Native Plant

Conservation

Campaign

 

HOME

(updated May, 2008!)

Conservation Economics

International

Equal Protection for Plants

Botany Staffing & Funding

Science & Law

Important Plant Areas

(c) Priscilla Titus

Contact us!

Native Plant

Conservation Campaign

 

PMB 151

1459 18th St.

San Francisco, CA 94107

Phone: 415 970 0394 

e mail: Emily Roberson

Director, NPCC

(c) David Tibor

(c) John Game

(c) Susan Meyer

(c) Lori J. Makarick

NPCC News is an e mail news and action alert service provided by the Native Plant Conservation Campaign. This page reprints selected items previously sent over NPCC news.

Sign up for NPCC news!

Find an Action Alert by date

NEPA Under Attack

July 11, 2005

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is part of the foundation of our democracy. It requires federal agencies to perform environmental analyses (e.g. develop environmental impact statements) for projects which my significantly affect imperiled species, air or water quality, public health, and our environment generally.

NEPA further requires extensive public review of and input into these environmental analyses.

It is literally the public's way to oversee - and help decide - how our tax dollars are used to affect our environment, public health, native plants, air, water, and our publicly owned lands.

For several years, Congress and the Bush Administration have been working to narrow the scope of NEPA. They have already exempted a number of classes of projects on national forests and elsewhere from NEPA review. Now they are working on a complete overhaul of the law.

Below find a recent editorial from the Center for Biological Diversity supporting NEPA.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

ACTION:
Contact your Senate and House representatives and tell them that NEPA is fundamental to our environmental health, public health, quality of life and economy. That the public DOES have a right to know and to help decide what is done with our tax dollars, and to our imperiled plants, fish and wildlife, air, water, and public lands.

Please phone or fax if you can. E mail is also helpful, but is sometimes less frequently read by busy Congressional and Senate staff.
Fax and phone number information for your Senators and House representatives can be found online at www.congress.org. Click ignore ad and type in your ZIP code.


<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><

Editorial from CBD supporting NEPA

White Mountain Independent, Friday, July 5, 2005

Keep the National Environmental Policy Act Intact and Protect the Public's
Right to Know

Erik Ryberg

Several members of Congress have been touring rural western America to promote changes to the National Environmental Policy Act. This law does not have a lot of name recognition, but it has rightly been called our nation's
"bedrock" environmental law. The "NEPA," as it is called, does not require
protection of the environment, but rather requires the federal government to
conduct a public review of the impacts of its actions. What those impacts
are is not a concern of NEPA; whether the federal government has disclosed them to the public and accepted public comment on them is.

The congressional tour on NEPA stopped off in Show Low last month, where it heard it from local people who all urged that the NEPA be changed. Environmental organizations, including the one I work for, were invited to the hearing only at the very last moment, and told that we had to submitforty hard copies of anything we would like to say to Representative Renzi's office in Show Low within 48 hours of receipt of the invitation. Given that NEPA itself is a law concerned with adequate notice and hearing, this struck us as an ironic turn.

The members of the public who spoke out against the NEPA at the hearing can be forgiven for not having a robust understanding of this complex law, but reading coverage of their testimony at the hearing has been a saddening moment for me. As someone who works with this remarkable law every day, I wonder who is counseling these speakers on what NEPA is all about.

For example, the White Mountain Independent reports that a New Mexico
rancher appeared before the committee to testify that the Forest Service had cut her grazing numbers in half without involving her or listening to her
concerns. I have no difficulty believing her story, but in this case the
NEPA is precisely the law that would come to her rescue if she had exercised it-the NEPA is specifically designed to ensure that federal agencies conduct their activities openly and do not make arbitrary or unjustified decisions.

The Independent also reported that a representative of the American Forest Resource Council complained that NEPA does not consider the consequences of not acting. He stated that forest health is declining because there is no evaluation of what happens when nothing is done in the forests. As I said above, it is understandable that the public does not know the ins and outs of a complex federal law, but the American Forest Resource Council should be happy to learn that NEPA very explicitly requires an evaluation of what it calls the "no action" alternative. This used to include landscape review of the "no action" alternatives in Forest Plans, but, sadly, the Bush Administration has severely curtailed this kind of analysis in forestwide planning. However, this is not the fault of the NEPA.

