These cute, baby, Louisiana Black Bears are at risk of losing their habitat if the environmental review provisions are not removed from WRDA 2013 (photo credit: flickr/USDAgov)

However well-intentioned this bill is, there are extremely dangerous sections that threaten the safety and well being of the environment and the public – two provisions in particular will steamroll an integral environmental review process that has been in place for over 40 years.

In order to initiate projects that will protect the public and our natural resources, the Army Corps of Engineers needs this bill to be signed into law. But all the good projects that could be constructed could very well be negated by these harmful provisions. Streamlining the environmental review process does not reduce costs, does not protect the environment, and does not serve the greater good for the public. In fact, creating bureaucratic hurdles and fines will allow bad projects to slip through under the cover of darkness, and could jeopardize the very water resources we rely on for drinking water and commerce.

Stand Up For Your Water Resources!

In the first week of May the Senate is expected to vote on S. 601. If the destructive environmental provisions are not removed, the environment, wildlife, and people will face grave consequences. Please remove provisions in the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) that would significantly undermine the environmental review process – section 2032 on Study Acceleration and section 2033 on Project Acceleration.

Celebrating Endangered Species Day

May 20, 2011 – We do not always know the value of something until it is gone. Unfortunately, hundreds of unique plants and animals are just a step away from extinction. May 20, 2011 is Endangered Species Day and an opportunity to learn about the wildlife we are in danger of losing forever.

Senate Votes on Big Oil Tax Breaks

May 18, 2011 – As the oil and gas industry enjoys record profits and consumers pay up to $4.00 a gallon for gas, this week the Senate took a roll call vote on S.940, the Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act. While 60 votes were required for passage, a majority of 52 senators voted in favor, including two Republicans. “Billions of taxpayer dollars are enriching the wrong industry and rewarding the wrong behavior,” said Joe Mendelson, National Wildlife Federation global warming policy director. “Americans know it’s fundamentally unfair to make extreme cuts to conservation, science and clean energy programs that invest in our future while polluters get special breaks. It’s past time to hit the reset button on this wasteful spending.”

Natural Solutions for an Unnatural Disaster

May 18, 2011 – As the catastrophic Mississippi River flooding unfolds like a slow-motion train wreck, the first priorities of the federal, state, and local government are to prevent loss of life, minimize property damage and assist those in need with all resources possible. When the waters recede, it will be important to ask some tough questions. Was this truly a natural disaster or one that was caused (or at least exacerbated) by government policies? What pragmatic steps can be taken now and in the years ahead to better prepare and protect people and communities from future storms and floods? In a new report, National Wildlife Federation has identified five ways government policies and practices are contributing to the extraordinary Mississippi River flooding and resulting impacts, as well as five specific recommendations to help policymakers avoid and minimize catastrophes like this.

And here are a few highlights from NWF in the News:

• USA Today: Mississippi Flood Control – Major Changes Urged
• Los Angeles Times: House Panel Passes Bill on Government Flood Insurance Program
• The Bellingham Herald:Connect With Nature During a Backyard Campout

For more, visit www.nwf.org/News

In fact, toxic stormwater runoff is the number one source of pollution to Puget Sound. Compounding the problem, climate change is projected to bring more intense rainstorms and even more floods to the region, increasing the risk to residents.

So how is Seattle handling the problem? Green Infrastructure.

A street-side swale and adjacent pervious concrete sidewalk in Seattle, WA helps decrease stormwater runoff. Photo: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Green infrastructure is a loose term that can refer to wide range of landscape sizes and settings. Essentially, it encourages restoring natural areas to cleanse stormwater, improve water quality, and control floodwaters. In doing this, communities are also creating wildlife habitat and opportunities for outdoor recreation.

For the home gardener, green infrastructure could mean simple things such as planting trees and tree boxes; or getting a little more complex with methods such as:

• Permeable paving
• Roof gardens
• Rain water collection systems
• Rain gardens
• Green walls

In Seattle, green infrastructure is popping up everywhere; in part, because there are many programs to support the local green gardener.

Seattle Public Utilities has created RainWise, a program for managing rainwater at home. The website offers solutions and step-by-step processes for controlling stormwater, links to other local projects, a vendor directory of certified RainWise contractors, and information on receiving rebates if you live in a targeted sewer overflow basin.

Washington State University and Stewardship Partners have teamed up to create the 12,000 Rain Gardens campaign.  The goal of this program is to filter 160 million gallons of polluted runoff by helping install 12,000 rain gardens in Puget Sound by 2016. You can find everything you need on their website — including a rain garden handbook, YouTube videos, and local workshops.

Incorporating these green infrastructure techniques in your garden is a great first step in certifying your yard as a wildlife habitat. As a small incentive, May is Garden for Wildlife Month and as a special offer, when you certify your yard any time this month, NWF will plant a tree on your behalf.

So get out there. You have nothing to lose — beautify your garden, improve the environment, and create habitat for wildlife simultaneously!

Inundated areas in New Orleans following breaking of the levees surrounding the city as the result of Hurricane Katrina. Photo: NOAA

Actor/Director Harry Shearer, perhaps best known as the voice behind several Simpsons characters like Ned Flanders and Mr. Burns, is touring the country promoting The Big Uneasy - his new documentary revealing the true story of why New Orleans flooded.  Over the next few weeks, the film is showing in Charleston SC, Duluth MN, Columbus and Cincinnati OH, Louisville KY, Santa Cruz CA, St. Augustine FL, New York City and Los Angeles  — click here for all showtimes.

“The flooding of New Orleans was not a natural disaster, but rather the product of more than four decades of design and construction flaws in a system Congress had ordered the US Army Corps of Engineers to build to, ironically, protect New Orleans from serious damage from a hurricane,” says Shearer in a statement about the film.

