Yet just yesterday, the Administration’s budget proposal effectively eliminated two critical programs designed to meet both goals at once – the highly important environmental education programs of EPA and NOAA.

Let’s take a look back…

What Obama Said Then

Earlier this year during the President’s Inaugural address, he spoke to these issues:

“The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult.  But America cannot resist this transition, we must lead it.  We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries, we must claim its promise.”

And then a few weeks later at the State of the Union:

“Now, if we want to make the best products, we also have to invest in the best ideas.  Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy — every dollar. Today, our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer’s. They’re developing drugs to regenerate damaged organs; devising new material to make batteries 10 times more powerful. Now is not the time to gut these job-creating investments in science and innovation. Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race.  We need to make those investments.  Today, no area holds more promise than our investments in American energy…”

For a few years now I have struggled to understand why the Administration has failed to realize that we must invest not only in clean energy technology, but also in the education of American students and workers.  There is a disconnect here.

This investment in preparing the American people for the clean energy economy has a name: environmental education. Without it, the United States will never lead the transition to a clean energy economy.

Why Environmental Ed. is Critical to our Future

Environmental education happens at institutions of higher education (including community colleges), K-12 schools, career and technical education centers, and through innovative partnerships with non-profits, apprenticeship programs, business and others that will help create and strengthen education and re-training programs, curricula, and courses.

And earlier this week, with the release of the Administration’s budget, EPA’s and NOAA’s environmental education programs have been marked for elimination, even though they have bipartisan support in Congress (technically, NOAA’s programs are expected to be “consolidated” with other science, technology, engineering and math programs and details will not be available for a few more days).

These reductions would eliminate already woefully underfunded grant programs for child-serving organizations, schools, nature centers, zoos, aquariums and teacher training programs in nearly every community.

And let’s be honest, while these programs provide critical funding for teachers and communities nationwide, $25 million is a rounding error in the $1 trillion federal budget.  If the United States is to lead the global transition to a clean energy economy, to lead the world in science and technology, to spark the next space race or human genome product, $25 million is not going to cut it! 

We need an investment of billions of dollars across all levels of education. We need leadership to educate, train and prepare all Americans for this transition to a green economy.

What Do You Think?

We at the National Wildlife Federation would like to hear from YOU about your ideas for how we get there.  How can we, together, get Congress and the Administration, Republicans and Democrats, the public at large behind an agenda to truly prepare Americans for the clean energy economy?

Please leave a comment below!

A Black Billed Magpie during an early morning walk in Aspen, Colorado. Photo by Melinda Koslow, 2012.

This year the Forum tackled the idea of “Living With the New Normal,” a response to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s actual air temperature measurements that show the U.S. yearly normal temperatures are now 0.5 degrees F higher in 1981 to 2010 than they were from 1971 – 2000.

In parts of the Great Lakes region average air temperature increase is closer to 1 degree F.

Using standards established by the World Meteorological Organization, the 30-year normals are used to compare current climate conditions with recent history. Local weathercasters traditionally use normals for comparisons with the day’s weather conditions.

What does this mean for our planet? I tackle these questions through the framework of the three main points of discussion at the Forum.

How is the planet responding to this new normal?

I’ll bring in a Great Lakes example for this one. The most obvious is probably the recent flash flooding in Duluth, Minnesota. Over two days, more than seven inches (some reports are closer to 9 or 10 inches) of rain fell, breaking rainfall records and causing a raging river through the city.

Precipitation totals for Duluth area June 19-20, 2012. Photo from NOAA, 2012.

Two-thirds of the zoo was under water, said Holly Henry Marketing Director of the Lake Superior Zoo.

The flooding hit wallets also. Early estimates from the state of Minnesota show at least $100 million in damage.

Storm runoff from June flood in Duluth, Minnesota. Photo by NOAA, 2012.

According to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the Midwest has already experienced a 37% increase in very heavy precipitation since 1958.

The elements are not matching up. While there’s a problem of too much water in Minnesota, Colorado has a problem of too much fire. Record temperatures in the 100 degrees F and dry conditions have made it very difficult for brave firefighters to do their jobs.

NWF’s own Rocky Mountain Regional Center staff tell more detailed personal accounts of the fires here.

