Senate Budget Reconciliation Strikes Heart of American Wildlife, Wild Places

Defenders of Wildlife hammered the Senate’s version of the budget reconciliation bill for striking at the heart of America’s wildlife and wild places. The bill contains massive oil and gas lease sales and a dramatic increase of logging in our forests — each of which threatens iconic American wildlife and puts our nation’s unique and imperiled species at greater risk.  

“The Senate is sacrificing American lands, waters and wildlife in a short-sighted cash grab to fund tax breaks for billionaires,” said Robert Dewey, vice president of government relations at Defenders of Wildlife. “Degrading habitats threatens hundreds of iconic native species, from the Alaskan polar bear to the New Mexican pronghorn. With this bill, the Senate is putting critical wildlife habitats at risk and compromising the opportunity of Americans to enjoy and benefit from our shared natural heritage.”  

Harmful wildlife provisions in the Senate Budget Reconciliation Bill include to:

• Require quarterly lease sales of onshore oil and gas in any state with available land, including Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Nevada and Alaska.  
• Increase logging by drastically raising timber targets and requiring the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to issue 45 contracts that will last for the next 20 years.
• Require no fewer than 30 offshore lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico in a 15-year period.
• Require the Secretary of the Interior to offer at least 80,000,000 acres for each lease sale in the Gulf, and at least one million acres for each offshore lease sale in Cook Inlet.
• Require no fewer than six lease sales in Cook Inlet, Alaska over a seven-year period.
• Mandate at least four lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge within 10 years.
• Require no fewer than five lease sales by not later than 10 years in the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska.
• Rescind any remaining IRA funds for recovery of species listed under the Endangered Species Act.
• Allocate $46.5 billion for the construction of additional wasteful, ineffective, and destructive border wall and related infrastructure. 

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For inquiries, please contact Communications Director, Maggie Dewane at mdewane@defenders.org