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For Immediate Release
Anti-Environmental Riders Slip Into Interior Funding Bill; Conservationists Decry Stealth Attacks
WASHINGTON -- The Interior appropriations conference report included two new, extremely damaging anti-environmental riders without debate or full consideration of their impacts, Defenders of Wildlife charged today.
The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote tonight or tomorrow on the bill, which will provide fiscal year 2002 funding for the major federal natural resource management agencies.
"As Congress rushes to complete the year’s appropriations bills in the midst of concern over our national crisis, anti-environmentalists on Capitol Hill are ramming through these destructive provisions behind closed doors. It appears to us that they are taking advantage of the fact that the nation’s attention is now focused on the terrorist threat to attach controversial riders that they hope no one will notice. One particularly egregious rider on national forest plans didn’t even appear in the House or Senate bill, but they slipped it in during conference," said Rodger Schlickeisen, President of Defenders of Wildlife.
One of these anti-environmental riders exempts the Forest Service from meeting a fifteen year deadline for updating forest plans. Under current law, each of roughly 155 national forests developed a master plan that guides forest management, including issues like wildlife protection, logging, recreation, and roads. These forest plans must be updated every fifteen years. This new rider bars, for one year, virtually any legal challenge based on the failure of a national forest to meet the fifteen year deadline. "Most national forests already operate under outdated plans based on the Forest Service's priority in the 1980s - logging - not the public's priority of today, balanced, environmentally sensible forest management," Schlickeisen said. "The public and our forests deserve a whole lot better than these obsolete forest plans."
While there are virtually no lawsuits based on these deadlines, Defenders argued it is inappropriate and unnecessary to set a precedent for barring citizen suits, and to remove a tool that could help bring the Forest Service into the modern era The bill also includes a rider that overrules two recent U.S. Circuit Court decisions to reduce the number of cruise ships allowed to enter Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska pending completion of an Environmental Impact Statement. Cruise ship traffic seriously impacts fragile Park resources including the endangered humpback whale and other wildlife, air quality, water quality, and the pristine character of the Park. Earlier this year, a 37 year-old, pregnant humpback whale was struck and killed by a cruise ship at the entrance of Glacier Bay. According to Park officials, the impact was so severe that part of the whale’s neck separated from its head.
The conference report also failed to include language, passed when the bill was initially considered on the House floor, to halt environmentally destructive practices by the mining industry on public lands. At the same time, Defenders hailed language passed by both the House and Senate, and retained in the final bill, to prevent opening of national monuments to new oil and gas drilling.
Despite the inclusion of anti-environmental riders, Defenders applauded the appropriators for standing by the deal struck last year to provide dedicated and increased levels of funding over a six year period for a broad menu of critical conservation programs that protect open space, wildlife habitat, and wildlands threatened by uncontrolled sprawl and urban development.
"This landmark conservation trust is the most important environmental funding initiative in our lifetimes," Schlickeisen said. "The Interior appropriators have met and passed the first test in upholding this visionary and historic commitment."
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Defenders of Wildlife is a leading nonprofit conservation organization recognized as one of the nation’s most progressive advocates for wolf recovery in the United States. With more than 470,000 members and supporters, Defenders of Wildlife is an effective leader on endangered species issues. For more information on this issue or other Defenders of Wildlife projects, please visit www.defenders.org, and for regular updates on important wildlife issues, subscribe to the DENLines bi-weekly electronic alert at www.defenders.org/den.
