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Funding Bills Could Include Anti-environmental Riders

The Congress went home for the election without passing important spending bills for Fiscal Year 2005, including those that fund our land management agencies. The Congress is back in a post-election session to finish that work. Among the most significant for us is the Interior Appropriations bill that funds the land management agencies. It will be rolled into a giant "omnibus" measure and it includes a number of harmful provisions or "riders" with even more threatened.

Time is short and we need your help. The final shape of these measures could be determined in the next 48 hours, even before the Congress formally reconvenes on Monday!

Please Take Action Immediately! Urge your senators and representatives to insist on FY2005 appropriations bills, in whatever form, that safeguard our natural resources for future generations, not ones that give them away in a welter of special-interest provisions.

You can click here to send that message immediately.

Funding Bill: Considerable Mischief and One Great Opportunity

The Congress is on an exceptionally fast track with the funding bills. Members are now working on the omnibus measures. They will go to a House-Senate conference, then to an up-or-down vote. There is much we don't know yet, but what we do know is alarming. In their various forms, the bills that will be rolled into large omnibus bills contain a number of harmful, anti-environmental provisions or "riders." Worse, it's likely others will be added as the process moves forward.

Public lands in Alaska are the target of many of these damaging riders. But Alaska's Tongass National Forest could also be the beneficiary of a very good appropriations provision that we strongly support: an amendment that Sen. John McCain hopes to offer, if he has the chance, to end taxpayer subsidies for construction of commercial logging roads on the Tongass.

Already in a House Bill

In a remarkable bipartisan effort, the House of Representatives in June approved an amendment, offered by Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH) and Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ), to the Interior Appropriations bill to end taxpayer subsidies to private timber companies to build logging roads on the Tongass. The cost to taxpayers of this subsidized destruction has been enormous.

Take Action Now.

A Welter Of Bad Provisions

Beyond Sen. McCain's Tongass subsidy amendment, the news is mostly bad. Among the most troubling anti-environmental riders already in the spending bills are ones that would:

• Interfere with judicial review of logging projects in the Tongass National Forest of Alaska and limit citizens' ability to challenge timber sales;


• Waive environmental review of grazing permits on public lands and renew harmful grazing leases in Idaho;


• Expedite a land exchange, being negotiated with a for-profit drilling company, that aims to allow oil drilling in the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska;


• Allow commercial fish stocking, roads and attendant facilities inside park, refuge and other wilderness areas in Alaska;

More Trouble to Come

Other anti-environmental provisions are likely as the omnibus measures take shape. Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon has already threatened one that would overturn a federal court injunction and simply legislate the massive Biscuit post-fire logging project in Oregon, the largest public lands logging project in modern history with taxpayer subsidies and destructive potential to match.

Read enough? Click here to contact your legislators NOW.

Another would ask the Congress to do something it has never done before: remove wilderness protection from lands within our National Park System. This amendment would de-designate wilderness on Cumberland Island National Seashore in order to allow commercial motorized tours.

For more details on these dreadful anti-environmental provisions, visit this page at Wilderness.org.

How You Can Help: Take Action Now!

Time is very short: the omnibus appropriations bills will be before the House and Senate almost as soon as they reconvene. Please urge your senators and representatives to support Sen. McCain's Tongass subsidy amendment, if he offers it, or the Chabot-Andrews language from the House Interior Appropriations bill; to support increased funding for conservation and to work to strip all anti-environmental provisions from funding bills. At this late hour, only phone calls and faxes will reach your legislators in time. You can send a fax immediately from:
http://ga1.org/campaign/appropsriders.

If you'd like to write your own fax, and we hope you will, we've included a sample letter you can draw from. You can find House and Senate fax numbers at:
http://www.wilderness.org/TakeAction/contactdir.cfm.

If you would rather call, you can reach your legislators' offices by phoning the Capitol switchboard at (202)224-3121. It takes only a few minutes and it's easy. Just ask for the staff person that handles Interior Appropriations for the senator or representative and identify yourself.

Ask that the Member:

• Support Sen. McCain's Tongass subsidy amendment or the similar House language;


• Support all efforts to increase conservation funding to protect public lands and wildlife;


• Oppose all anti-environmental riders that are or may become part of the omnibus spending bills; and,


• Oppose the omnibus appropriations bills on final passage if these anti-environmental riders remain.

Contact Information

You can find contact information for your U.S. Representative at
http://www.wilderness.org/TakeAction/contactdir.cfm.

Sample Fax Letter

Re: Anti-Environmental Riders in the FY2005 Appropriations Bills

Dear Senator or Representative ____________:

I write to urge you to demand FY2005 Appropriations bills that safeguard our public lands, our wildlife and other natural resources. Unfortunately, the various bills in their present form fall far short of that. And other troubling riders have been threatened. Please oppose final passage of the conference reports on these funding measures unless they are stripped of provisions that attack the environment.

In addition to your support for removing anti-environmental provisions, I also strongly urge you to support any effort to increase funding for conservation programs that protect our public lands and wildlife. I am deeply concerned that important conservation needs could go unmet given the funding levels we've seen proposed for various important conservation programs.

I also strongly urge you to support an amendment to eliminate taxpayer subsidies for logging-related road-building on the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. That subsidy has already cost American taxpayers over $750 million in the past 20 years. A bipartisan majority in the House earlier approved an amendment by Reps. Steve Chabot and Robert Andrews to eliminate the subsidy. Sen. John McCain hopes to offer a similar provision.

The various funding measures threaten our national treasures through inclusion of an array of harmful anti-environmental riders. They seek to:

• Interfere with citizen challenges and judicial review of logging projects on the Tongass National Forest of Alaska;


• Waive environmental review of grazing permits on public lands and direct renewal of harmful grazing leases in Idaho;


• Expedite a land exchange aimed at allowing oil drilling in the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska; and,
• Allow commercial fish stocking, with attendant roads and other facilities, within Alaska wilderness areas.

• An amendment to authorize the Biscuit post-fire logging project in Oregon, the largest logging project in modern history as well as one of the most costly and damaging; and,


• An amendment to prop up commercial motorized tour operators by removing wilderness protection from part of Cumberland Island National Seashore, something the Congress has never done in a unit of our National Park System.