Subject: [Tweeters] Washington endangered birds at risk, please read!
Date: May 22 13:13:47 2009
From: Mark Egger - m.egger at comcast.net



Dear Tweets,

The following message is from Florence Caplow, a botanist and former
employee of the Washington Natural Heritage Program. She is alerting
those concerned with the conservation of natural areas and endangered
species (of course including birds) with the inordinately drastic
budget cuts proposed for the Heritage Program, the state agency
entrusted with monitoring and properly managing endangered species and
habitats in our state. Please take the time to read the information
below and take action if you are so inclined. Thanks for your
assistance on this very important issue, hopefully during this long
weekend!

Mark

***********************

One more point:

I wanted to clarify that the state funding for Natural Heritage and
Natural Areas (not counting their federal grants) was cut
extraordinarily far out of alignment with the 25% cut mandated by the
legislature for the Department of Natural Resources. The state funding
for Natural Heritage was cut by 65%. The state funding for Natural
Areas was cut by 87%.

Thanks,

Florence



On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 4:56 PM, Florence Caplow <firenze33 at gmail.com>
wrote:
Dear friend of Washington conservation and the Washington Natural
Heritage Program,

I'm writing to you to ask for your help and support in saving the
Washington Natural Heritage and Natural Areas programs from disastrous
budget cuts.

Two weeks ago the Department of Natural Resources made its decisions
about the allocation of the state budget for the next two years, and
their choices devastated two programs that are essential to the
conservation of biodiversity in Washington. Although the agency was
mandated to make cuts of 25% of state funding across the agency, the
total budget for Heritage was cut by 47%, and for Natural Areas by
53%, and these percentages include both state and federal funding.

What this means is that Heritage must - unless we can turn around this
decision - lay off as many as five people - half its staff - by June
30th, including two out of five scientists and three out of the four
people who maintain the data system.

The Heritage data system tracks all rare plant records for the state,
and many records of high quality plant communities. It is the heart of
the Heritage program, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the
program is essentially eviscerated by this cut. There will be no data
entry person, no GIS person, and no one to respond to information
requests from the public, agencies, and consultants. Sandy Moody, the
Heritage information request staff member, responded to more than 400
information requests in the last year alone, and her position is one
that has been eliminated.

Natural Areas was established in 1987 to conserve the areas of the
most outstanding diversity in Washington, and currently manages 31,000
acres in fifty-one sites throughout the state. They have lost roughly
half of their personnel. Two regions of the state (Olympic and
Northeast) will have no staff at all, and most regions will have
little or not funding for management beyond the funding for minimal
staff. Many preserves will quickly lose their biodiversity without
ongoing management, and the work of many years will be undone.

I know many of you - I'm the former rare plant botanist for the
Heritage program - and I know you care about the biodiversity of
Washington and the work of Heritage and Natural Areas. If we're going
to make a difference, this is the time to act. Time is of the essence.

Here are some things you can do, NOW.

1) Forward this email to others, particularly others in the
conservation and environmental consulting fields. I would particularly
appreciate if this email could be forwarded to the Washington and
Oregon NPS list serves.

2) Write to or call Peter Goldmark, the Commissioner of Public Lands,
and you could remind him that he was elected by the hard work of
environmentalists across the state, on a platform of sustainability
and conservation. Ask him to restore the funding to both programs, and
to explain why the cuts fell so disproportionally on the two most
specifically conservation-oriented programs within the agency. If you
depend on the Heritage data system in your work, please make that
clear to him. Letters from other agencies and consulting firms are
particularly important. Email is cpl at dnr.wa.gov . Phone is
360-902-1004. Fax is 360-902-1775

3) Write to or call the governor, Christine Gregoire, and make the
points above. Email form: http://www.governor.wa.gov/contact/
Phone: 360-902-4111. FAX: 360-753-4110

4) Send letters to the editor to your local newspaper. Letters in The
Olympian and the Seattle Times (opinion at seattletimes.com) would be
particularly effective. Be sure to remind readers that the current
commissioner of public lands ran on an environmental platform.

If you feel so inclined, please let me know what you did. I'd be happy
to answer any questions to the best of my ability, or you can contact
Pene Speaks at DNR for more direct facts on the cuts or to confirm my
information: pene.speaks at dnr.wa.gov .

Thank you so much.

Sincerely,

Florence Caplow


--
"Practically speaking, a life that is vowed to simplicity, appropriate
boldness, good humor, gratitude, unstinting work and play, and lots of
walking brings us close to the actually existing world and its
wholeness." -Gary Snyder

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