Americans have four new wildlife refuges to celebrate this month! Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recently announced the designation of four new Wildlife Refuges that span five states and diverse ecosystems.
How is it that an oil and gas industry rolling in profits can manage to receive government subsidies and tax breaks while conservation programs that are only a small part of the federal budget are threatened with the ax as Congress attempts to balance America’s budget?
Last year we asked you to help protect Montana’s premier National Wildlife Refuge, and many of you did just that — calling on the Fish and Wildlife Service to finalize its 15-year Comprehensive Conservation Plan (CCP) and expand proposed wilderness.
Congress’ Great Outdoors Giveaway continued this week with the Aug. 2 passage of a debt-ceiling deal that will make it significantly more difficult for the government to invest in conservation funding over the next ten years.
Several years of stagnant or declining budgets have exacerbated the more than $2.5 billion operations and maintenance backlog at refuges, and have forced a dramatic 20 percent reduction in staff nationwide. This fact sheet details effects at refuges across the country.
At the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on Maryland's Eastern Shore, sea-level rise threatens to drown the brackish marsh on which migrating shorebirds depend. In Northern California, the shrinking snowpack has reduced stream flows that sustain the delta smelt, a federally threatened fish species. Higher summer temperatures in northern Minnesota have depressed the birthrates of the area's once-populous moose, and just 20 inhabit the Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge that was designed in part to shelter them.
Americans have four new wildlife refuges to celebrate this month! Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recently announced the designation of four new Wildlife Refuges that span five states and diverse ecosystems. Refuge designation for these critical lands and waters will protect them as important pieces of America’s natural heritage for the economic benefit and recreational enjoyment of generations to come. The new Refuges are:
The National Wildlife Refuge System is asking for YOUR best ideas for improving the Refuge System.
So if you’re a bird or wildlife lover, you’ll want to jump on the chance to weigh in on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s initiative to gather the public’s thoughts on how they manage refuges in the future.
More than 100 million Americans watched the Super Bowl clash between the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers but they may not realize there’s an even bigger battle they should tune into this month – the fight over federal spending that could decimate pristine forests, pollute our air and water, close national parks and more.
It’s a long airplane flight from Baltimore to northern Alaska. But what if you were a tundra swan? This time of year, these birds head off from their wintering grounds in the Chesapeake Bay, flying about 4,000 miles to their breeding grounds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other spots across Alaska’s Arctic coastline.
Typically, they fly through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota, stopping at national wildlife refuges and other suitable spots.
