PEERMail | BLM Must Embrace Climate Solutions

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Beyond 2020: BLM Must Embrace Climate Solutions

BLM Photo / Western landscapeThis isn’t a great time. With a pandemic, huge blazes tearing across the West, and a record-setting hurricane season, this torrid year marches on, both frightening and tragic for so many people. With all of this swirling around us, PEER has just released our new interim paper, Beyond 2020: Bureau of Land Management. A PEER Action Plan for 2021.

This plan calls for BLM to embrace mitigating climate effects as a central element of its mission. PEER’s work in 2021 will seek to ensure that all BLM planning includes assessments of climate impacts. We will press BLM to comply with Obama-era directives to mitigate climate effects and promote climate-resilient lands in all its programs.

It is now clear — the climate emergency is now writ large upon us. We can no longer ignore it. We have a small window of opportunity to enact changes to address this crisis and safeguard against the worst effects of climate change. BLM must be part of the solution.

We will also continue our work in 2021 to ensure BLM ends its oil obsession. Under Trump’s “Energy Dominance” policy, BLM has made oil and gas permitting a major focus of its very limited resources.

Central to our BLM work will also be an effort to heal our natural landscapes, protect wilderness areas, and save biodiversity. That is why we will also step up our work to reform the grazing program, pressure BLM to recover its conservation mandate, and rein in destructive recreation on public lands.

While this has been a challenging year, we are hopeful that new voices will soon emerge in our public lands debate. Our goal is to help inform those new voices with recommendations illuminated by the experiences of our public servants.

P.S. We value your input into our work. Let us know what you think about our interim report on BLM Beyond 2020 and how to improve it.


Pendley Must Go

Executive Director Tim Whitehouse testified at the House Natural Resources Committee Democratic Roundtable on September 9th on William Perry Pendley’s unfitness to lead the Bureau of Land Management. read more »

Scaling Back Right Whale Surveys

A new National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration report recommends reducing the most effective means for monitoring critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. Instead of maintaining targeted surveys to identify individual whales and assist with disentanglements, NOAA wants to return to broad-scale surveys, which will identify far fewer whales. PEER is raising concerns about this report and its recommendations. read more »

Cutting Protections on Sea Turtles

Record numbers of green turtles are nesting on Texas’ Gulf coast just as the National Park Service is cutting back on the program designed to ensure those eggs successfully hatch and the hatchlings reach the sea.  More sea turtles of several species now nest or are stranded on Padre Island than anywhere else in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, the Park Service inexplicably wants to redirect Texas turtle funding to Florida and North Carolina. You can make your voice heard by signing the petition. read more »

Curbing Noisy Overflights

Long-overdue plans to limit noise and disruption caused by air tours over national parks are finally taking off. Under court order from a PEER lawsuit, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced the schedule for developing air tour management plans for 23 national parks, which are all to be finalized by May 1, 2022. read more »

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