Although I am sympathetic to the public's misunderstandings of the NEPA, I
believe that Representative Renzi has a duty to educate himself about this
historic and bedrock law before he criticizes it in a public hearing and
champions sweeping changes to it. I have no idea where Mr. Renzi learned, for example, that NEPA's environmental reviews now average "decades" to complete, or that NEPA has prevented the Forest Service from conducting "basic service and maintenance." Like all laws that endure (the NEPA was signed into law over thirty years ago), the NEPA contains many escape clauses. And basic service and maintenance, it turns out, is one of them-the NEPA has many different levels of review, and depending just how "basic" the maintenance is, the action will require no review at all or very minimum review. For example, the Forest Service may log up to 1,000 acres for fire protection under an exclusion to NEPA that requires no more than two or three pages of analysis. Under a similar exclusion it may log an unlimited number of acres for wildlife habitat improvement.

At the rally held before the hearing, a common theme was that NEPA prevents public input into federal decisions. But this is the exact reverse of
reality: NEPA on the contrary ensures public input-in fact that is its
central objective-and without it the very people opposing this vital law
would be in a dire place indeed. The NEPA is the public's lifeline of
information to our federal government. Without it the federal government
could act arbitrarily, without concern for its impacts to local people, and
without regard for science, caution, or the public good. I can think of
nothing more American than a law that compels our government to tell us what it is doing and explain its actions when the public asks.

Representative Renzi should take a harder look at NEPA and serve his
constituents not by rashly discarding it but by enforcing it vigorously. I
suspect when he reads it he will find, like President Nixon who signed it
into law, a great deal that he will like.

Erik Ryberg is a Southwest Forest Advocate with the Center for Biological
Diversity in Tucson.

New York Times publishes article on bill that weakens and removes federal protection for endangered Species

July 7, 2005

The New York Times recently published an article on a draft bill, sponsored by Representative Richard Pombo (R-CA) and others that would weaken - in some cases - remove federal protection for endangered species.

The Times also published an editorial supporting the federal Endangered Species Act.

Both are reprinted below. A Defenders of Wildlife preliminary analysis of the draft legislation is also attached.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE ON BILL TO WEAKEN FEDERAL ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT:

Bill Would Reduce Government's Role in Protecting Species

By FELICITY BARRINGER
Published: July 4, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 3 - Republican critics of the Endangered Species Act in Congress have drafted legislation hedging the government's obligation to take all necessary steps to bring back to robust health any species on the brink of extinction.

The draft envisions more limited government obligations: ensuring that the status of an endangered plant or animal gets no worse and helping to make it better.

Representatives of environmental groups who have seen the draft legislation said that the change, achieved by redefining the act's interpretation of "conservation," would severely undercut the law.

The draft measure, said Jamie Rappaport Clark, the executive vice president of Defenders of Wildlife, "takes a wrecking ball to the whole Endangered Species Act" by changing its mission, disabling enforcement tools and loosening controls on agencies like the Forest Service and the Army Corps of Engineers.

But Jim Sims, the executive vice president of Partnership for the West, a group representing Western ranchers, farmers and industries, said that the draft has a "common-sense" emphasis on incremental improvements that are achievable, rather than on long-term recovery that may take decades. "The aspirational change is necessary," he said. "It's more important to incrementally improve the species' health as much as we can rather than set the bar at total and complete recovery, and nothing else."

The draft legislation, prepared by the Republican staff of the House Resources Committee, also narrows the law's reach, potentially exempting many federal actions that are now subject to review. In addition, it requires that the authority to list subgroups of a species of fish or wildlife as endangered be used "only sparingly." The draft would automatically take the Endangered Species Act off the books in 2015.

Richard W. Pombo, Republican of California and chairman of the House Resources Committee, has long been a critic of the Endangered Species Act, although in recent months he has spoken more favorably of its goals, and indicated that his revisions would make them more achievable.

