As I prepare to go to Colorado this summer to explore the great outdoors on Sam Correro’s Trans America Trail, I continue to hope that we will have the wisdom to keep some of that great outdoors for generations to come to enjoy. Today the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) sent out a press release that disturbed me, part of which I’ve pasted in here:
While the Department of the Interior’s budget is slated for a record $11 billion increase for FY05, the highly successful Land and Water Conservation Fund, which pays for land acquisition for parks and wildlife refuges and provides grants for land restoration and conservation, would be funded at a level $100 million below what Congress approved last year. The Interior budget request also contains deep cuts in endangered species programs. While the president requested increased funds for listing species as endangered, funding for recovery programs would be slashed by more than $9 million. The budget seeks to increase National Park Service funding by over $100 million, with about half of that total targeted at reducing the backlog of maintenance projects at national parks.
Continue reading this post for information on action you can take.
In the Department of Agriculture request, the president’s Healthy Forests
Initiative would receive 40 percent less money than what Congress authorized
last year, thereby underfunding programs to protect homes and communities from
wildfires. Other Agriculture Department programs to protect wetlands and
wildlife habitat and to promote energy efficiency and sustainable agriculture
also would see budget cuts.
The FY05 budget would cut Department of Energy programs that promote the use of
renewable energy sources such as biomass and solar power. The budget also would
cut energy efficiency and conservation programs by more than $2 million. The
budget would increase funding by 16 percent for the president’s hydrogen
initiative, which would generate hydrogen from dirty power sources such as coal
and nuclear reactors. The budget also contains increased funding for a new
generation of nuclear reactors and for programs that would increase the threat
of nuclear proliferation by resuming America’s nuclear waste reprocessing
program, which produces bomb-grade plutonium.
For more information on the Bush administration’s proposed FY05 budget, see
NRDC’s budget statement, and NRDC’s analysis of the budget.
http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/040204b.asp
http://www.nrdc.org/media/docs/040204.pdf
