Thomas Breen photo
Long Wharf Nature Preserve: Home to at least one bald eagle.
NH Land Trust Director Justin Elicker (right) with U.S. Sen. Blumenthal.
Last week a group of 5‑year-old New Haveners saw a bald eagle on the sand bluff of the Long Wharf Nature Preserve.
If the Trump Administration succeeds in its attempts to roll back 45-year-old federal environmental legislation that protects the bald eagle and other endangered and threatened species, no one may be able to see a bald eagle there — or elsewhere — ever again.
New Haven Land Trust Executive Director Justin Elicker made that case during a press conference on Friday morning. Elicker, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, and a handful of other state environmental activists spoke out against President Trump’s recent attacks on the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
CT Audubon Society Director Patrick Comins, CT Sierra Club Chair Martha Klein, Blumenthal, and Elicker.
Standing in the shade before the Long Island Sound and the Long Wharf Nature Preserve, one of six nature preserves in the city overseen by the Land Trust, Elicker spoke about how he and a group of young New Haveners in the organization’s Schooner Program summer camp saw a bald eagle last week as they were exploring the sand bluff and enjoying its wildlife.
“If we start to dismantle this incredible work that we’ve done to protect so many species,” he said, “our children won’t be able to enjoy natural treasures” like the bald eagle.
Last week, President Trump’s Interior Department proposed a number of changes to the 1973 environmental law. The Trump administration argues that the law hasn’t been updated in three decades and that the proposals will streamline and modernize the regulatory process.
Blumenthal.
Blumenthal and state Audubon Society Executive Director Patrick Comins said the proposed updates would make it more difficult to add species to the endangered and threatened species lists, would loosen protections on threatened species, and would make it easier for companies to build roads, pipelines, and other developments in and near protected species’ habitats.
One of the proposed changes would remove the phrase “without reference to possible economic or other impacts” from the section that guides how government agencies should decide which species to protect.
“These species need a thorough, unbiased review that is entirely based on their biology and the threats facing them,” Comins said. He said Connecticut is home to a number of species that have seen longer leases on life because of the Endangered Species Act, including bald eagles, peregrine falcons, brown pelicans, and the piping plover.
“In those days, the environment was a bipartisan cause,” Blumethal said, calling back to when the Endangered Species Act first passed in 1973 during the administration of Republican President Richard Nixon. “Sadly, not so much today.”
Klein.
Martha Klein, the chair of the Connecticut chapter of the Sierra Club, said that the world is currently experiencing what environmentalists call the “sixth extinction.”
“More species of animals and plants are going extinct faster than at any rate in human history,” she said. She said the five prior extinctions in the planet’s history took place in geologic time: over the course of centuries and millenia. She said today, the planet is losing animals and plants on a daily and weekly basis.
“This is one of the best examples of functional government that we have,” she said about the Endangered Species Act. Instead, she said, the Trump administration is more interested in catering to the fossil fuel lobbies.
“This is an ethical question about what kind of people we are,” Elicker said. “And what kind of stewards of the earth we are.”
Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch the full press conference.
Please photoshop Blumenthal out so we can share this story widely. I do appreciate that he is there for this issue, but the story holds much more weight without him in front of the camera using it merely for political points, not real activism or awareness.
At the end of the day, Blumenthal's family owns the Empire State Building, and he only represents the billionaires in this country, not the working poor... or the endangered eagles.
Retire.