Although we have to be careful to attribute short-term events to climate change, what we do know is that these types of extremes and record-breaking events help us to understand the growing risk that the warming atmosphere induces.

Climate is what you affect, weather is what gets you. – Myles Allen

Read more about the effects of climate change on extreme weather patterns in the U.S. Climate Change Science Program’s report Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate, Regions of Focus: North America, Hawaii, Caribbean, and U.S. Pacific Islands or in climatologist Heidi Cullen’s book The Weather of the Future.

How are we responding to this new normal?

See no evil, hear no evil, say no evil. Photo by Melinda Koslow, 2012.

Flickr/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Midwest Region, 2010.

This work requires lots of relationships across state, tribal and federal lines and across all sectors of the economy to help wildlife survive these changes. NWF is a leader in practicing climate-smart conservation in all approaches to saving wildlife – ecological restoration (especially in the Great Lakes), planning, urban habitats, understanding how and why we are vulnerable and more.

It can be done.

These actions not only save wildlife, but also help our human habitats deal with a new normal. For example, every wetland we restore helps reduce the impact of flooding and water quality pollution to our cities.

How adapting does not mean accepting.

Flickr/Natalie Lucier, 2009.

Conservationist E.O. Wilson and I. Photo by Melinda Koslow, 2012.

Yet, I still think about those people who emulate the three “wise” monkeys. When will they also respond?

To paraphrase Harvard biologist and famous conservationist, E.O. Wilson, a human response to a message they don’t want to hear is often like this, “First the ridicule, then the outrage, followed by claims of ‘it’s what we’ve been saying for a while.’”

My opinion? It’s really what we’ve been saying for a while.

Today I attended the first ever White House Summit on environmental education.  There were speakers ranging from Richard Louv to NASCAR. 

The Presidential Environmental Youth Awardees were inspiring.  And it was wonderful to hear Education Secretary Arne Duncan express his enthusiasm for environmental education and the new Green Ribbon Schools program (inaugural winners to be announced on 4/23/12!).

However, it was pretty clear from the onset that there was indeed an elephant in the room…

Just a few weeks ago the White House recommended to Congress (through its annual budget request) the effective elimination of three environmental education programs that were funded by Congress at about $35 million last year (or about 1/4 the cost of a F-22 Raptor fighter jet).

What does the elimination of these programs mean?  What is at risk?  First, let’s consider just a few examples pulled from thousands of local grants to schools, nature centers, parks, zoos, science centers, natural history museums, aquariums and other community-based organizations over the years:

• Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Missouri received an EPA grant to engage their youth in environmental education and outdoor experiences.
• The Galeton School District in Pennsylvania received EPA funds for under-served students to monitor water quality to determine the environmental impact of natural gas extraction from Marcellus Shale.  
• Environmental Learning for Kids (ELK) in Denver, Colorado, received an EPA grant to provide career, leadership and life skills for you under-served youth through its Leadership Corps program.
• The Seacoast Science Center in New Hampshire received a NOAA grant to create new partnerships across New England for teaching informal, outdoor ocean science to under-served families in five New England communities.
• The Science Museum of Virginia received NOAA funds to provide earth science and climate change education for visitors through its Science on a Sphere platform.
• Trout Unlimited in the Chesapeake region received a NOAA B-WET grant for their Potomac Waters Youth Education Initiative to educate students about the importance of headwater streams to brook trout and the entire watershed.
• The University of Wisconsin received a NSF grant to create a regional Great Lakes network to increase the adoption of effective climate change education programs by working with teachers, businesses and the public.
   

This is just the tip of the iceberg!  These funds support programs like National Public Lands Day and the development of innovative curricula.  The National Environmental Education Foundation has leveraged millions of dollar in public/private partnerships through a modest federal investment.

At the summit, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced that EPA would maintain $5 million in funding for FY 2013, which is about half of what Congress provided last year.  This is a good step, but we still have not seen a detailed plan for how these funds would translate to grants and other support from EPA. 

Administrator Jackson also reinstated an inter-agency task force created by the 1990 National Environmental Education Act to improve coordination among federal agencies and stakeholders.

Unlike the steps announced by EPA, no one mentioned the major cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Program or the National Science Foundation environmental education programs.

At the end of the day I left with some new ideas and was pleased with the reinstated task force,  but I did not hear a commitment to the financial investment our nation needs to prepare the next generation to address climate change and enter the new green jobs sector.

