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Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks approves wolf trapping, triples bag limit, eliminates quotas for 2012-2013 wolf hunting season.
House Ag Committee approves major cuts to conservation funding and damaging policy changes in 2012 Farm Bill.
Obama administration to ramp up drilling in Arctic Ocean. Interior Department released 5-year offshore drilling plan.
Defenders filed a petition to extend protections for North Atlantic right whales from boat collisions
Yesterday, the Senate passed an amendment to the Farm Bill that requires farmers who receive taxpayer-funded crop insurance subsidies to take adequate steps to protect the land and prevent water pollution, a vital conservation measure that helps protect hundreds of thousands of acres of land across the nation. However, the broader bill cuts overall funding for land, water and wildlife conservation by more than 25 percent, with potentially serious consequences.
Crucial programs that protect wildlife and habitat were slashed today in a bill approved by the House Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies appropriations subcommittee. While the bill’s overall funding is reduced by 4 percent, certain programs were singled out for the worst cuts in the bill. The subcommittee bill cuts the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by more than 20 percent and the land acquisition program under the Land and Water Conservation Fund by 80 percent below the FY 2012 enacted levels.
Yesterday the House passed a bill that strips environmental protections for hundreds of thousands of square miles of public lands along the U.S. border, including National Parks and wildlife refuges. It also lifts key protections for several other national wilderness and forest areas and blocks wildlife conservation measures for sea turtles and migratory birds along the North Carolina coast.
Conservation groups today filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C., that challenges the Obama administration’s plans to increase offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico without fully addressing the risks to wildlife and the environment. According to the suit, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management dismissed the lessons learned during the Deepwater Horizon disaster and failed to obtain essential information about the status of species and resources still suffering from the 2010 oil spill.
Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced an amendment today to the Farm Bill that would eliminate federal protections for imperiled species that exist entirely within the borders of a single state.
Conservation groups and the U.S. Forest Service have agreed to have an independent science panel evaluate the service’s selection of plant and animal species as indicators of the overall health of the Sierra Nevada forests.