Common loons in the Seney National Wildlife Refuge, Michigan

Photo by Flickr member McGill’s Nature in Motion

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A common loon chick naps on its parent’s back

Photo by Flickr member maryanne.pfitz
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Your Photo Could Be Here

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Power plant in Morro Bay, CA via kafka4prez/flickr

Twenty plus years in the making, the new pollution limits on power plants will cut mercury emissions by 91%, reduce acid gas emissions 91%, and significantly cut arsenic, lead and nickel emissions.

Mercury Standards a Long Time Coming

The announcement is a tremendous victory for people and wildlife. National Wildlife Federation’s effort to curb mercury air pollution started back in September 1999 when we released Clean the Rain, Clean the Lakes: Mercury in Rain Is Polluting the Great Lakes (pdf)

The report warned of mercury’s potency as a neurotoxin that can cause neurological and brain damage at low levels in people and reproductive hazards in wildlife.

Excerpt from NWF’s 1999 mercury report:

The Clean the Rain Campaign…will press for the control and eventual elimination of mercury emissions that are contaminating the rain. It will call for the implementation of the following actions…

Coal-fired power plants must cut and eventually eliminate their combustion of coal (a major source of mercury, as well as smog and acid rain-producing pollutants). 

New Rules Will Protect Children, Improve Health, Create Jobs

Each year, EPA’s new air toxic pollution rules will prevent 11,000 thousand of premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks, 130,000 cases of childhood asthma and 6,300 cases of acute bronchitis. And it will prevent mercury exposure to children that can adversely affect their developing brains – including effect on their ability to walk, talk, read and learn.

The rules will also provide employment for thousands. The updating of older power plants with modern air pollution control technology will support 46,000 new short-term construction jobs and 8,000 long-term utility jobs.

And as NWF has documented, the new pollution rules are also a huge present to wildlife. Mercury pollution belching out of power plants settles in our lakes and rivers where microscopic organisms convert the inorganic mercury into methylmercury. This form of mercury accumulates up the food chain in fish and then other into other animals when they eat fish. As a result, species from the common loon to the river otter to the Florida panther are impacted by mercury.

Read NWF’s report Game Changers: Air Pollution, a Warming Climate, and the Troubled Future for America’s Hunting and Fishing Heritage that shows how mercury, carbon dioxide, and other air pollutants are directly impacting numerous species, including black ducks, moose, and walleye, that are revered as part of our country’s angling, hunting and conservation heritage.

Over the last year, thousands of NWF members and supporters have continued the campaign started in 1999. They have attended public hearings, signed postcards, made phone calls, and sent over 50,000 messages supporting the EPA’s new efforts on mercury and pushing back against polluters attempts in Congress to stop these new air pollution protections.

So join NWF as we thank the EPA for taking action to protect your kids and wildlife from the dangers of mercury and toxic air pollution. Together, we can all breathe a little easier.

Learn more about mercury pollution >>

Misdirected federal funding cuts could become the next big threat to endangered wildlife like the Florida panther. Photo: Michael Levine.

With the holidays right around the corner, House Republican leaders are scrambling to fulfill the last-minute wish lists of their good friends, big polluters.

Knowing that Congress must pass the federal spending bills before year’s end in order to continue funding the government, some members are scheming to push through anti-wildlife measures that would otherwise never make it into law.

A whopping 51 anti-environmental “riders”–so called because they ride along appropriations bills while having nothing to do with spending–are being considered, making it one of the most aggressive assaults in our nation’s history to wildlife, clean air, and clean water.

At risk are cuts to programs in the Endangered Species Act, National Wildlife Refuge System, and State and Tribal Wildlife Grants Program, which have been essential to protecting and restoring our wildlife and natural resources. In addition, some of the most egregious riders attempt to:

• Block the EPA and U.S. Army Corps from clarifying the scope of the Clean Water Act, leaving 60% of our nation’s rivers and streams and over 20 million acres of wetlands–which provide crucial habitat for river otters–at risk.
• Force approval of the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline and remove the President’s authority to make a final decision on the project. Bypassing much-needed environmental review and turning Congress into a permitting body on this dangerous project would undermine the entire process and put wildlife–including the endangered whooping crane–and water supplies at risk of toxic oil spills.
• Block EPA from reducing mercury and other toxic air pollutants from power plants, industrial boilers or cement kilns, which already causes suffering for common loons.

Passing a spending bill should not be an opportunity to force through unrelated matters that have not received proper consideration or public scrutiny. We can responsibly and successfully fund the federal government in a way that protects our nation’s wildlife, natural resources, and public health.

Urge your members of Congress to stand firm against anti-wildlife riders in the federal spending bill.

The Common Loon (also known as the Great Northern Diver or Great Northern Loon) is large member of the loon family of birds.   The Common Loon breeds in Canada, parts of the northern lower-48 states and Alaska, and Greenland.

But these Common Loons (known for their haunting calls) and their young are in jeopardy from the toxic mercury pollution that travels in the air from coal-fired power plant smokestacks, and accumulates within the northern lakes where loons breed.

We have the power to reduce harmful pollution threatening loons by advocating for the strong mercury limits proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Take action to protect loons from mercury pollution, today!

The EPA’s proposal would limit the mercury and air toxic pollution that comes from power plants – the country’s largest source of these toxic emissions.  Right now, mercury pollution in the air contaminates our lakes, rivers, oceans, and forests.  After landing in streams and rivers, a form of mercury called methylmercury builds up in fish and the wildlife that eat fish. The risk of mercury exposure also extends to terrestrial species such as songbirds, bats, spiders, and amphibians.

Mercury has many damaging effects on wildlife species.  Fishincluding trout, bass (large and small mouth), northern pike, carp, walleye, salmon; birds such as the Common Loon, white ibis and great snowy egret;and mammals like the mink and river otters, have all been found with harmful levels of mercury accumulation.

The effects of mercury in fish, birds and mammals range from reproductive to behavioral.  In fish there is a concern for reproductive issues and how this could mean a lower fish population in the future.

Image courtesy of Marlin Harms/Flickr

Common Loons do not know the fish they are eating are poisoned, and unlike us, cannot avoid foods with high mercury. After years of eating mercury-laden fish, loons with high mercury levels face difficulties that impact their ability to survive and for their young to survive.  The more mercury they are burdened with, the more likely they are to spend less time at their nest taking care of their young, and the more likely they will even have asymmetrical feathers that make their long migration flight more difficult.

Both the mink and river otter in New England have been tested for mercury, and incredibly, studies have found levels of mercury in their bodies associated with severe effects including mortality.

Wildlife are obviously suffering from mercury pollution. What can we do?  We can support the EPA’s proposed air toxic ruling that will put limits on the amount of mercury that coal-fired power plants can put into our air and water.

Now is the time to speak up for wildlife such as the Common Loon.  You can help make sure their haunting yodel is not lost in our northern wild places from mercury pollution.