Comments
15 May 2013
The Forest Service recently adopted new planning rule that will guide the agency’s process for forest planning for the next decade or so. For the first time, the planning rule directs the staff to consider ecosystem services when deciding what management actions to implement on the public lands. Following the adoption of the new rule, [...]
Posted in Climate Change, Federal Policy, National Forests, Public Lands0 Comments
15 May 2013
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has recently been in the news as it relates to climate change, as reports surfaced that the administration is finalizing long-awaited NEPA climate change guidance (you can find the draft guidance here), outraging Senate Republicans who fear the guidance is an attempt to regulate greenhouse gases. NEPA is exactly the [...]
Posted in Climate Change, Federal Policy, NEPA, Public Lands0 Comments
13 May 2013
More than 150 years ago, Samuel L. Clemens raved over the flavor of bacon-fried trout he savored while camping along the transparent shorelines of Lake Tahoe, Nevada. He had arrived with the intention of staking a timber claim but instead returned less than two years later as reporter and columnist for Virginia City’s Territorial Enterprise. [...]
Posted in California, Imperiled Wildlife0 Comments
25 April 2013
On Tuesday, April 30th, the National Research Council will release a highly anticipated study on pesticides and endangered species. The study is a major milestone toward resolving the clash over how to evaluate the effects of pesticides on endangered species. To date, the U.S. EPA has disagreed with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and [...]
Posted in Imperiled Wildlife0 Comments
03 April 2013
Several months ago, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service finalized its schedule for deciding whether to propose listing of almost 200 candidate species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Many private landowners and state wildlife agencies are eager to conserve these species, with the goal of avoiding the need for listing. One of their chief [...]
Posted in Imperiled Wildlife, Paying for Conservation, private lands, Public Lands0 Comments
29 March 2013
Earlier this week, four federal agencies released a report on how they intend to improve the pesticide registration and consultation processes. This is a small but noteworthy step toward resolving the debacle over how to ensure that pesticides use complies with the Endangered Species Act (ESA). To date, the story of pesticides and endangered species [...]
Posted in Agriculture, Imperiled Wildlife0 Comments
26 March 2013
Today the Obama administration released the National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy. This ground-breaking strategy is the first national-level plan for addressing climate impacts on wildlife and ecosystems, and the first national-level climate plan developed by multiple levels of government including input from federal, state, and tribal agencies and organizations. The Strategy has [...]
Posted in Climate Change0 Comments
18 March 2013
The United States is on track to lose more than 54 million acres of its rural open space to development by the year 2030. That comes to more than 2 million acres per year, 5,500 acres per day, and almost 4 acres per minute lost during each of the next 17 years. Most alarmingly, this [...]
Posted in Agriculture, private lands0 Comments
15 March 2013
Later this year, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service must decide whether to list the lesser prairie chicken under the Endangered Species Act. With this deadline looming, state and private landowners are racing to finalize conservation agreements for the species, with the hope of staving off the need for listing. Less than two months ago, [...]
Posted in Agriculture, Imperiled Wildlife, private lands, Uncategorized0 Comments
01 March 2013
On June 12, 2012, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service decided that the dunes sagebrush lizard, a candidate species for over a decade, no longer warranted listing under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Yet only 18 months earlier, it concluded that the species warranted listing as “endangered.” This abrupt reversal was based largely on two [...]
Posted in Fossil Fuels, Imperiled Wildlife, Southwest0 Comments
© 2013 Defenders of Wildlife | 1130 17th Street NW | Washington, DC 20036 | 1-800-385-9712
Get Connected: 
