Archive for the ‘Matt Mead’ Tag
Source September 29, 2015
The governors of Wyoming and Montana will head to Washington, D.C. this week (Tuesday, September 29th) to give their perspective on how to “improve” (ie. dismantle) the Endangered Species Act.
Please find several tweets to send off at the bottom of this post.
Western Governors’ Association Chairman and Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead will be joined by Governors Steve Bullock (Montana, WGA Vice Chair), Jack Dalrymple (North Dakota),Dennis Daugaard (South Dakota), and Gary Herbert (Utah) at a number of meetings with congressional leaders. Governors Mead and Bullock will appear at a briefing on the topic “Improving the Endangered Species Act : Perspectives from the Fish and Wildlife Service and State Governors.” In addition to the governors’ appearance and remarks on the ESA, (which is the focus of Gov. Mead’s Chairman’s Initiative), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director, Dan Ashe, also will be present and will make a statement.
- Mead last month announced that the Western Governors’ Association will hold five forums around the West to collect information on how to improve the Endangered Species Act. The first will be held in Wyoming this fall. The act “touches the people and economies of Western states in a significant way,” Mead said last month in announcing the effort. “This initiative is intended to take a hard look…” Mead has focused much of his criticism of the ESA on how difficult it is to remove federal protections for a species once it is listed. He has said that since 1973, when the federal law was enacted, 2,280 species have been protected but only 30 have been taken off the list after being classified as recovered. The truth of the matter is, as Montana lawyer, Tim Preso of Earthjustice, states: “The proper measure of success of the Endangered Species Act is its track record of preventing species from going extinct”. He said he regards current calls for improving the law to be “Trojan horse efforts” to undermine key provisions.“The Endangered Species Act has been 99 percent effective at preventing extinctions, which is kind of amazing when you consider the huge amount of population expansion, and expanded human footprint on this continent since the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973”.
Let us not forget that Wyoming’s wolf management plan classified the animals as unprotected predators that could be shot on sight in most areas, an approach that drew opposition from national environmental groups.
Bottom line, the Endangered Species Act works. The longer an animal or plant species is protected under the ESA, the more likely it is to recover. Today the ESA is under attack at a time when we can least afford to lose it.
The ESA safeguards ecological processes, such as predation, as well as maintaining biodiversity. Science tells us that the most effective way to mitigate climate change is by maintaining ecological resiliency. The ESA protects keystone species (such as the gray wolf and sea otter) which create more resilient ecosystems by increasing biodiversity.
- Politicians should not be meddling in what should be science based decisions. Please reach out to the members of the Committee on Environment and Public Works – Subcommittee on Fisheries, Water, and Wildlife via twitter. Tell them that the ESA works, leave it alone!
Republicans:
Dan Sullivan (Chairman) Tweet#1 Tweet#2 Tweet#3 Tweet#4
John Barrasso Tweet#1 Tweet#2 Tweet#3 Tweet#4
Shelley Capito Tweet#1 Tweet#2 Tweet#3 Tweet#4
John Boozman Tweet#1 Tweet#2 Tweet#3 Tweet#4
Jeff Sessions Tweet#1 Tweet#2 Tweet#3 Tweet#4
Roger F. Wicker Tweet#1 Tweet#2 Tweet#3 Tweet#4
Deb Fischer Tweet#1 Tweet#2 Tweet#3 Tweet#4
Mike Rounds Tweet#1 Tweet#2 Tweet#3 Tweet#4
James M. Inhofe Tweet#1 Tweet#2 Tweet#3 Tweet#4
Democrats:
Sheldon Whitehouse (Ranking Member) Tweet#1 Tweet#2 Tweet#3 Tweet#4
Thomas R. Carper Tweet#1 Tweet#2 Tweet#3 Tweet#4
Benjamin L. Cardin Tweet#1 Tweet#2 Tweet#3 Tweet#4
Bernard Sanders Tweet#1 Tweet#2 Tweet#3 Tweet#4
Kirsten Gillibrand Tweet#1 Tweet#2 Tweet#3 Tweet#4
Cory A. Booker Tweet#1 Tweet#2 Tweet#3 Tweet#4
Edward Markey Tweet#1 Tweet#2 Tweet#3 Tweet#4
Barbara Boxer Tweet#1 Tweet#2 Tweet#3 Tweet#4
Thankyou, everyone, for your efforts here and support to protect the Endangered Species Act.
