SCB Policy Blog

SCB, along with The Wildlife Society and the Ecological Society of America, this week asked Congressional leaders and the President to reject legislative riders added to the Continuing Resolution that would undermine the Endangered Species Act and other important environmental laws and regulations. The three organizations urged in their letter (link) that lawmakers actively oppose, and if passed, that the President veto, any legislation that would undercut the use of the best available science as the basis for implementing our conservation, environmental and public health laws. Many of the proposed provisions in the House Continuing Resolution, H.R. 1, and scores of amendments offered to it, would not reform the regulatory process to improve the use of science, but rather would halt the public comment and judicial review processes, defund state, private and federal cooperative conservation programs based on science, and replace them with directives supported by particular interests.

Although SCB primarily develops its own policy statements, at times the Society collaborates with other organizations on an issue that affects SCB’s members. The Minnesota chapter of SCB recently teamed with a group of both scientific societies and NGOs (Audubon Minnesota, Fish and Wildlife Legislative Alliance, Minnesota Chapter of The Wildlife Society, Minnesota Conservation Federation, Minnesota Division, Izaak Walton League of America, Minnesota Prairie Chicken Society, and The Nature Conservancy) to ask their Congressperson to help preserve the State Wildlife Grants Program, which is threatened with being ‘zeroed out’ in the new budget. This letter provides a good example of how SCB can effectively use its voice as a scientific society to help advance conservation policy issues. Read more…