![]() We have no time to lose.”īiden also called on the Department of the Interior to review the boundaries of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah and of Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which President Obama created due in part to the discovery by Audubon scientists that Atlantic Puffins spend winter in the monument. “Bird survival is human survival and birds are telling us they are in trouble. “All of our work to defend core conservation and bird protections and urge action on climate for the past four years have become day one actions for the Biden-Harris Administration,” said David Yarnold, president and CEO of the National Audubon Society, in a press release. ![]() The president also directed federal agencies to review and potentially overturn more than 100 Trump-era policies that the new administration says “were harmful to public health, damaging to the environment, unsupported by the best available science, or otherwise not in the national interest.” Those include significant measures related to wildlife protection, including a rule that sharply curtailed the reach of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, others that weakened the Endangered Species Act, and land-management plans that stripped protection for the imperiled Greater Sage-Grouse across millions of acres of its shrinking habitat. Also under review are the Trump administration’s controversial interpretation of the Clean Water Act that removed protections from numerous wetlands and streams its rule opening the Tongass National Forest in Alaska to logging and its rollback of the National Environmental Policy Act, widely regarded as the bedrock of American environmental law. “We applaud President Biden for taking these critical first steps on our long journey to rebuild our economy, revitalize frontline communities, improve our health, reduce pollution, restore our public lands, respect Indigenous communities, and protect our wildlife heritage,” said Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, in a press release. The moves were not unexpected-Biden pledged, on the campaign trail and since the election, to take many of them soon after being sworn in-but were nonetheless striking after four years of climate-change denial and deregulatory fervor. He also issued a moratorium on oil and gas leasing activity in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a vital area for migratory birds and other wildlife, just a day after the Bureau of Land Management issued nine leases in the refuge, the first-ever approved there. ![]() Among a slew of actions, Biden rejoined the Paris climate agreement and revoked the permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which Donald Trump granted early in his presidency. Just as the Trump administration worked through its final days to weaken environmental regulations, President Joe Biden wasted no time in using his new authority to begin reversing his predecessor’s rollbacks.Īlong with signing executive orders aimed at addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing racial equity, and reforming immigration, the new president used the power of his pen on Wednesday to reassert the federal government’s role in protecting the environment. ![]()
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