Cuyahoga River Fire

For those of you who may have forgotten, or some who never knew, we once had rivers in the United States that would catch fire because they were so polluted. The image above is the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland Ohio. The Cuyahoga River caught fire thirteen times between 1868 and 1969. The citizens of Cleveland, and indeed the nation, decided something needed to be done about the pollution of our waterways.

On February 28th, 2017, Donald Trump rescinded the “Waters of the United States” rule. It seems that Donald Trump, Scott Pruitt, and his band of misfits, believe that we no longer need protection of our waterways and our environment. As stated in a recent New York Times article

In his days since being confirmed as the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general who built a career out of suing the agency he now leads, has moved to stock the top offices of the agency with like-minded conservatives — many of them skeptics of climate change and all of them intent on rolling back environmental regulations.

Also on the EPA front, the Wall Street Journal pens an article stating “EPA set to reconsider car emissions standards set under the Obama administration,” and Rob Davis from The Oregonian gives us a “List of 42 of President Donald Trump’s planned EPA budget cuts.”

Meanwhile, Ryan Zinke, the newly appointed Secretary of the Interior announced that the Department will offer 73 million acres offshore Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida for oil and gas exploration and development. The proposed region-wide lease sale scheduled for August 16, 2017 would include all available unleased areas in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Another Gulf Oil Spill anyone?

Oiled Pelican

Considering the misguided ideas and unlawful conduct of this incompetent public employee, the only executive order I want to see from Donald Trump is this one:

Trump Resigns!

(FYI – you can make The Donald order anything you want by following the instructions here)

Written by Larry
Larry Jordan was introduced to birding after moving to northern California where he was overwhelmed by the local wildlife, forcing him to buy his first field guide just to be able to identify all the species visiting his yard. Building birdhouses and putting up feeders brought the avian fauna even closer and he was hooked. Larry wanted to share his passion for birds and conservation and hatched The Birder's Report in September of 2007. His recent focus is on bringing the Western Burrowing Owl back to life in California where he also monitors several bluebird trails. He is a BirdLife Species Champion and contributes to several other conservation efforts, being the webmaster for Wintu Audubon Society and the Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Urban Bird Foundation. He is now co-founder of a movement to create a new revenue stream for our National Wildlife Refuges with a Wildlife Conservation Pass.