Obama Budget Deal Bad for Environment

The budget deal the Obamacon reached with radical Repugnants slashes funding for environmental protection programs. Water quality programs alone account for about 2.6% of the $39 billion in budget cuts. The funds provided to states for safe drinking water and sewer systems were cut by $997 million compared to FY2010. The resolution just passed by Congress also prohibits spending any money on the administration's Wild Lands policy announced in December in which the Secretary of the Interior was to designate new areas as protected wild lands such as Labyrinth Canyon in Utah. The BLM operated under a similar agency policy to protect wild lands for 27 years before the Charlatan prohibited the practice.

Most galling of all budget developments to conservationists is the rider that removs the grey wolf in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Utah from the endangered species list. The measure returns wolf management to the states. Wolves were slaughtered in those states by ranchers and hunters who consider the ecologically valuable predator vermin. By 1930 almost all wolves had been eradicated in the lower 48 states. Recently wolf populations have begun to rebound under protection in the Northern Rockies causing anti-wolf legislators to agitate for removing protections. Idaho has declared a "wolf emergency" in which the state's estimated 800 wolves are said to be compromising public safety. [photo credit: ENS, radio collared wolf shot by Montana rancher, 2008]  According to the Center for Biological Diversity, Montana's Democratic senator, "included the rider as a ploy to score political points in his 2012 reelection campaign, and now wolves and other species will have to pay the price." It is a price too high.