Did you attend the summit?  Watch it online?  Please share your thoughts with me by leaving a comment below.  And stay tuned for future action alerts to support environmental education.

Striped dolphins swim through BP oil, April 2012 (NOAA's National Ocean Service)

Based on comprehensive physicals of 32 live dolphins from Barataria Bay in the summer of 2011, preliminary results show that many of the dolphins in the study are underweight, anemic, have low blood sugar and/or some symptoms of liver and lung disease. Nearly half also have abnormally low levels of the hormones that help with stress response, metabolism and immune function.

Researchers fear that some of the study dolphins are in such poor health that they will not survive. One of these dolphins, which was last observed and studied in late 2011, was found dead in January 2012. [...]

NOAA is sharing the preliminary results from the study so that stranding responders and veterinarians can better care for live stranded dolphins and look for similar health conditions.

Since February 2010, more than 675 dolphins have stranded in the northern Gulf of Mexico (Franklin County, Florida, to the Louisiana/Texas border)–a much higher rate than the usual average of 74 dolphins per year, prompting NOAA to declare an Unusual Mortality Event (UME) and investigate the cause of death for as many of the dolphins as possible. The vast majority of stranded dolphins have been found dead; however, 33 have stranded alive and seven have been taken to facilities for rehabilitation.

Last year, the National Wildlife issued a status report on Gulf wildlife and ecosystems warning  to watch dolphin populations for “reduced fitness of adults” – exactly what NOAA is now detailing. ”The poor health of dolphins in the oil spill area was to be expected,” says NWF Senior Scientist Doug Inkley. “The Gulf oil disaster is to marine life what smoking is to humans – it could kill you, and if it doesn’t, your general health suffers.”

Dolphins aren’t the only species showing signs of long-term impacts. A study last year documented the oil’s impact on Gulf killifish, a critical part of the Gulf’s food chain.

Just last week, National Wildlife Federation staffers found oil remains in Barataria Bay marshes and discovered a dead pelican with oil on it. The trip was a reminder that Mississippi River Delta restoration is needed now more than ever. While the Senate passed the RESTORE Act as part of its transportation bill, the House has yet to act.

Speak Up for Gulf Restoration

Speak up for Gulf wildlife and ask your Members of Congress to protect the Gulf’s wildlife and communities by passing the RESTORE Act >>

Photo credit: Peter Hemming

The 2011 update to the Arctic Report Card makes the bold statement that the Arctic Ocean climate may have already achieved a “new state.” The dramatic decline of Arctic sea ice thickness and summer extent has resulted in an upper ocean that is warmer and less saline. At the same time, the Arctic Ocean appears to have settled into a new circulation regime over the past 14 years.

And, if all these impacts of warming weren’t enough, ocean acidification (caused by the uptake of excess atmospheric CO₂ by the oceans) is starting to take its toll in the Arctic Ocean. Changes in pH are especially acute in the Bering Sea, which just happens to provide 47% of the catch caught in US commercial fisheries.

The impacts of this new climate state: “profound, continuing changes in the Arctic marine ecosystem.” When a scientific assessment uses words like “profound,” it is definitely worth paying attention. Such assessments tend to be scientifically cautious, wary about overstating the science or causing unjustified alarm.

The trends in the Arctic marine ecosystem are indeed astounding:

• Seven of the world’s 19 polar bear populations are declining. At least 2 of these declining trends have been tied directly to sea ice loss.
• Walruses are “hauling out” by the thousand along the north coast of Alaska in July and August. This unprecedented behavior has happened 4 of the last 5 summers, and is thought to be related to sea-ice losses in the Chukchi Sea.
• Baleen and bowhead whales are finding increased access to now open Arctic waters.
• Phytoplankton (microscopic plant-like organisms) productivity has increased by about 20% over just a 12-year span, mainly because there is so much more open water.
• Phytoplankton blooms in the spring are happening up to 50 days earlier than they did in the late 1990s.
• Phytoplankton communities are shifting to smaller species.
• Species that live on or near the floor of the Arctic Sea are being replaced by species typically found in more temperate oceans.