The draft legislation was given to The New York Times by a lawmaker opposed to its provisions, who requested anonymity because the legislation had not yet been introduced. It has been circulating among interest groups focused on the issue, which tends to pit environmental groups against a loose coalition of Western ranchers, farmers and business interests. Most lobbyists believe that the committee's legislation will provide the framework for rewriting and reauthorizing the act.

The law has been a magnet for controversy since its passage in 1973. It is credited with playing a major role in preventing the extinction of hundreds of species of plants, insects, animals and birds in the United States. Nonetheless, only a handful of the more than 1,200 species listed over the years have recovered sufficiently to permit their removal from the list.

The law, as interpreted by a series of federal judges in the past quarter-century, has been instrumental in blocking dam construction, ending most logging in the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, overturning state or regional decisions on the allocation of scarce western water, and preventing some development on public and private land.

Over the past decade, efforts to rewrite the law failed to pass the House or were blocked by Senate Republicans, but Mr. Pombo said in a recent interview that he believed he could forge a consensus and win passage of the bill, given Republican gains in the House and the Senate in the last election.

Some of his supporters are not as sure. But Mr. Sims, of Partnership for the West, is not among them. "The prospects for some updating of the Endangered Species Act are very high in this Congress," he said.

"I think the chairman has a very reasonable marker out there with this draft," Mr. Sims added. "It's not too far to the left, not too far to the right. A number of my members don't think this goes far enough."

Environmental groups are gearing up their own campaign in opposition to the legislation as currently drafted.

They may find unusual allies in property-rights advocates who have focused their criticism on the bill's requirement that the government designate, and potentially restrict the use of, territory that is essential to a species' recovery. In a June 16 letter to Mr. Pombo, representatives of groups including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Americans for Tax Reform and Gun Owners of America urged that the bill ensure that all property owners be compensated if their land values drop.

The draft legislation permits compensation only when a property owner shows that a government action diminishes a property's value by at least 50 percent.

On the issue of what constitutes the "best available science" for making and supporting decisions under the law, the draft measure takes the unusual step of giving one scientific method preference over another. It calls for "empirical data" - which can be hard to obtain when a species's numbers are small and scattered - to be used when possible. More common currently are studies based on statistical models of a species's number, range and viability.

The draft legislation also sets new restrictions for mapping the territory considered essential for the recovery of an endangered species. It would limit such territory, called "critical habitat," to areas currently occupied by the species; the law now allows for the inclusion of a larger portion of the species's historic range. In the new proposal, expansion of the current range is possible only if that range is inadequate to prevent the species's extinction.

"It shortchanges habitat protection," said Ms. Clark of Defenders of Wildlife. "And habitat destruction is the primary reason for most species becoming endangered." She added that the law "places almost overwhelming restrictions on sound science."

Mr. Sims, in turn, argued that some of the law's proponents care more about keeping land unused than ending threats of extinction. "This is the Endangered Species Act," he said. "I would argue that a great majority of the American people believe that a focus on efforts to recover a species are more important than efforts to lock up land."

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL SUPPORTING THE ESA.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/opinion/05tue2.html

Editorial: An Endangered Act
Published: July 5, 2005

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is far and away the most controversial of all the landmard environmental statutes enacted during the Nixon years. It is especially so among those libertarians and property owners who think that commercial development is unduly restricted by the mandate to protect not only plants and animals, but also the habitats essential to their survival. The law is up for reauthorization again this year, and the pressures to weaken it are great. There are ways to streamline the law and make it less litigious that would not come at the expense of its core values and purpose.

Regrettably, the Bush administration is not waiting for this debate to take place. Since the day they took office, Bush officials have tried to subvert the law administratively and in the courts. They have slowed the process by which species are listed as threatened or endangered, cut scientists out of important wildlife decisions, encouraged and then sided with industry lawsuits against habitat designation, and tortured the very meaning of the act to evade its obligations.

The most recent example involves endangered salmon species in the Columbia and Snake River basins in the Pacific Northwest. These fish have long had trouble catching a break. A comprehensive recovery plan devised by the Clinton administration was tossed out by a federal judge, James Redden, who found the prescriptions too vague and the projected outcomes too speculative. But the Clinton administration never tried to shirk its lawful obligation to provide for the recovery of the species by settling, as this administration has, for the lesser goal of keeping the current rate of decline from getting any worse.

