De-Funding Trout Unlimited (and More)

This week TU called attention to US House Bill HR1 — now in draft form, but a bill that would de-fund a wide array of protections that fly fishers have come to take for granted, from rules about mountaintop removal to Clean Water Act enforcement to eliminating funding for the State Fish and Wildlife Grants program, which provides matching grants to a wide variety of conservation groups.
As Kirk Deeter commented yesterday: “HR1 is a bill in Congress right now that would slash funding for a number of important conservation programs that impact fly fishing from coast to coast. I don’t care what your political persuasion is…if you’re a fly fisher, this should concern you, because any threat to habitat is a threat to opportunity.”
The Clean Water Network lists all the details regarding potential loss of water protections, calling it a “Sewer Full of Polluters’ Amendments.”
As this week’s decision by Gov. Tom Corbett to weaken rules for gas drilling in Pennsylvania’s parks highlights, states are also increasingly targeting environmental protections as “unnecessary expenses.”