Independent news blog report on the briefing
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From: the Fence Post
Jan, 05, 2015
Wild Family In Great Divide Basin
Colorado Farm Bureau will be looking to improve national wild horse and burro management at next Tuesday’s voting delegate session during the American Farm Bureau Annual Convention in San Diego, Cali.
CFB President Don Shawcroft said Colorado ranchers will be calling on the federal government to enforce the already-standing Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act.
“The most important thing in our recommendation is a clear call on the Bureau of Land Management to follow the act as written and keep those animals within the determined numbers in areas where the animals are managed,” Shawcroft said.
Shawcroft said cattle and sheep ranches that share land with wild horse populations have suffered the most from the lack of monitoring due to competition over grazing resources.
“The biggest problem is that where those animals exist, they are not being managed and the numbers are not being controlled. It’s an issue for those with grazing rights in some areas,” he said.
Jason Vermillion, chair of Colorado’s Young Farmers and Ranchers and an alternate for the state’s voting delegation, said the issue is especially important on the Western Slope where ranchers have felt the greatest impact of the uncontrolled wild horse population. The issue was brought forward by CFB members in Mesa County.
Shawcroft also pointed out that the horses themselves suffer from lack of management and, as a result, lack of protection.
On Dec. 8, the state of Wyoming filed a lawsuit against the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management over wild horse management and called on the agencies to enforce the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act.
Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead said the Bureau of Land Management currently lacks the resources to enforce the act and must be provided more funding to properly manage wild horse populations.
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From: The Billings Gazette
The state of Wyoming is appealing the reinstatement of federal wolf protections.
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Wyoming and U.S. government officials have filed separate notices that they will appeal a ruling by a federal judge that reinstated protections for wolves in the state.
The notices filed this week target the decision in September by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Washington, D.C., who rejected a Wyoming wolf management plan that took effect in 2012.
The state plan had classified wolves in most of the state as predators that could be shot on sight.
Jackson agreed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that wolves in the Northern Rockies have recovered. However, she ruled that the federal agency should not have accepted Wyoming’s nonbinding promise to maintain at least 100 wolves and 10 breeding pairs outside of Yellowstone National Park and the Wind River Indian Reservation.
The Fish and Wildlife Service reintroduced wolves in the Northern Rockies in the 1990s. The animals have since expanded their range.
Despite the plan to appeal, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead said Thursday he believes that congressional action holds the best chance for resolving the long-running dispute over manage wolves in the state.
Congress previously specified that there could be no legal challenges to decisions to end federal protection for wolves in Idaho and Montana.
Many Wyoming residents believe the wolf population in the state should be restrained to minimize the killing of livestock and other wildlife by the animals.
Wyoming has been involved in nearly continuous litigation against environmental groups and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the state’s effort to gain control of wolf management.
“To state it as simply as possible, we’re trying to cover all bases,” Mead said of the state’s notice that it will appeal Jackson’s ruling.
Mead said his administration is working with the state’s congressional delegation on legislation to turn over wolf management to Wyoming and prohibit further legal challenges.
Under the plan rejected by Jackson, Wyoming had divided the state into two general zones. Trophy hunting was allowed in a flexible area bordering Yellowstone, where the number of wolves killed was controlled by license sales. Wolves were left unprotected as predators in the rest of the state.
Trophy hunting is not allowed under federal management.
Mead previously said the state had almost 190 wolves and 15 breeding pairs after the first hunting season in 2012 and just under 200 wolves and 15 breeding pairs after last year’s hunt.
Jackson’s ruling derailed the state plan to allow hunters to kill a maximum total of 43 wolves starting in October.
Tim Preso, a lawyer with Earthjustice in Montana, represented a coalition of groups that sued to overturn Wyoming’s wolf plan. He said his clients are prepared to assert that the appeals court should uphold Jackson’s ruling.
Preso said it appears Wyoming’s best chance at restoring state wolf management would be to fix the flaws in its management plan rather than challenge the judge’s ruling.
Preso said the confirmation of a female gray wolf from the Northern Rockies near the Grand Canyon shows that wolves have the ability to find places to live if humans don’t kill them.
“The big issue that we had with Wyoming’s plan was it provided too many opportunities for people to kill wolves with little to nothing in the way of limits on that in most of the state,” Preso said. “In the rest of the state there were a lot of things that really weren’t nailed down by way of conservation promises.”
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Wolf Is My Soul 