January, 14 2010, 10:52am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Cyndi Tuell, Center for Biological Diversity, (520) 444-6603
Matt Norton, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA), (651) 223-5969
Brad Sagen, Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness, (218) 365-6461
Sharon Stephens, Sierra Club, (952) (465-2118)
Destructive Superior National Forest ORV Plan Challenged in Court
Conservation groups filed a formal appeal today of a federal plan
that fails to protect wild lands in Minnesota's Superior National
Forest from damage from off-road vehicles. The groups are asking
Regional Forester Kent Connaughton to reverse the Superior National
Forest decision due to concerns about how the proposed off-road vehicle
plan will affect threatened lynx, wolf, and the Boundary Waters Canoe
Area Wilderness.
"The Forest Service
continues to fail in its duty to minimize harm to the environment from
ORVs.
DULUTH, Minn.
Conservation groups filed a formal appeal today of a federal plan
that fails to protect wild lands in Minnesota's Superior National
Forest from damage from off-road vehicles. The groups are asking
Regional Forester Kent Connaughton to reverse the Superior National
Forest decision due to concerns about how the proposed off-road vehicle
plan will affect threatened lynx, wolf, and the Boundary Waters Canoe
Area Wilderness.
"The Forest Service
continues to fail in its duty to minimize harm to the environment from
ORVs. It continues to ignore the impacts of hundreds of miles of
illegal roads and has no concrete plan to remedy the problem," said
Cyndi Tuell, a conservation advocate at the Center for Biological
Diversity. "Increasing the number of miles of roads in lynx habitat
violates the Forest Plan and will put the species at increased risk."
Under this plan, all but two of the 30 areas of lynx habitat will
continue to have open-road densities that are in violation of the law.
Sharon Stephens, of the Sierra Club, noted that the current plan for
those two areas doesn't give any indication of when those few roads not
designated as open would be physically removed, or how such closures
would be paid for. "It's unfortunate the Superior National Forest
didn't have a plan in place to take advantage of stimulus funds to
create jobs that would actually get these unnecessary and harmful roads
off the landscape," said Stephens.
In April 2009,
the groups appealed the Forest Service's first decision to allow
motorized travel on more than 1,600 miles of roads and trails in the
Superior National Forest because of harm to air and water quality,
noise pollution, the spread of invasive species, potential impacts on
Boundary Waters, and a failure to protect endangered and threatened
species such as Canada lynx
and gray wolf. While that appeal was granted in March, when the Forest
Service was directed to analyze the impacts to air quality in the
Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, "The Forest Service has made no
substantive changes to its original decision, thus leaving the Boundary
Waters vulnerable to continued impacts from off-road vehicles," said
Brad Sagen, chair of Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness.
More than 1,600 miles of roads and trails would remain open to off-road
vehicles under this plan, affecting more than 2.7 million acres of
forest.
This decision is the Superior National Forest's attempt to implement a 2005 regulation
that requires forests to determine which roads they need, how many they
can afford, and which roads should be closed because they are too
costly or causing too much damage. Most forests cannot afford to
properly maintain their current road systems, and implementation of
this requirement is seen by many as an ideal opportunity to bring the
overgrown and unmanageable road networks under control.
The groups that filed the appeal are the Center for Biological
Diversity, Friends of the BWCAW, Izaak Walton League, League of Women
Voters Minnesota, MCEA, Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness, and
Sierra Club.
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US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
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Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
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However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
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Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
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"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
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These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
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Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
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Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
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