News
The National Wildlife Refuge Association is excited to announce a groundbreaking partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Catawba College, establishing a unique internship program at the breathtaking Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina. This collaboration embodies a shared commitment to cultivating the next generation of conservation leaders and safeguarding the future of our natural treasures.
President Geoffrey Haskett of the National Wildlife Refuge Association testified before Congress on the proposed revisions to the Biological Integrity, Diversity, and Environmental Health (BIDEH) rule for the National Wildlife Refuge System.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is embarking on an ambitious new effort to establish an Everglades to Gulf Conservation Area (formerly known as the Southwest Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Area). If successful, a new conservation area would allow the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to work with willing landowners to protect the lands most important to our water and wildlife, in one of the most biologically diverse regions in our country. The USFWS has released a draft Everglades to Gulf Land Protection Plan and is seeking input.
Dive into an insightful guest blog by Lynn Scarlett, a board member of the National Wildlife Refuge Association and former Deputy Secretary of the Interior. Explore the importance of collaborative conservation efforts and how they're shaping a sustainable future for our natural world. Lynn sheds light on why coming together to solve environmental challenges is more crucial than ever.
As far back as she can remember, Lucy Crespo hasn’t liked being indoors. Maybe it’s in her genes: she was born in Argentina, surrounded by forests and mountains, lush grass and plants, and rivers that ran by her home. The air was crisp and sweet, the water clear.
That’s all a distant memory for her now. When she was four years old, Lucy and her family left home in search of a better and more prosperous life, eventually settling thousands of miles away in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, putting our nation on a new path to tackle the climate crisis and build a clean energy economy. This historic $370 billion package is a critical investment in our future and we applaud the diligent efforts in Congress to get this bill over the finish line. We were pleased to see the inclusion of over $121 million to address the threat of invasive species and increase the resiliency and capacity of habitats within the National Wildlife Refuge System and State wildlife management areas.
The House passed their historic Build Back Better bill, which includes billions of dollars to fund climate change solutions, including additional conservation on the ground, the creation of a Climate Conservation Corps, and, most importantly for the National Wildlife Refuge System, the repeal of the oil and gas leasing program in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The National Wildlife Refuge Association strongly supports the language released yesterday by the House of Representatives in their Build Back Better reconciliation bill that repeals the disastrous oil and gas development program on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This bill also buys back the leases that were improperly sold in January to ensure they will be canceled. The language included in the bill would repeal the creation of the oil and gas program included in the 2017 Tax Act, repeal the addition of an oil and gas program as a “purpose of the refuge”, and buy back the leases sold in the last minute sale before the change of administrations.
Some signs of climate change are subtle, such as shifting precipitation patterns or altered migration patterns, but some signs are dramatic, with monster storms hammering coastal communities and droughts and wildfires out west. While we know climates are shifting and changing, these signs are becoming more and more obvious as the years pass and the damage compounds.
