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Twenty-two former public officials, including multiple former Secretaries of the Department of the Interior, sent a letter to Secretary Haaland expressing their concerns regarding the Interior’s intentions for the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. Throughout their collective tenures in public service, they have defended Alaska’s public lands and the conservation and subsistence values protected under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is embarking on an ambitious new effort to establish a Southwest Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Area. If successful, a new conservation area would allow the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) 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The Department of the Interior recently announced that Secretary Deb Haaland rescinded a 2019 proposed land exchange in the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge that authorized a road to be constructed through the heart of this pristine Alaskan landscape. The National Wildlife Refuge Association has worked for decades to protect the Izembek NWR from this threat and celebrates this important step towards safeguarding America's most ecologically significant national wildlife refuge.
President Joe Biden will sign a Proclamation restoring protections to the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, the first marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean. This monument, administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as part of the National Wildlife Refuge System, protects unique geological features and habitats for whales, puffins, turtles, and deep-sea corals.
The Biden Administration released their 30x30 campaign outline. We fully support efforts to fully fund National Wildlife Refuge System operations and maintenance, establish wildlife corridors, and expand protected lands. This plan seeks to do all this, plus increase outreach to private landowners, many of whom are all in on protecting their land for wildlife.
The National Wildlife Refuge Association congratulates Secretary Deb Haaland on her confirmation as Secretary of the Interior. Her confirmation as the first Native American in the position is groundbreaking and will help the Department of the Interior move towards an equitable and inclusive approach to wildlife conservation, visitation, and use of our public lands.
The National Wildlife Refuge Association congratulates Representative Deb Haaland (NM-1) on her historic nomination as Secretary of the Interior. We are thrilled to welcome Rep. Haaland to this position, for which she is uniquely qualified and well prepared. As the vice chair of the Natural Resources Committee and chair of the Public Lands Subcommittee, she has been instrumental in implementing conservation policy during her tenure in Congress.
The National Wildlife Refuge System, which is administered by the Interior Department, manages 850 million acres of lands and waters. The System stretches from the islands of the Pacific Ocean to the 16 refuges in Alaska, throughout the 20 million acres in the Lower 48, to the underwater canyons and seamounts of the Atlantic and the sunny beaches and lush forests of the Caribbean. These lands and waters are the largest protected area for wildlife on Earth, and yet are drastically underfunded and understaffed.
We look forward to working with Rep. Haaland, who will be the first Native American ever to hold the position of Interior Secretary. The Refuge System by its very nature adjoins tribal lands, contains sacred sites, and provides habitat for native plants and wildlife that people depend upon, particularly in the Southwest and Alaska. We are extremely pleased to have a Secretary who values and treasures the wildlife of all Refuge System lands and waters, and will protect it for all generations of Americans.
Former Secretaries of the Department of the Interior Babbit and Kempthorne both visited the National Wildlife Refuge Association office to conduct interviews of oral history with our former Board member John Cornely for the USFWS Heritage Committee.
