Dear Mark,

A few weeks back, we promised we’d file suit to stop the Trump administration’s new policy that guts the landmark National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Well, we’ve done it.

Last week, a coalition of environmental justice and environmental groups — represented by NRDC attorneys and joined by other civil rights and environmental organizations — sued the Trump administration over its attempt to roll back NEPA.

NEPA is a critical part of our democracy that requires thorough environmental reviews and public input before major federal projects — including dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure — can be approved. It protects the people’s right to speak out against the destructive influence of polluters and hazardous projects that poison communities today and lock us into the climate crisis for decades to come.

The Trump administration’s rollback would eliminate environmental reviews for too many projects, erode government transparency, and thwart public participation.

The courts are our best bet at stopping the Trump administration from gutting this landmark environmental protection. So NRDC rushed to court to defend NEPA alongside environmental justice organizations from around the country, including:

• The Environmental Justice Health Alliance
• The New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance
• East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice
• The Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice
• Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services

Our litigation partners also include Sierra Club, National Audubon Society, and the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Be sure to visit the websites of our partners to find out more about their critical work.

Dear Mark,

A few weeks back, we promised we’d file suit to stop the Trump administration’s new policy that guts the landmark National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Well, we’ve done it.

Last week, a coalition of environmental justice and environmental groups — represented by NRDC attorneys and joined by other civil rights and environmental organizations — sued the Trump administration over its attempt to roll back NEPA.

NEPA is a critical part of our democracy that requires thorough environmental reviews and public input before major federal projects — including dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure — can be approved. It protects the people’s right to speak out against the destructive influence of polluters and hazardous projects that poison communities today and lock us into the climate crisis for decades to come.

The Trump administration’s rollback would eliminate environmental reviews for too many projects, erode government transparency, and thwart public participation.

The courts are our best bet at stopping the Trump administration from gutting this landmark environmental protection. So NRDC rushed to court to defend NEPA alongside environmental justice organizations from around the country, including:

• The Environmental Justice Health Alliance
• The New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance
• East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice
• The Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice
• Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services

Our litigation partners also include Sierra Club, National Audubon Society, and the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Be sure to visit the websites of our partners to find out more about their critical work.

And read all about the Trump administration’s disastrous NEPA rollback and what NRDC and our allies are doing to stop it at NRDC.org.

Trump’s rollback is a clear example of environmental racism.

Weakening of NEPA will most directly impact low-income communities and BIPOC communities, who have long faced disproportionate levels of pollution due to industrial facilities placed in or near their neighborhoods.

These are the same communities who have been hit the hardest by the COVID-19 crisis, which is especially critical as preliminary research shows that long-term exposure to air pollution is associated with higher death rates from the coronavirus.

Predictably, Trump has decided to double-down on exposing them to dangerous pollution and continued health risks. NRDC, our partners in the lawsuit, and our allies across the movement, will do everything in our power to stop attacks on NEPA.

Find out more about Trump’s disastrous attack on NEPA at NRDC.org and from the original email we sent you below.

Earlier this year, NRDC and our sister organization, the NRDC Action Fund, submitted over 100,000 public comments — alongside nearly half a million more from green and environmental justice groups — opposing Trump’s NEPA rollback.

Now, we’ll continue the fight to save NEPA in the courts, alongside our important litigation partners from across the country.

This is NRDC’s 121st lawsuit against the Trump administration — and we’ve won nearly 90% of the cases that have been resolved — an astounding record of success fighting back against illegal actions by this president that harm our environment and public health. And we’re confident that with this lawsuit, we will prevail again.

While America faces the crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and its history of racism and inequity, President Trump is pushing ahead with an anti-environmental assault that would exacerbate both challenges in one fell-swoop.

The Trump administration just finalized its disastrous rollback of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) — a landmark law that empowers people to make their voices heard about hazardous projects in their communities and stop pollution in their own backyards.

This attack on NEPA is an attack on democracy, our environment, our climate, and YOUR voice, Mark.

And NRDC will respond immediately, taking the Trump administration to court if that’s what it takes to stop this reckless assault on one of the pillars of environmental law. And we couldn’t respond so effectively without the support of NRDC supporters like you — thank you.

Get all the facts about Trump’s harmful attacks on NEPA, and how NRDC and our allies and partners are fighting back, and more at NRDC.org.

If Trump’s NEPA rollback is allowed to stand, disastrous polluting projects — like coal mines, highways, incinerators, oil and gas drilling operations, and pipelines — could be expedited with little-to-no environmental review, public input, or analysis of long-term impacts on the environment, our climate, or the people who live near these projects.

Make no mistake: this rollback is a clear attempt to silence people and make it easier for industry to pollute our communities.

