Be Proud! See what you achieved for the Wild in 2009

By Laura Bailey on December 9, 2009 - 2:09pm

In 2009 you helped us begin to tear down the destructive environmental legacy of the Bush administration. Our members and supporters sent more than 1 million letters to decision makers, while our staff worked closely with the incoming administration and Congress.

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Together we rolled back or achieved time-outs for the unbalanced, industry-centric policies that were in place at the beginning of 2009. Beyond holding the line, we also gained some serious ground of our own by passing a massive package of wild land protection bills in Congress. Give yourself a pat on the back for being part of the effort! 

Here’s just some of what you helped accomplish this year:

• New protections for 2.2. million lands in nine states! We helped pass the largest wilderness bill in more than a decade, winning lasting protections for places like Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains and Oregon’s Mt. Hood.
   
• Saved Oregon’s ancient old-growth forests from major increases in logging proposed under the Bush administration.
   
• Fended off a massive oil and gas land grab in the West, winning a respite from oil and gas leasing for special places like New Mexico’s Otero Mesa, Wyoming’s Adobe Town and some of the treasured areas in Utah’s Red Rock country.
   
• Urged the Bureau of Land Management to look into overhauling its leasing program, which favored industry under the Bush administration. Helped spur investigation into industry-favoring conditions of oil shale research and development leases in the Rocky Mountain West.
   
• Saved Alaska’s Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge from a land exchange that would have placed oil and gas development within its current borders.
   
• Blocked proposals to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
   
• Scored major increases (4.6 billion) in federal funding for conservation programs.
   
• Helped win passage of climate change legislation in the House of Representatives, including funding for natural resources adaptation. (We're currently working on similar legislation in the Senate).
   
• Halted damaging off-road vehicle (ORV) abuse in California.
   
• Pressured the administration to halt Bush-era attempts to strip the nation’s roadless forests of protections.
   
• Succeeded in getting the Obama administration to adopt a plan to make land management agencies within the Department of Interior coordinate climate change efforts in an integrated, coordinated way.
   
• Helped bring snowmobile numbers in Yellowstone down from more than 700 to a little over 300.
   
• Passed the FLAME Act, which will fund the forest service and the Bureau of Land Management to fight large-scale fires, so that the agencies will no longer need to rob other valuable programs of funds in order to fight fires.
   
• Successfully expanded the Congaree National Park in South Carolina.

Many Bush-era policies are still being challenged in the courts or are under review by the Obama administration. The threats are not over. America's wild lands need you in 2010.

photo: Bristlecone pine in California protected by the Eastern Sierra and Northern San Gabriel Wild Heritage Act. Photo by John Dittli.