Miranda Carter / Food & Water Watch – 2018-09-21 23:31:45

https://secure.foodandwaterwatch.org/act/protect-endangered-species-act

ACTION ALERT:
Big Oil & Gas vs. Endangered Species
Deadline Monday, September 24:
Tell the Department of the Interior to
leave the Endangered Species Act alone!
Miranda Carter / Food & Water Watch

WASHINGTON, DC (September 21, 2018) — Bald eagles, grizzly bears, California condors, grey wolves, American alligators . . . The Endangered Species Act (ESA) successfully brought these and other iconic species back from the brink. That’s pretty amazing.

Now the Trump administration is trying to gut endangered species protections for the benefit of the oil and gas industry.

Which would you rather have, Florida panthers or more dirty oil wells? Big Oil and Gas has wanted this law out of the way for a long time. And now it has an administration willing to make it happen.

Right now, there are some major changes to the Endangered Species Act being considered by the Department of the Interior. If those changes are allowed to move forward, critical protections would be thrown out or seriously undermined.

* Threatened species wouldn’t be protected from trapping, hunting, or other commercial exploitation.

* Limits would be placed on what wildlife experts are allowed to weigh in on.

* Financial considerations would be injected into what should be purely science-based evaluations.

Let’s not mince words: this attempt to weaken the Endangered Species Act is driven by money. Big Oil and Gas, and other corporate interests, want to be free to rake in profits regardless of the harm they cause in the process. And the Trump administration is happy to roll out the red carpet for them.

But federal agencies are required to accept public comments on whether to move forward with changes to this bedrock law. We need to make so much noise about this that undermining the Endangered Species Act becomes politically toxic for anyone connected with it.

This is just the latest in a long line of reprehensible actions taken by the Trump administration, but it’s important to remember that significant public outcry and bad publicity have torpedoed some previous regulatory rollbacks. It’s possible to stop this if we all speak up loudly and refuse to back down.

Will you stand with me to protect the Endangered Species Act and the wildlife whose survival depends on it?

ACTION: Tell federal agencies what YOU think: Submit a public comment before the SEPTEMBER 24 deadline. Take action with our sister organization, Food & Water Action, to help flood federal regulators with comments before Monday!

THE LETTER
Secretary Zinke:
Leave the Endangered Species Act Alone!

The Endangered Species Act works. It successfully brought iconic species like bald eagles, grizzly bears, grey wolves, and American alligators back from the brink. But now the Act itself needs protection from the Trump administration.

RIght now, federal agencies are considering changes that would remove protections for threatened wildlife, limit the involvement of wildlife experts in evaluating projects that could impact at-risk species, and inject economic considerations into what should be purely scientific reviews. All to benefit corporate cronies, like the oil and gas industry.

Let’s remind Interior Secretary Zinke that some things are more important than money.

Thanks for taking action,
Miranda Carter, Online Organizing Director, Food & Water Watch