Chesapeake Bay
GERALD WINEGRAD: CONSERVATION OF ROCKFISH, OSPREY AND MENHADEN IS AT STAKE | COMMENTARY
There is a raging conservation issue that revolves around a fish that no humans eat and most have never heard of. It has brought over 45,000 citizens and 60 national and local conservation organizations and dozens of fishery groups together to demand immediate and substantial reductions to the hundreds of millions of these fish allowed to be harvested each year.
Read MoreGERALD WINEGRAD: IT’S A TRAVESTY FOR CHESAPEAKE THAT A 56% GRADE IS CELEBRATED | COMMENTARY
As a student for 19 years and a graduate school professor for 11 years, a report card grade of 56% would always be an F, an embarrassingly low failure. But in a world turned upside down, a 56% rating for the health of the Chesapeake Bay is celebrated.
Read MoreGERALD WINEGRAD: WEAK NEW BAY AGREEMENT IS DEATH WARRANT FOR CHESAPEAKE | COMMENTARY
The agreement has been politically sanitized to appear as if meaningful plans are being made, when actually it is a major setback.
Read MoreDECLINE OF UNDERWATER GRASSES IMPEDES BAY RESTORATION | COMMENTARY
Remarkably, Maryland DNR’s Brooke Landry, their SAV program chief and chair of the Bay Program’s SAV Workgroup, touted the SAV data with the greenwashing that pervades bay restoration: “Despite many environmental pressures on the Bay, we continue to see signs of resilience and recovery in our underwater grasses. The increases in SAV acres observed in three of the four salinity zones this year are truly a testament to the effectiveness of long-term nutrient reductions and collaborative restoration efforts.” Really?
Read MoreCOMMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON THE DRAFT 2025 CHESAPEAKE BAY WATERSHED AGREEMENT
The Draft omits references to the most critical commitment of the Bay states and EPA in the 2014 Watershed Agreement—to meet the TMDL and fully implement each state’s WIP. This omission tarnishes the entire process as this TMDL has guided restoration for 15 years, and supposedly still does. Meeting the reductions in N,P,S is the most important commitment in the 2014 Agreement as well as its predecessor, the 2000 Bay Agreement.
Read MoreGERALD WINEGRAD: TRUMP’S BIG, UGLY, ENVIRONMENTALLY DESTRUCTIVE BILL | COMMENTARY
Vast swaths of our nation’s public lands, including wilderness, are opened to private oil, gas, coal and mineral extraction as well as logging. Existing protections are overturned. The oil and gas industry would gain access to 293 million acres of public lands and waters — an area larger than Texas and California. Quarterly lease sales are required for oil and gas in all states from Alaska to Oklahoma with available public lands.
The pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) wilderness would be opened to oil and gas extraction. ANWR is known as “The Sacred Place Where Life Begins” to the Gwich’in Nation. The refuge supports irreplaceable wildlife habitat that could be permanently disrupted.
Mining would be allowed in lands adjoining the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness in Minnesota. Citizens are denied judicial review of permits.
At least 30 oil and gas lease sales are required in the Gulf of Mexico over a 15-year period. Six lease sales are required in Alaska’s Cook Inlet over a 10-year period. Cook Inlet hosts a declining endangered population of beluga whales (331 left), the white whales of the North
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