As we close out another record-setting year for the Arctic, this report provides even more evidence that polar bears and other Arctic wildlife truly are contending with climate change right now. The question is whether we can take the steps necessary to curb carbon pollution and reduce the severity of impacts to come.

Help Give Arctic Wildlife a Fighting Chance

Donate today to help National Wildlife Federation protect polar bears and other treasured wildlife threatened by climate change.

Participants learn web-based tools. Photo by Melinda Koslow.

The Great Lakes, often referred to as our nation’s third coast, has as much coastal shoreline as the Atlantic coast of the United States. The diversity of wildlife habitat is unlike anywhere else in the world.

Why is this workshop important?

The Great Lakes region is currently experiencing climate change impacts like warmer air and water temperatures, decline of lake ice, and increased heavy events of snow and rain. More of these impacts, along with some unexpected surprises, await us in the future. Actions to integrate these impacts and potential surprises into conservation efforts today and into the future will greatly enhance wildlife survival.

Participants discuss many topics like invasive species management. Photo by Melinda Koslow

Who attended the workshop?

Professionals who work in conservation and restoration of wildlife habitat in the Great Lakes. They represent states, tribal nations, governmental and non-governmental organizations.

What did they learn?

Participants learned strategies and tools for applying climate change impacts to actions that control invasive species, restore toxic hot-spots, expand habitat for fish and birds and manage agricultural watersheds. They also had “hands-on” training on web-based tools such as Climate Wizard, CAKE, and NOAA’s CanVis.

What does coastal habitat conservation look like in the “real world?”

Participants at Erie Marsh Coastal Wetland Restoration site. Photo by Melinda Koslow.

Participants visited two Great Lakes Restoration Initiative-funded sites on Lake Erie to see what coastal habitat conservation in a changing climate looks like.

These sites represent one of the largest marshes on Lake Erie and rare and unique lakeland prairie.

Erie marsh is on the western edge of Lake Erie. Photo by Melinda Koslow.

Restoring these sites will enhance habitat for waterfowl, raptors, turtles, beaver, shorebirds and songbirds, fish to name a few – plus will enhance the habitat of Lake Erie itself.

Restoration professionals at the site explained their plans for dealing with climate change impacts such as lake level decline and warmer air temperatures and also discussed how this restoration will protect people from climate change impacts by acting as a buffer from large rain storms and as a filter for better water quality.

Participants also had a chance to provide input into the upcoming National Climate Assessment. You can too as this assessment is intended to provide the latest climate change information for all of us!

To learn more about ecological restoration in a changing climate, see National Wildlife Federation’s guide Restoring the Great Lakes Coastal Future.

This workshop is part of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) series of workshops focused on strategies and tools for coastal habitat conservation, restoration, and management, in a changing climate. Support for this workshop was provided by the NOAA Climate Program Office, Office of Habitat Conservation, and Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Team.

To learn more about this workshop please visit the Joint Office for Science Support.

If your office is as quiet as mine take a minute to watch this trailer for an amazing new film on Climate Refugees, and check out the website to find a screening near you.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This week’s stories:

1. Highlight of the Week: Fuel Efficiency Rules! Or, Cleaner Trucks Good for Wildlife, Economy
2. Quote: Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
3. Economic Story of the Week: Think Big, Start Small
4. Editorial of the Week: GOP vs. Mother Nature
5. Drilling On Up
6. Feeling Hot Hot Hot?
7. DOE Panel Calls for Action on Fracking Impacts
8. Happening this Week

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Highlight of the Week

Fuel Efficiency Rules! Or, Cleaner Trucks Good for Wildlife, Economy

via Flickr/indiwench

President Obama has unveiled the first-ever fuel efficiency standards for medium and heavy duty pickup trucks, vocational trucks, and combination tractors/semis. The proposed National Heavy Duty Program will save Americans $35 billion in fuel costs, cut 98 million barrels of oil consumption annually by 2030 and clear 246 million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution from our skies.

“These standards will provide welcome fuel savings, budget relief, and pollution reduction to those who rely on heavy trucks to move America’s goods and people, haul equipment on the job, or tow a boat to the lake,” said Larry Schweiger, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation.

Coming on the heels of new standards for cars and light duty trucks, the National Heavy Duty Program would cut fuel consumption across all types of trucks from 2014-2018.