Nor did it descend to the same depths of casuistry. Among other things, the National Marine Fisheries Service proposes to include millions of hatchery-raised fish in its assessments of wild fish - a bit of mathematical gymnastics that would instantly make endangered wild salmon populations seem healthier than they are and thus ease the need for protection. No less preposterous is its argument that it cannot remove the dams on the lower Snake River - an option the Clinton administration held in reserve in case all other recovery measures failed - because they are immutable parts of the landscape, like a mountain.

An angry - indeed, flabbergasted - Judge Redden has now tossed out this plan as well. For good measure, he has ordered the government to increase the volume of water spilled over the dams this summer to ease the passage of young fish to the ocean and thus increase their chances of survival. Given the dwindling number of wild salmon, he was quite right to do so. The only downside is that the ruling has inflamed various members of Congress, and some of them are muttering darkly about legislative retaliation.

This would not be helpful, either for the salmon or for a broader discussion of the Endangered Species Act. In his recent ruling, Judge Redden invited all the stakeholders - the dam operators, the developers, the commercial fishermen and the Indian tribes that depend on salmon for their living - to get together to devise a common plan.

Any discussion of the law itself should be conducted with comparable transparency. It is a fundamentally sound statute with wide public support and a demonstrable record of success. By forcing a better balance between commerce and nature, it has often constrained human behavior in ways that lead to a healthier environment for everyone. The law, and our environment, deserve far better than the guerrilla warfare with which the opponents of the Endangered Species Act have tried to undermine it.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Defenders of Wildlife Analysis/Press Release

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 6, 2005
Contacts : William Lutz 202-772-0269
Brad DeVries 202-772-0237

ASSAULT ON ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT

DRAFT LEGISLATION SIDES WITH DEVELOPERS OVER MAJORITY OF AMERICANS
 
Despite Americans Strong Support for Act that Saved the Bald Eagle, Resource Committee Chairman Crafting Loopholes that are a Developers Dream

WASHINGTON  Draft legislation prepared by Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Cal.) would severely undermine the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and punch loopholes in the law on behalf of oil companies, large-scale developers, timber companies, mining corporations, and other special interests. If these provisions were in place in recent years, recovery of animals like the bald eagle, American alligator, and peregrine falcon would have been extremely difficult if not impossible.
 
"We are stunned by just how bad Rep. Pombos draft bill is," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife. "The bill contains at least seven proposals each of which would cripple the federal effort to help endangered species. It also creates a whole new series of loopholes that enable oil companies, large-scale developers, timber companies, mining corporations, and other special interests to dodge the Acts protections. The bill runs counter to the very intent of the Endangered Species Act which was put in place to ensure that human activity does not cause wildlife to go extinct."

Jamie Rappaport Clark, former Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and now Executive Vice President of Defenders, said, "This is a potentially disastrous bill. Given Mr. Pombos past statements about trying to make the Act work better, its extremely disappointing to see a draft bill that does so much to eliminate opportunities for species recovery."

An analysis of the draft bill by Defenders of Wildlife pointed to the following key problems:
 
7 It abandons the national commitment to bringing declining species back from the brink of extinction and recovering them to the point where they no longer need the Acts protection.

7 It sharply diminishes habitat protections for endangered and threatened species; the only habitat that would be required to be protected is the habitat that allows the species to barely survive.

7 It allows federal agencies to ignore their responsibility to protect threatened and endangered species. It exempts all federal agencies from the Acts requirement that they consult with wildlife experts to assess the damage potential projects may cause endangered species.

7 It changes the definition of what constitutes an endangered species, choosing a very unscientific definition that says a species is endangered only if its survival is threatened in its current remaining occupied habitat.

7 It opens a giant loophole that allows legal appeals during every step of the endangered species conservation process. Irresponsible developers, timber and mining interests and other resource exploiters would be able to tie the process into knots and avoid any meaningful implementation and enforcement.

