- Population Funding Release Approved
- Canada Puts Parks Before Profits
- Tongass Deal Cut
In a benchmark victory, volunteers across the country worked overtime
to persuade 44 Republicans to join 175 Democrats and one Independent in
the House of Representatives to support President Clinton's request to
release Fiscal Year 1997 population funds on March 1 (see December 1996
Planet). The FY 97 funds are currently scheduled to be released on July
1, even though international family planning programs depend on them
from October 1996 to September 1997. On Feb. 13, the House voted 220 to
209 to release the funds in March. Two weeks later, 11 Republicans in
the Senate broke ranks to pass the resolution. Now it only requires
Clinton's promised signature to become law.
Club activists argued that this was a vote about basic, fundamental
reproductive rights, not, as anti-abortion forces claimed, the first
test of the 105th Congress on the issue of abortion. By law, no U.S.
international population funds can be used to provide abortions.
"Without aid from the United States," said Karen Kalla, population
program director for the Sierra Club, "millions of women who depend
upon U.S. funds for reproductive health services would be denied the
freedom to determine if and when to have children."
For more information:
Contact International Programs Director Larry
Williams at (202) 675-6690; e-mail:
<larry.williams@sierraclub.org>
A two-year fight by Sierra Club and other environmental groups in
Canada to stop rampant commercial development in Banff National Park
(see May 1996 Planet) paid off in
October with the release of the Banff-Bow Valley report. Among the
report's more than 500 recommendations is a call for ecosystem
preservation as the primary goal of park management. Other
recommendations include a moratorium on releasing land for commercial
development within Banff, limiting the town that currently exists
within the park to 10,000 residents, and removing an airstrip, a
buffalo paddock, horse corrals and a camp to create a wildlife
corridor.
Parks Canada, the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. National Park
Service, is now required to complete a management plan by the end of
March to carry out the study's recommendations. "The conflict between
exploitation and protection in our premier national park must end,"
said Elizabeth May, executive director of Sierra Club of/du Canada.
"The Canadian Government and Sheila Copps, Minister of Heritage, have
taken a big step in the right direction."
To take action:
Write in support of implementing the recommendations of
the Banff-Bow Valley report. Send your letters to Sheila Copps,
Minister of Heritage, Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada,
K1A 0A6.
For more information:
Contact Sierra Club of/du Canada at (613)
241-4611; e-mail:
<sierra.club.canada@sierraclub.org>
The Clinton Administration agreed in February to supply Louisiana
Pacific's Ketchikan Pulp Company (see September 1996 Planet) with 300
million board feet of Tongass timber over the next three years and to
pay $140 million to settle LP's lawsuits over changes in the 1990
Tongass Timber Reform Act.
"The payoff to this corporate polluter is just another drain on the
federal treasury for a company that's been operating destructive timber
operations for 40 years in the Tongass," said Richard Hellard, Alaska
Chapter conservation chair. "Now that the Tongass will be released from
the 50-year timber contract stranglehold, the Clinton administration
and the U.S. Forest Service need to release a final Tongass land
management plan that recognizes clean water, abundant wildlife and wild
salmon as valuable and essential forest products."
For more information:
Contact Sally Kabisch at the Alaska Rainforest
Campaign office at (907) 235-2896; e-mail:
<sally.kabisch@sierraclub.org>
http://www.sierraclub.org/planet/199704/updates.asp
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