http://wolfwatcher.org/news/all-news/keep-wolves-protected-in-the-lower-48/

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is preparing to strip wolves across the lower 48 states of all Endangered Species Act protections! Wolves have only just begun to recover in large portions of the Pacific Northwest, California, southern Rocky Mountains and Northeast.

Retaining protections for wolves in the lower 48 will not impact the delisting decisions in the northern Rocky Mountains or western Great Lakes. However, it will retain protections for a small number of wolves in the West – wolves that have slowly been moving back into historically occupied areas like the southern Rocky Mountains and Northeast. These wolves may never recover if this plan is implemented.

Right now members of Congress are ready to step in. Representatives Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) are circulating a letter to the USFWS opposing the premature removal of wolf protections. U.S. Representative’s Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), Jim Moran (D-VA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Henry Waxman (D-CA), Sam Farr (D-CA), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), and David Cicilline (D-RI) have already signed on as co-signatories.

Letter, https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7xYnjjogLTJWHJsSDc5SHhNM0E/preview?pli=1

ACTION: Please call and write to your member of Congress to urge him or her to save wolves by signing onto Reps. DeFazio and Markey’s letter. Remind them that removing protections for lower 48 wolves is premature and will prevent their recovery in portions of their former historical range.

just released:

http://scorecard.lcv.org/

Continuing their bad record from 2011, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) forced through radical bills attacking cornerstone environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. They pushed to drill off our shores and in the Arctic Refuge, tried to approve the harmful Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, and attacked protections for our national parks, forests, and wildlife.

If it wasn't for our champions in the U.S. Senate and the Obama Administration, many of the environmental and public health safeguards we rely on would have been lost.

Want to know if your members of Congress stood with people or polluters last year? Take a look at the 2012 National Environmental Scorecard here.

The good news is: if we can educate the public about anti-environmental legislators' records, we can build the public pressure to hold them accountable and i

what would we be looking at?

http://www.weareultraviolet.org/quiz/gun-violence/?akid=320.494848.JQ75Sl&rd=1&t=3


Quiz: How much do you know about gun violence and the NRA?

President Obama has a big plan to deal with gun violence, including universal background checks. But the National Rifle Association is already mobilizing against him. How much do you know about the gun violence in the U.S. and the NRA agenda? Take this short quiz to find out--then challenge your friends to beat your score.

that's right, these are the same people who refused to ask Bush about the lies. Oh well?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=arctic-needs-protection-from-resource

Arctic Needs Protection from Resource Rush as Ice Melts: U.N. Body

The Arctic needs to be better protected from a rush for natural resources as melting ice makes mineral and energy exploration easier, the United Nations' Environment Programme (UNEP) said.


LONDON (Reuters) - The Arctic needs to be better protected from a rush for natural resources as melting ice makes mineral and energy exploration easier, the United Nations' Environment Programme (UNEP) said.

The UNEP Year Book 2013 was released on Monday to accompany the opening of talks in Nairobi attended by environment ministers or senior officials from around 150 nations, aimed at making the world economy greener at a time of weak economic growth.

"What we are seeing is that the melting of ice is prompting a rush for exactly the fossil fuel resources that fuelled the melt in the first place," said Achim Steiner, U.N. Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director.

..more..

Is what I am told.

Source: Voice of Russia

Meteorite crash in Russia: explosions in Chelyabinsk (VIDEO). 2 15 2013


A series of explosions in the skies of Russia’s Urals region, reportedly caused by a meteor shower, has sparked panic in three major cities. Witnesses said that houses shuddered, windows were blown out and cellphones stopped working.

In Chelyabinsk, witnesses said the explosion was so loud that it resembled an earthquake and thunder at the same time, and that there were huge trails of smoke across the sky. Others reported seeing burning objects fall to earth.

Office buildings in downtown Chelyabinsk are being evacuated. The regional Emergency Ministry said the phenomenon was a meteorite shower, but locals have speculated that it was a military fighter jet crash or a missile explosion.

“According to preliminary data, the flashes seen over the Urals were caused by [a] meteorite shower," the Emergency Ministry told Itar-Tass news agency.



Read more: http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_02_15/Meteorite-crash-in-Russia-explosions-in-Chelyabinsk/

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**make sure to watch the video

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/13/1186785/-BREAKING-WH-arrests-to-come-Civil-Disobedience-Action-on-Keystone-XL-today

Wed Feb 13, 2013 at 05:14 AM PST.

BREAKING: WH arrests to come: Civil Disobedience Action on Keystone XL today

by A SiegelFollow .

The morning after the President actually discussed climate change in the State of the Union address, a group of prominent people are heading to the White House to risk arrest in a call on the President to live up to those words on the need to act on climate change. The Keystone XL pipeline, in and of itself, isn't enough to 'cook the planet' -- it is, however, a key tool to foster expanded production of Canadian Tar Sands. And, along with failures to reduce coal consumption, that expanded production could be enough (even without considering all other issues) to hammer in the last nail on the potential for humanity to avert catastrophic climate chaos.

Today's Tar Sands Action will have 50 prominent American leaders (see here for list with quotes from most as to why they are willing to be handcuffed and hauled to prison) from a range of domains.

- Jeremy Grantham -- an excellent financial analyst and advisor -- is a powerful symbol of mounting business and financial concerns. [Update: just learned that Grantham will be there but will not risk arrest although his daughter will ...]
-Rev Lennox Yearwood, Jr, is the head of the Hip Hop Caucus and is representative of youth, religious, and the rainbow reality of concerns over climate change.
- Julian Bond -- truly a civil rights legend -- links climate change issues to the rich legacy of our nation's struggles for civil justice.
- Darryl Hannah provides an example to our other 'stars' about the need to put their celebrity on the line and in the struggle to avert Climate Disruption.
-Randy Thompson -- a Nebraska rancher -- provides a powerful symbol of American farmers' growing realization of how climate disruption is already impacting their lives and of how promoting fossil foolish development is simply, well, outright foolish.
-Michael Brune -- the Executive Director of the Sierra Club -- is a strong symbol of how seriously traditional environmental organizations are taking the struggle against climate change and against Keystone XL

As for the last, the Sierra Club has never authorized civil disobedience in its 120 year history ... until now.

..more..

Source: Petoskey News

Humane Society of United States files gray wolf lawsuit against U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Morgan Sherburne (231) 439-9394 - msherburne@petoskeynews.com
8:57 a.m. EST, February 13, 2013

The Humane Society of the United States filed a lawsuit against Michigan and two other Great Lakes states, calling for protection of the gray wolf in all three states.

"Plaintiffs, animal protection and conservation organizations, challenge the decision of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to strip gray wolves in the Great Lakes region of protection under the Endangered Species Act," says the opening of the lawsuit document.

Too, the lawsuit objects to the gray wolf's delisting because it says the Endangered Species Act requires protection for a species that is endangered throughout its historic range. Currently, the gray wolf is present "across just five percent of its historic range," says the lawsuit.

But organizations that support the wolves' delisting and a potential hunt of the wolf say populations are healthy, particularly across the three states named in the lawsuit.
..more..

Read more: http://www.petoskeynews.com/news/featured/pnr-humane-society-of-united-states-files-gray-wolf-lawsuit-against-us-fish-and-wildlife-service-20130213,0,4385370.story