7 It sets the year 2015 as the expiration date for the Endangered Species Act, for the first time setting a timetable for the end of federal endangered species conservation efforts.

7 It includes an onerous "takings" provision which requires the federal government to pay landowners for the costs of complying with the law, a terrible precedent to set with regard to environmental protections.
 
"The Act in place today has been wildly successful at preventing the extinction of many magnificent creatures. Since 1973, only nine out of the 1800 animals protected by the Act have been declared extinct. With this bill, Rep. Pombo has turned his back on this success and effectively eliminated any meaningful federal effort to save endangered species," Schlickeisen said.
 
For more information and detailed analysis of the Pombo bill and the Endangered Species Act, see:

 www.saveesa.org/learnmore/pdf/pomboanalysis.pdf.
 

Loss of Habitat Threatens Native Utah Wildflower With Extinction Citizen Groups Ask Courts for Help Enforcing Protection Law

July 5, 20005

Salt Lake City - Potential loss of habitat to highway expansion, suburban sprawl, and livestock overgrazing threaten a native Utah wildflower with extinction, prompting a Utah biological organization and two conservation groups to file a lawsuit today seeking protection for the wildflower's extremely limited habitat. The lawsuit also seeks to force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to finally adopt a recovery plan for the beleaguered species.

"This remarkable Utah native is only found at one site, and the Fish and Wildlife Service won't take even the most basic steps of adopting a recovery plan and protecting this wildflower's habitat," said Erin Robertson, staff biologist with Center for Native Ecosystems. "The Service is once again sitting on its hands instead of recovering this endangered species."

The Deseret milkvetch, a native wildflower found only in Utah County, Utah, survives in a single population of less than 300 acres near Thistle. The entire population is located within 1,000 feet of a two lane highway in a rapidly suburbanizing area. The milkvetch has been listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act since 1999, yet the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has so far refused to develop a recovery plan which would identify the specific steps necessary to recover and delist the milkvetch. The Service has also refused to designate critical habitat for the wildflower.

"We have little hope of saving this beautiful and tenacious Utah wildflower unless the Fish and Wildlife Service adopts a recovery plan,"
explained Tony Frates, a botanist and Conservation Co-chair for the Utah Native Plant Society. "Then the landowners, agencies, and other organizations can roll up our sleeves and get to work saving this important part of Utah's natural heritage."

The Fish and Wildlife Service is required by the Endangered Species Act to adopt recovery plans for protected species. These plans provide a "road map" for recovery and delisting, identifying conservation needs and a plan for achieving them. Similarly, the Service is required by the Act to designate critical habitat, which is the habitat necessary for the survival and recovery of the protected species. The Service has so far refused to take either of these essential steps.

"We owe it to our children and grandchildren to be good stewards of the environment and leave behind a legacy of protecting endangered species and the special places they call home," said Frates.

Contacts:
Erin Robertson, Staff Biologist, Center for Native Ecosystem (303) 546 0214
Tony Frates, Utah Native Plant Society, (801) 277-9240
 

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/living/health/12064219.htm

Associated Press reports more troubling information on misuse and censorship of science by the Administration.

June 30, 2005

For background on this issue go to the Union of Concerned Scientists "Restoring Scientific Integrity" page: http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/index.cfm

or the Scientific Integrity page at the Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility: http://www.peer.org/campaigns/eller/index.php

(The Native Plant Conservation Campaign's "Misuse of Science" page is undergoing reconstruction)

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
ARTICLE

Scientists report pressure to alter Fisheries findings at request of commercial interests.
By JEFF BARNARD

Associated Press Writer

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP, June 28) - Many scientists at NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency responsible for balancing hydroelectric dams against endangered salmon, say they know of cases where scientific findings were altered at the request of commercial interests, according to a survey released Tuesday by two watchdog groups.

The survey was conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. The survey posed 34 questions and was sent to 460 NOAA Fisheries scientists across the country. Responses came back from 124, or 27 percent.

"The conclusion is that political interference is a serious problem at NOAA Fisheries," Lexis Schulz, Washington representative of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said from Washington.

Among the findings:

- 58 percent of respondents said they knew of cases where high-level Commerce Department appointees or managers inappropriately altered NOAA Fisheries determinations.