The three sets of standards would cut 639 million metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution annually by 2030 – the equivalent of about 10 percent of America’s carbon footprint today. “That’s a critical step in confronting global warming, the single biggest threat facing America’s wildlife,” said Zoe Lipman, the National Wildlife Federation’s senior manager for transportation and global warming solutions. “The standards will also cut America’s oil consumption by 3.4 million barrels of oil every single day – more than we currently import from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Venezuela combined.”

Check out NWF’s recently released joint report on the economic benefits of fuel efficiency standards.

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Quote:

via Sen. Boxer/Flickr

“They keep trying to overturn the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act. That’s not going to happen.”

-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA).

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Economic Story of the Week

Think Big, Start Small

zilowatt.org

While Congress continues to squabble over energy efficient light bulbs a California nonprofit called Zilowatt is spreading energy conservation from the bottom up. The Palo Alto based organization is supplying interactive educational kits to schools this fall for outreach sponsored by the city’s utility departments.

The kits are packed with visual tools that allow students to learn at their own pace and use character superheroes Reuse, Recycle, Reduce and TIO (“Turn It Off”) to share lessons. The group’s goal is to provide materials to any school but they must first recruit a sponsor and a champion within the school to promote the program.

More on this story: NY Times

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Editorial of the Week

GOP vs. Mother Nature

(LA Times)

via Paul Fundenburg/Flickr

They loaded up the appropriations bill that funds the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency with dozens of riders that would encourage deadly pollution of the air and water, set back efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and allow uranium mining near the Grand Canyon, among other things. Such riders are commonplace on annual appropriations bills, but Washington insiders say they’ve never seen such a breathtaking assault on the environment.

If there was any good news from the chaos surrounding this week’s deal to raise the federal debt ceiling, it’s that the drawn-out congressional debate over the issue distracted GOP representatives from passing this monstrosity. (More…)

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Drilling On Up

Arctic Fox, via Billy Linblom/Flickr

The Obama Administration just gave the green light to Shell Oil’s Arctic drilling exploration plan, proving once again that oil companies are held to a different standard than everyone else.

In a statement BOEMRE (the offshore regulatory agency) said that they “found no evidence that the proposed action would significantly affect the quality of the human environment.” The final outcome is contingent on a few more approvals – for safety permits and other things – but most observers believe the point is clear: the government wants drilling to happen and is working hard to make that a reality.

But just this week the British government warned that several hundred tons of oil had likely leaked into the North Sea from a Royal Dutch Shell rig, the 11th reported incident since 2009.

So what’s the big deal? A lot of folks have pointed out the obvious: there’s no way Shell or any other company could control a blowout or clean up an oil spill in these conditions.

More on this story: AP

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Feeling Hot Hot Hot?

via Mr T in DC/Flickr

New data confirms what you already knew – July was incredibly hot, one of the warmest on record. Check out the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center recap of July 2011.

“We’ve had another unusually warm month and are on the way to another unusually hot year, but the reality is that these conditions are the new normals that we all need to get used to,” said Dr. Amanda Staudt, climate scientist with the National Wildlife Federation.

We’re on pace for the 35th consecutive year with global temperatures above the 20th century average. Some members of Congress may find the validity of climate change an inconvenient truth, but many U.S. cities are going above and beyond to mitigate it by lowering their carbon pollution and financing adaptation methods, for example, planting trees to increase shade to counter heat waves and elevating building foundations to account for projected sea level rise.

More on this story: Wildlife Promise, USA Today, NOAA’s State of the Climate

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DOE Panel Calls for Action on Fracking Impacts

Marcellus Shale, via Flickr/Marcellus Protest

The Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB) Natural Gas Subcommittee recently called for better enforcement, oversight and transparency for the natural gas industry, including full disclosure of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking.’

“The chemicals used to extract natural gas through fracking are often a mystery for local communities and state and federal regulators, so we applaud the panel for recommending the public disclosure of fracking chemicals,” said Kate Zimmerman, senior policy advisor on public lands for the National Wildlife Federation. “But this recommendation is just a tiny first step. Congress, the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior and the EPA also need to move forward to close the gaping loopholes in our environmental laws the natural gas industry continues to exploit. Energy companies and government watchdogs need to balance economics and jobs with protecting wildlife, clean water, clean air and human health.”

