We the undersigned stand united against any actions by our government to eliminate, weaken, or reduce in enforcement, any federal environmental law, rule, or regulation that protects our land, our air, our water, our forests, rivers, and oceans, our food supply, wild plants, animals and natural places and ecosystems, the living environment which we Americans love and cherish. These environmental laws and regulations protect not only nature, but the health and very lives of all Americans.

Our nation, along with the rest of our living Planet Earth, is undergoing a crisis of ecological destruction unprecedented in all of human history. Because of the exponentially increasing toxic and destructive industrial footprint on Earth over the past few hundred years, scientists are comparing the current sudden loss of so many different life forms on Earth to the five previous periods of catastrophic collapse since life began four billion years ago. The last mass extinction period, the Fifth Extinction, was 70 million years ago when the dinosaurs and most other existing life forms of that time died out and were gone forever.

Scientists call our time, now, the Sixth Extinction, defined by a rapid collapse of natural ecosystems, and the accelerating and eventual extinction of millions of different species of plants and animals – biological diversity – on all the continents and in all the oceans, species that only recently entirely covered our miraculous and unique planet. In the next hundred years one half of all wild species may become extinct, and the majority of remaining species may be heading towards extinction.

Clearly, our existing environmental laws and regulations are not strong enough – and are not sufficiently enforced. The deadly record-breaking Gulf of Mexico explosion and oil contamination, the poisoned public water supplies in Flint and cities and towns across America, the exploding oil trains, the ruptures of gas and oil pipelines and toxic releases into lakes and rivers, the blasting of mountain tops in Appalachia, the clearcutting of wild and natural forests in every region of our nation, the collapse of populations of bees, bats, butterflies, and many other species vital to the balance of nature and the welfare of human populations and food supplies – these and numerous other assaults on our environment not only degrade and destroy America’s natural wealth but also poison and cause the deaths of Americans. These catastrophes – all of them – could and should have been prevented. These examples and many others illustrate why the vast majority of the American people want stronger environmental laws, and better enforcement of existing laws.

Instead of a national effort for stronger environmental protection to prevent these types of catastrophes, we are now faced with a new president and Congress proclaiming their intent to reduce and remove even the existing environmental protections by repealing laws such as the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act, weakening or removing regulations and rules which serve to carry out the environmental laws, and crippling the agencies that enforce these environmental laws. Representative Rob Bishop, Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, has announced he will seek to pass a law to abolish the Endangered Species Act.

• We stand united against any and all of these plans to weaken or remove America’s existing environmental legal or regulatory protections.

• Our fight is non-partisan and universal.

• We stand firmly against any reductions in existing environmental protection laws, regulations, or rules whether supported by Republican, Democrat, or Independent, liberal or conservative, right, left or center.

• We will make no “deals” to protect one place at the expense of lowering the environmental protection of another.

• We will not agree to leaving one environmental law intact at the cost of weakening another environmental law.

• We will not agree to the designation of new areas as wilderness at the cost of lowering the level of protection given by wilderness designation.

• We oppose transfer of federal land to states, or giving effective control of federal lands to states, which will lead to no effective environmental protection for those federal lands.

The American people will not tolerate an increase in pollution of our air or water, we will not accept an assault on our nation’s forests or wild natural areas, we will not agree to the loss, give-away or squandering of the natural treasures of our federal lands and their natural assets.

America's air, waters, and soil, our public lands, all have long been defended by many brave Americans – we will not cede our national, natural heritage.

We will hold accountable any and all who act against the environmental interests and will of the American people and future generations of Americans.

We pledge to protect America’s lands on behalf of the all the American people – we will not allow our nation’s century of environmental progress to be turned back.

signed,

Forest Defense Alliance