And it will further marginalize low-income communities, Black communities, Indigenous communities, and communities of color who already suffer disproportionately from the adverse health impacts of industrial pollution — and who have been hit the hardest by the COVID-19 crisis. This is especially critical as preliminary health studies suggest that long-term exposure to air pollution is associated with higher death rates from the coronavirus.

NEPA gives people the right to weigh in before a highway project tears up their neighborhood or a pipeline goes through their backyard. Steamrolling their concerns will mean more polluted air, more contaminated water, more health threats, and more environmental destruction — and it will encourage the government to ignore how massive polluting projects contribute to climate change.

We must — and will — do everything in our power to stop the Trump administration’s rollback and save NEPA, including fighting back in federal court if necessary.

This dangerous new rollback comes weeks after another sweeping executive order that prods administration officials to ram through polluting projects without public notice, let alone adequate environmental reviews.

And it comes amid an onslaught of other Trump administration rollbacks over the past few months — including a move that could allow industrial polluters to evade penalties if they unlawfully fail to monitor and report on their pollution during the coronavirus crisis.

NRDC is fighting many of these rollbacks in court — just as we’ll fight to save NEPA as well, if that’s what it takes. NRDC has filed 118 lawsuits against the Trump administration. With the law on our side, we’ve won nearly 90 percent of the cases resolved so far.

• Read more about this at NRDC.org.
• Then share the news about this new Trump rollback on Facebook and Twitter.

Thank you for standing with us at this critical moment.

Sincerely,

Sharon Buccino
Senior Director, Land Division, NRDC

https://www.nrdc.org/

Produced with massive help from the ‘League Against Cruel Sports’ (LACS) – London.

https://www.league.org.uk/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsKblx5mV6wIVA-ztCh0UTAoMEAAYASAAEgJm_PD_BwE

Much of the information is reproduced from their site at  https://www.league.org.uk/hunting-act

The Hunting Act 2004 is the law which bans chasing wild mammals with dogs in England and Wales – this basically means that fox hunting, deer hunting, hare hunting, hare coursing and mink hunting are all illegal, as they all are cruel sports based on dogs chasing wild mammals.

The introduction of the Hunting Act followed an extensive and often exhausting campaign spanning 80 years, with the League Against Cruel Sports and its supporters (including us) at the forefront since 1924. In Scotland, hunting with dogs was banned earlier by a different law, the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Act 2002.

Securing the Hunting Act was a key moment in the history of animal protection legislation in the UK and public polling consistently shows it is a popular law. Yet, since its introduction, the Hunting Act has been the target of considerable attack from the pro-hunt lobby which has waged an on-going campaign to try and undermine the Act with the aim of getting it scrapped or weakened, and defied the Act by developing and promoting methods to circumvent it in the form of false alibies or illicit exploitations of its exemptions.

This sabotage of the law continues today, despite the legislation of 2004.

Prosecutions and Exemptions

Official figures demonstrate that the Hunting Act has protected animals, with people being convicted for crimes covered by the law. However, far too many allegations of illegal hunting have not been properly investigated and far too many illegal hunters have got away with it unpunished, which means that the Act has a serious enforcement problem. Because of the weak enforcement by the authorities the successful prosecution of registered hunts was spearheaded by the League when we took private prosecutions against illegal hunters.

While many people have been convicted under the Hunting Act, most of these are in fact poachers rather than hunters. Unfortunately we believe that illegal hunting with dogs by organised hunts is very common across the country, while there are very few prosecutions. The problem is that considering the defiance of the hunting fraternity and how they have created sophisticated alibies and illicitly exploited the exemptions of the Act, it is often hard to catch hunts in the act of chasing and killing a fox, and even if they are caught, it is hard to prove in court.

The Act contains ‘exemptions’ built into its Schedule, which were designed to prevent the ban affecting activities which Parliament did not intend to prohibit. Unfortunately, hunts often use these exemptions as an excuse if they are caught hunting. For example, staghunts use the ‘Research and Observation’ exemption that was designed for researchers and not hunters, and some fox hunts carry birds of prey in order to claim that they use the ‘falconry’ exemption, which was designed for falconers.

However, the most common way illegal fox hunters use to avoid prosecution is with ‘trail hunting’. Most registered fox and hare hunts now claim to be trail hunting – an activity that was not in existence or envisaged when the Hunting Act was drafted, and which should not be confused with ‘drag’ hunting.

Trail hunting is an entirely new invention which purports to mimic traditional hunting by following a scent trail (using fox urine, according to the hunters) which has been laid in areas where foxes are likely to be. Those laying the trail are not meant to tell those controlling the hounds where the scent has been laid, so if the hounds end up following a live animal scent the hunt can claim that they did not know.

