The Action Report - How NWF Is Making a Difference - National Wildlife Federation activities

Unexpect Wild Places at Risk From Oil Drilling

When we think of sensitive ecosystem at risk from oil and gas drilling, the Great Lakes probably aren't high upon the list. But NWF's Great Lakes Natural Resource Center has been working hard to save the lakes from "directional" drilling, in which a well is drilled vertically onshore and then angled underneath the water.

Despite sturdy opposition from NWF and other environmental and citizens clusters Michigan officials recently lifted a four-year-old moratorium upon leases for drilling under the lakes, paving the way for up to 30 novel wells to be drilled along the coastlines of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron Congres replyed in November by enacting a federal ban that prohibits the states from allowing further directional drilling for sum of two units years while the Army Corps of Engineers studies its environmental impact.

NWF will now examine to persuade the Michigan legislature to reinforce the congressional action by means of restoring the state moratorium, originally imposed in 1997 because of public touch about the risks of drilling. At that time, Michigan already had permitted ten oil and gas wells to be directionally drilled beneath Lake Michigan and three below Lake Huron. Seven of those thirteen still are operating.

NWF maintains that no drilling should take place until the state implements all recommendations made by the agency of a scientific panel for reducing the negative impacts of drilling. "It is shortsighted to risk a treasure of the like kind as the Great Lakes without solid evidence that the quantity of oil or gas to be win backed would actually benefit the public," says Tim Eder director of NWF's Great Lakes center "And it is irresponsible to increase production of fossil firings without a national energy plan that would encourage conservation, potency efficiency and greater use of renewable resources."

To learn more about this issue, log onto www.nwf.org/greatlakes.

U Reintroduces Black-Footed Ferret to Mexico

upon October 2, 2001, U.S. and Mexican wildlife officials fortunately released 39 captive-born black-footed ferret in Chihuahua, Mexico, the first wave of a reintroduction wait fored to number 100 animals. (Plans for the historic cross-border recapture effort were first reported in the September/October 2001 issue.)

Biologists believe the site proffers an excellent opportunity to reestablish a self-sustaining population of the endangered ferret because it is abiding-place to the largest North American colony of disease-free black-tailed prairie dogs, the ferrets' chief nutrition source.

Since the 1980 when a small wild colony was discovered in Wyoming, NWF has played a lock opener role in efforts to release the ferrets from the brink of extinction and a captive-breeding program was established. Since 1996 NWF has serv upon the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Black-Footed Ferret retrieval Implementation Team.

freshly NWF staffers helped break earth for a new National Black- lower extremityed Ferret Conservation Center near Fort Collins, Colorado.

hermes Unsafe in Milwaukee Rain, of recent origin Study Finds

Rain falling from the skies above Milwaukee contains levels of hermes more than ten times higher than what the U Environmental Protection Agency considers "safe" for the Great Lakes and other waterways, a fresh report reveals. The study was commissioned by the agency of NWF and co-sponsored by individual of its affiliates, the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation.

NWF ordered the samplings and neared the findings as support for a propos fresh mercury reduction rule in Wisconsin that--if passed--would be the strictest in the nation. It calls for a 90 percent reduction in hermes emissions from coal-fired power plants by dint of 2015. NWF is pressing for a phaseout of hermes emissions from all significant sources by dint of 2020.

Power plant air pollution is the source of a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of of the mercury in rain, which extreme points up in lakes and streams, contaminating fish that tribe and wildlife eat.

Federal Fire Plan May Threaten Rare Sage Grouse

A propos federal plan that calls for intentionally igniting fires upon western public lands to bring the risk of larger wildfires could devastate the already declining sage grouse population, warn NWF and single of its affiliates, the Nevada Wildlife Federation.

In Montana and the Dakotas alone, the U Bureau of Land Management is proposing to identify more than 8 million acres where fires could be intentionally set

similar a policy would needlessly overthrow millions of acres of already dwindling sage-steppe habitat that supports sage grouse and other grassland species, of the like kind as pronghorn, mule deer and of gold eagles.

According to the Nevada Wildlife Federation, its state has adopted a better approach: restoring grouse habitat by the agency of removing evergreen trees like pinon juniper and using actual limited fire and mechanical rules in ways that will mastery the spread of cheatgrass, an exotic species that repeatedly crowds out wildlife and sagebrush following fires.

Microsoft Grant Will Aid NWF's Conservation Work

Microsoft Corporation has awarded NWF more than $600000 worth of software, which will help improve data management, provide access to the latest electronic collaboration tools and enhance NWF's popular Web site, www.nwf.org.