Shearer continues: “And because taxpayers in more than 100 American cities are being similarly “protected” by levee systems designed and built by the Army Corps (not to mention all the communities around the country battling short-sighted, environmentally-damaging Corps projects), what happened in New Orleans could happen next in Sacramento.”

National Wildlife Federation (NWF) is promoting this documentary to bring attention to federally-subsidized water projects that can and have had devastating impacts on wildlife habitat and public safety.  For every harmful project, NWF is promoting better, cheaper and safer ways to meet our country’s water challenges –- solutions that work with nature, that don’t put the public at risk, and preserve and enhance wildlife habitat.

Ways to get involved:

• Get out and see The Big Uneasy.
• Take action by telling Congress that restoring wetlands, rivers and floodplains is the cheapest and safest way to protect communities and solve water challenges at the same time.
• Visit the Water Protection Network (formerly Corps Reform Network) — a coalition of hundreds of organizations from around the country that NWF coordinates, working to ensure our water projects and policies are environmentally and economically sound.

Sunday night at 4 AM, I was awoken by a shrill buzzing noise. My flooding alarm in my basement was going off. Reluctantly, I went downstairs to find about a foot of standing water on my basement floor.

 In the first three weeks of March, we have seen double the amount of normal rainfall (3.6 inches vs. 1.7 inches). There have been 19 days with precipitation and 6 significant storm events. Let’s just say, it is extremely wet in Washington right now.

Unfortunately, daily precipitation is only amplified as a result of global warming, therefore increasing the risk of floods. This change in precipitation events, coupled with inappropriate development in floodplains, is starting to carry serious consequences for Washington State. Since 1990, flooding has been blamed for 71 deaths in Washington State, Interstate 5 has been closed 4 times, and over 1,000 homes have flooded repeatedly.

Once floodplain areas are filled by development, the height of floodwaters rises, spreading the risk of flooding to larger land areas. What does this mean for homeowners? There is a one-in-four chance of a property in the 100-year floodplain being damaged by flooding over the 30-year life of a standard mortgage (compared to 1% chance of fire damage).  With increasingly severe storms due to global warming, if you live near a floodplain, your risk for flooding is now increased.

What many taxpayers don’t know is they are actually paying for these losses whether their home is affected by flooding or not. Seventy percent of Washington taxpayers who don’t experience floods are paying for the preventable damage of the other 30% of the state that does flood. In Puget Sound alone, there have been 14 federally declared flood disasters since 1990, totaling more than $1.4 billion in damage costs.

Originally, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), was created to get people out of harm’s way by limiting development in floodplains. In reality, by making insurance widely available, FEMA has been subsidizing and essentially encouraging development in these high risk areas. Unfortunately, money out of our pocketbooks is not the only thing we are losing.

The Pacific Northwest takes great pride in claiming salmon and orca as an iconic species for the region. Floodplains are among the most biologically diverse and productive areas, providing critical habitat for these species.  In 2008, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) issued a scientific and legal finding (called a Biological Opinion, or BiOp) that FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is contributing to the extinction of salmon and orca in the Puget Sound.

Now, 122 Puget Sound communities will have until September 2011 to bring their floodplain management regulations in line with NMFS’s BiOp. Changes to floodplain mapping, local building codes, and other modifications may be required for these communities to remain eligible for federal flood insurance. Some neighborhoods have already started planning and implementing changes; others however, are a little more hesitant or are only now starting to think about it.

Preventing new inappropriate development in floodplain areas through BiOp implementation is only the beginning. We need to work together to fix existing floodplain management problems, restore natural floodplain functions and habitat, and encourage low impact development techniques. We all must act to reduce the affects of flooding, because no one wants their house (or basement) flooded, including me.

Stay informed on important floodplains issues and solutions by visiting the National Wildlife Federation’s Pacific Regional Center website.

Flooding in London, July 2007 (via Flickr's Andwar)

As polluter allies in Congress continue efforts to blindfold the Environmental Protection Agency from the realities of global warming, two new studies are confirming that changes in our climate are leading to stronger storms:

Human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases helped trigger the increase in extreme rain events seen in North America over the second half of the 20th century, a group of climate scientists reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.

In a second Nature paper, another group reported that human greenhouse gas emissions likely contributed to the horrendous floods that inundated England and Wales in the fall of 2000. Those scientists ran sophisticated climate simulations across a network of tens of thousands of home computers that volunteers loaded with climate-modeling software. [...]

The study found that observed increase in deluges “cannot be explained by natural internal fluctuations of the climate system alone,” said [Environment Canada climate researcher Francis] Zwiers. In other words, only the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere explains why the United States and Canada have experienced a dramatic increase in heavy downpours.

We’ve seen a series of extreme flooding events over the last year in places like Pakistan, Brazil and Australia. Climate scientists say global warming is loading the dice, making it more likely that ordinary storms will turn severe – and that severe storms will turn into disasters. Even the current unrest in the Middle East is being tied in part to climate-related spikes in food prices.

We can’t put off action on climate pollution any longer. Please take a moment right now to ask your member of the U.S. House of Representatives to take a stand against polluters.

To learn more about the connection between global warming and extreme weather, go to NWF.org/ExtremeWeather.

The decade of the 2000s is the warmest on record, with 2009 the fifth-warmest year on record.

Climate extremes, including droughts, floods, and heat waves, were recorded in many parts of the world this year.

Arctic sea ice was ranked the third lowest on record, after the lowest records set the previous two years.

In light of this news perhaps we should give similar “praise” to those saying that climate science and impacts aren’t supported by the overwhelming preponderance of scientific evidence?