Kitzhaber seeks peace in Columbia salmon wars

Trying to head off a ballot measure to ban gillnetting for salmon on the Oregon side of the lower Columbia River, Gov. John Kitzhaber has told state fisheries managers to come up with new regulations that would accomplish a similar goal while still keeping gillnetters on the water.

Meanwhile.....

On the Washington side of the river, Department of Fish and Wildlife Regional Director Guy Norman said they hoped to work out a way to keep Washington's regulations compatible with Oregon's, but reserved the right to go their own way.

LINK (via:The Seattle PI)

Stop Gillnets Now, the organization that got the gillnet ban placed on the ballot, has come out in favor of the Governors plan, the gillnetters have not.

LINK (via:Coast River Business Journal)

House Asspropriations Committee Slashes Environmental and Natural Resources Protections

Last week while the rest of the known universe was focusing on the Supreme Court, the House Asspropriations Committee was doing everything in its power to gut environmental protections for clean water.

On June 28 the House Appropriations Committee passed by a 26-19 vote the Interior and Environment Appropriations bill. The bill would slash the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget by about a fifth for fiscal year 2013, the lowest it has been funded since 1998 and deeply cut funding for other environmental programs including the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a program that provides critical resources for protecting national parks, wildlife refuges and local recreation areas.

In addition, the bill was riddled with anti-environmental riders, including ones that would block the Obama administration from finalizing and implementing proposed guidelines to restore Clean Water Act protections to many of America’s rivers, lakes, streams and wetlands.

As an added bonus the bill also contains a rider to block Interior Department regulations that may be proposed to protect streams from mountaintop removal mining.

LINK (via: ecowatch)

Vote for the world you want to live in

Patagonia is partnering with the band Wilco, Headcount and the League of Conservation Voters to encourage customers to identify what they love about the environment, register to vote and vote the environment in November.

VENTURA, Calif. (June 20, 2012) — Patagonia Inc., a leading designer of outdoor, surf and sport-related apparel, announces the launch of its Vote the Environment campaign – a campaign that asks customers to register to vote, learn about candidates’ environmental records and vote for the world they want to live in. Patagonia is one of the only for-profit businesses to engage in a public campaign that aims to sway its customers’ voting towards the most environmentally-minded candidates.

www.votetheenvironment.org/

This year, Patagonia has partnered with the rock band, Wilco, the non-profit HeadCount and the League of Conservation Voters to achieve the campaign’s objectives. The company will also launch a Twitter campaign around the hashtag #becauseilove. People at Wilco shows, in Patagonia retail stores and online will be encouraged to tweet messages and images that complete the sentence "I vote the environment because I love …" in order to personalize the environmental issues at stake in this election. The #becauseilove tweets will be displayed in real-time at Wilco shows, in Patagonia stores across the country and online at Patagonia.com thanks to a technology partnership with Austin-based social integration company Mass Relevance.

Vote the Environment, along with voter registration group HeadCount, will accompany Wilco on tour this summer, with a booth at each US-based show. Additionally, Wilco has donated an exclusive version of their song “Whole Love” - the title track from their Grammy-nominated album The Whole Love. 100% of the proceeds from the sale of this song benefit HeadCount. http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/whole-love-live-live-single/id528700126

Customers will also find a special edition tee from Patagonia celebrating Wilco and Patagonia’s support of HeadCount; five dollars from the sale of each tee will go to HeadCount.

"Given the current state of American politics, it's easy to see why people become disillusioned and don't participate in the system,” notes Jeff Tweedy, Wilco’s lead singer, “But my hope, and my reason for this partnership with Patagonia, is to remind people that they do have a voice, and voting is an effective and undeniable way to be heard. And nature, while powerful, needs our voices and votes to protect and preserve it."

The social media component of the Vote the Environment campaign is designed to get customers thinking about what aspect of the environment matters most to them, and inspire voting that will preserve what they love. The company’s hope is that customers will spread the “I vote the environment #becauseilove…” on their social networks to get the word out about “voting the environment” in November.

“People protect what they love,” says Patagonia’s founder and owner Yvon Chouinard, “It’s time to hold our candidates accountable to environmental issues: if you care about clean air and water, how do the candidates on the national, state and local levels measure up on those topics? Get informed before casting your vote.”

Assault on Public Lands Passes House

The asshats in the House are at it again.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a package of anti-wilderness bills including H.R. 1505 the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act.

The anti-wilderness package allows logging in California roadless areas, clear-cutting of old growth forests in the Tongass National Forest and virtually rent-free grazing on public lands.

H.R.1505 would hand over “operational control” of federal public lands within 100 miles of the Canadian and Mexican borders to the U.S. border patrol and would outright suspend 16 environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act, within 100 miles of U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada.

The US Customs and Border Patrol would also have immediate access to develop roads and infrastructure on the more than 600 million acres of national parks, monuments, Indian reservations, wilderness, wildlife refuges.

LINK (Via: Ecowatch)

Senate defeats attempt to study genetically engineered salmon

The Senate yesterday defeated an amendment, 45-50, by Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, to require comprehensive environmental study of what she called a “test tube” salmon before the government approves it for the food supply.

LINK (via: SF Gate)

Western legislatures grab for control of public lands

Brought to you by ALEC and major corporations such as Koch Industries, ExxonMobil and Shell Oil Co.

LINK (via:High Country News)

The extractive resource industry and their paid members of congress like to push the notion that we need to open more of our public lands and waters for oil and mineral exploration.

Maybe they should develop the land and water they already have under lease?

More than two-thirds of offshore leases in the Gulf of Mexico and more than half of onshore leases on federal lands “sit idle.”

LINK (via:The Washington Post)