Endangered Species Act Update
Among the oddities of election year politics is that Congress, for the most part, stops passing legislation when they get close enough to election day that they are worried about what affect their votes might have. We are now in mid-April without a bill in the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee (that would presumably be a companion bill to the Pombo bill passed by the House last fall) and with no motion on the Crapo bill sitting in the Finance Committee, and everyweek that goes by without movement on a "gut the Endangered Species Act" bill in the Senate, then, is one week closer to mid-term elections. For that reason, it's both a small victory in its own right and another step toward prevailing in our campaign to defend the Act. Not only does the political will to move legislation diminish with every passing week, the Senate calendar gets more and more jammed up with top Republican priorities (which do not include the Act).
For all of these reasons, the Associated Press is now reporting on the "dwindling prospects of Senate action." We aren't in the clear yet, of course, but things are looking better every day.
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Center for Native Ecosystems
Our mission, simply put, is to save endangered species across Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. We play an "urgent care" role for the imperiled plants and wildlife most at risk of extinction, buying some time to figure out the long term solutions. We also work hard to recover these species, restoring them and their habitats to health. And we blog because doing so gives us a great way of keeping folks a little more plugged in to what's happening in the world of endangered species advocacy, offering some insight into what we do and how we do it, and fostering conversation among our supporters, our staff, and others.