Having looked over 4,000 hunt monitoring reports of over 30 hunt monitors from different organisations covering the majority of hunts in England and Wales (157), since the Hunting Act 2004 was enacted these hunt monitors have reported witnessing someone laying a possible trail only in an average of around 3% of the occasions they monitored hunts, but they believed that only an average of around 0.04% of the occasions they may have witnessed a genuine trail hunting event, rather than a fake one.

Trail hunting is not the same as drag hunting, a legitimate sport created in the 1800s which is not intended to mimic animal hunting, but instead is a sport using hounds to search for a non-animal scent without the pursuit or killing of wild animals.

In drag hunting, or in bloodhounds hunting (or hunting the ‘clean boot’ as it is also known) where the scent of a human runner is followed instead of a drag, the trail never contains animal scent, is never laid in areas likely to have foxes, and those controlling the hounds always know where the trail was laid.

This is why in drag hunting, ‘accidents’ when live animals are chased are very rare, while in trail hunting they are very common.

The League believes there is no such a thing as the ‘sport of trail hunting’ and it is simply a temporary, false alibi to cover for illegal hunting while the hunting fraternity hopes for the hunting ban to be repealed or weakened.

For more information visit our trail hunting page and read or download our detailed report on trail hunting, drag hunting and the ‘clean boot’.

Hare hunting and hare coursing

Hare hunting is the lesser known cousin of fox hunting and deer hunting, but in the days before hunting was banned in England and Wales, one in three hunts were actually hare hunts. Despite the ban, when hunting with dogs was made illegal, most of these hunts still exist, and are chasing and killing hares in the name of ‘sport’.

Hare coursing is a different ‘sport’, involving two fast dogs being set loose to chase a hare. Traditionally, this could take place on a small scale but also as a large-scale, organised event, such as the famous Waterloo Cup event which attracted thousands of spectators who came to watch and place bets. Hare coursing was banned, along with hare hunting, by the Hunting Act 2004, and is illegal, but coursing still takes place

According to the Hare Preservation Trust, the number of brown hares in the UK has declined by 80% since the late 1880s – that’s a devastating drop. While modern farming practices are thought to be the main cause of this decline, hare hunting and hare coursing also had an impact. A return to these cruel sports could see brown hares wiped out in many parts of Britain. The brown hare is listed as a conservation priority in the UK’s Biodiversity Action Plan, meaning we should be doing all we can to protect this vulnerable species.

There is nothing ‘natural’ about a hare being chased with a pack of dogs. Hares have evolved to sprint at high speeds for short periods to escape predators. They cannot match the stamina of hunting hounds who will continue the chase until the hare is exhausted and can run no more. When talking about hares and hunting with dogs, the Government’s Burns Report published in 2000 concluded that ‘this experience seriously compromises the welfare of the hare.’

Ref – https://www.league.org.uk/hare-hunting-and-hare-coursing

Watch the reality of the Hare hunt:  https://youtu.be/Xrhkt0EOGx4

Regards Mark

In many ways it is still a bloodbath !

Great news,

Italian fashion giant Prada has banned kangaroo skin.

The Prada Group – which includes Prada, Miu Miu, Church’s, and Car Shoe – has confirmed that it will no longer purchase any new kangaroo leather. The decision will spare these remarkable Australian animals immense suffering.

Prada joins the likes of Versace, Victoria Beckham, Chanel, and Paul Smith in banning leather made from kangaroos.

Some 2.3 million kangaroos are reportedly killed every year for their skin. To produce leather, the animals are first shot. Then, the injured kangaroos – as well as orphaned joeys – are decapitated or hit sharply on the head to “destroy the brain” before their skin is torn off so it can be exported and made into accessories often labelled as “k-leather”.

As you read this, state governments are approving permits to hunt kangaroos.

Please join our campaign urging the New South Wales and Victorian governments to stop issuing permits for the mass slaughter of kangaroos

While wildlife carers are still working day and night rehabilitating burned, otherwise injured, and starving animals, the Victoria and New South Wales governments are allowing permits to be issued for the mass slaughter of kangaroos – often simply because they compete for food with introduced farmed animals raised for meat, leather, and wool.

It’s outrageously easy to get a permit to kill kangaroos in these states – in fact, in New South Wales, it’s called a “Licence to Harm” and applicants can even renew over the phone. 

Meanwhile, Queensland’s commercial slaughter has been halted and the South Australian government has stopped plans to slaughter wallabies on Kangaroo Island after one-third of the island caught fire. 

More than 1 billion animals perished in Australia’s recent fires. The death toll is high enough. 
Join us in urging the New South Wales and Victoria governments to stop issuing permits to kill wildlife.

Take Action Here:

https://secure.peta.org.au/page/56507/action/1?utm_source=PETA%20AU::E-Mail&utm_medium=Alert&utm_campaign=0820::skn::PETA%20AU::E-Mail::Prada::::aa%20em&ea.url.id=4858960&forwarded=true

Regards Mark.