_ 53 percent said they were aware of cases in which commercial interests inappropriately induced the reversal or withdrawal of NOAA Fisheries scientific conclusions or decisions through political intervention.

_ 13 percent said they knew of cases where environmental interests inappropriately induced the reversal or withdrawal of NOAA Fisheries scientific conclusions or decisions through political intervention.

_ 44 percent said NOAA Fisheries routinely makes determinations using its best scientific judgment, even when political pressure is applied, while 37 percent disagreed.

Steven Murawski, director of scientific programs and chief science adviser for NOAA Fisheries, said from Washington that the survey represented about 6 percent of the nearly 2,000 scientists at the agency, and primarily represented the views of low-level staff who evaluate the work of others to develop management policy, not research scientists.

Murawski would not say there was no political influence over science at the agency, but said science is the foundation of policy decisions that must take into account social and economic factors.

"To say it is politicized is a cheap shot, really," he said. "These are complex decisions, and many times people don't like the outcomes for one reason or the other."

Schulz said one of the inspirations for the survey was a recent case where NOAA Fisheries adopted a policy that counts some hatchery salmon and wild salmon together when assessing their status as endangered species. The policy was adopted despite advice from the Salmon Recovery Science Review Panel, made up of independent scientists, that they should adopt rules to keep hatchery and wild fish separate.

At the time, NOAA Fisheries Northwest Regional Administrator Bob Lohn said the hatchery policy was guided by a federal court ruling and staff scientists.

Robert T. Paine, professor emeritus of biology at the University of Washington served as chairman of the review panel. He said from Seattle that NOAA Fisheries rejected the first part of their report when they saw it dealt with the 2001 ruling by U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan that the fisheries agency could not give Endangered Species Act protection just to wild fish if it had previously lumped hatchery fish into the same population.

"The political wing of NOAA was outraged at us dealing with the Hogan decision," Paine said. "We were given three choices: submit the report as it was, and they wouldn't post it. To redo the report and they would be enthusiastic about it and they would help us do that. And thirdly, we were always given permission to publish."

They published their recommendations in the journal Science last year.

"I have no doubt, in fact, that there is a certain amount of tension between NOAA scientists who are charged with forming policy _ the majority of those people are political appointees, so they are going to do whatever the current administration dictates _ and the people in charge of science, if you will. There are a a lot of good scientists there. I think at times they feel terribly disappointed their recommendations are ignored or modified."
 

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passes a resolution supporting the Endangered Species Act.

June 28, 2005

Thank you to the California Native Plant Society, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and all others who worked to make this happen.

To see the text of the resolution, go to
http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/bdsupvrs/bosagendas/materials/051205
.pdf

This marks the first city to pass this pro-ESA resolution. Other cities and counties throughout the nation are moving to pass similar resolutions in coming weeks.

The resolutions are part of a nationwide effort sponsored by the Native Plant Conservation Campaign, the Endangered Species Coalition, and other groups to show local support for the federal Endangered Species Act and our other environmental laws. This year, Congress and the Administration are making their strongest push yet to gut the Act.

ACTION:
We need your help to pass more resolutions to save the federal Endangered Species Act! Last year we lost many of our protections for plants, wildlife and resources in our National Forests under the National Forest Management Act.

****We do not want the ESA to be next.****

Getting involved is a two step process:
(1) find elected official(s) to introduce a resolution in your City Council, Board of Supervisors, or other local elected body supporting the ESA, and strong environmental protections generally, and
(2) build a local coalition to support and pass the resolution.

We have put together a toolkit (attached) to help those interested in working to pass resolutions in their local areas:

The toolkit contains:

*A fact sheet on the federal Endangered Species Act *How to guide: Tips on how to pass a local resolution *A copy of the Endangered Species Act Legacy Pledge - which you can use as a

template for a resolution
*A sample resolution based on the Pledge.
*A sample letter to local elected officials - you can use this as a template for a letter asking your elected representatives to sponsor and pass an initiative.

For more information, go to
http://www.stopextinction.org/Team/TeamList.cfm?c=38