The National Wildlife Federation is not opposed to the development of natural gas; however, any energy development must be done in an environmentally sound manner that does not place wildlife and people at risk.

More on this story: NWF Media Center

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Happening this Week

Congress is on summer recess until September 6th.

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For more global warming news on Wildlife Promise click here.

Sound crazy? But according to Greenwire (sub. req.), that’s what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) continues to tell scientists in its Sea Grant research program – they can talk about our problems, but they can’t talk about solutions:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has announced it will continue to distribute guidance that discourages scientists receiving Sea Grant research grants from speaking out on “issues of public debate,” despite a petition from an advocacy group to reverse the “gag rule.”

NOAA rejected a petition from the advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility that asked the agency to alter their guidance related to the National Sea Grant College Program which funds scientific research. The guidance tells recipients of marine research grants to avoid advocacy “at all costs” — a policy that forces academics to keep quiet or risk losing their funding, according to PEER.

“Gagging scientists is bad enough, but the policy’s vagueness makes it even worse,” said Dr. Doug Inkley, the National Wildlife Federation’s senior scientist. “At a time when scientists are increasingly coming under political attack, it opens a gaping hole for a witch hunt about where scientists cross the line into ‘advocacy’. It doesn’t serve society well that the scientific experts on an issue are excluded from making management/policy recommendations in their area of expertise.”

Bill Morrow\Flickr

Since 1870 the National Weather Service, a branch of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), helps protect our lives and property from a tornado or other severe weather event. Even if you get weather information from your local TV meteorologist he or she cannot properly issue a weather warning without the determination of National Weather Service’s highly-trained around-the-clock scientists.

As severe storms this week brought harm to many in the south and eastern part of the United States, it is increasingly clear how important early detection and warning is to our safety.

NOAA also recognizes the need to detect and plan for impacts from climate change such as sea level rise and severe drought.

Where could we turn to get the climate change information needed to protect ourselves and wildlife?

To make climate change information accessible and useful for the public NOAA is creating the structure necessary for a National Climate Service.

Travis\Flickr

The Climate Service will assist answers to questions such as: How much might areas of the northern Great Lakes warm making moose more susceptible to disease? Or, what communities can expect extreme flooding and at what time of year?

There is no service currently in place to provide such information.

NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco says:

Advances in science make it possible for us to provide useful information about the months-to-years time-frame – something that has potential to be of immense utility to businesses, communities, natural resources and military operations.

Last week Congress did a disservice to national protection and planning efforts by blocking a measure to create this National Climate Service.

House members on both sides of the aisle defeated the measure. It is unknown what their true motivation is but it seems to be another attempt to squash climate change science.

Imagine what kind of trouble we would be in if the National Weather Service wasn’t available to translate weather science into warnings and forecasts for the public. The benefits of a National Climate Service are innumerable.

What does the future hold for a National Climate Service?

The issue of establishing a National Climate Service is being revisited in the fight over the FY 2012 budget. They will have to move very quickly as there is only 5 ½ months before the start of FY 2012.

We need your help to ensure this important service is implemented to protect people and wildlife.

Learn about the National Climate Service and visit its prototype website. Call your House Representative today and tell them not to deny information to protect people and wildlife from climate change by supporting a National Climate Service.

Learn more about National Wildlife Federation’s efforts to protect wildlife from climate change impacts.

NWF’s Senior Scientist Dr. Doug Inkley narrates the videos, which look at birds, mammals and sea turtles respectively.  As Dr. Inkley points out, we can’t say definitively that each of these animals died or became ill as a result of the oil because testing has not been done to actually prove that.  But in my personal opinion, basic common sense tells us that this disaster was directly responsible for most of these wildlife deaths and strandings reported since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded back in April.

The science bears out that common sense conclusion too.  When you compare this year’s rate of wildlife deaths and strandings in the Gulf with those of previous years without an oil spill disaster it’s obvious that the numbers this year are far, far higher than years without an oil spill.  The chart to the right shows the sea turtle numbers.  What do you think is the cause in the spike in strandings this year?

And remember, just because the well has been capped and the oil is no longer flowing, the impacts of this disaster are far from over.  National Wildlife Federation continues to be a voice for the wildlife and the people of the Gulf.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This post originally appeared on Animal Planet’s Gulf Oil Spill blog.