WASHINGTON, DC – Today, U.S. Sen Cory Booker (D-NJ) and 19 other Senators sent a letter to Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski and Ranking Member Maria Cantwell urging them to reject extreme, anti-wildlife, anti-conservation measures as they work to reconcile the House and Senate versions of energy legislation. The House-passed energy bill includes riders that would gut fundamental environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act.

“We greatly appreciate your leadership roles in shepherding the Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2016 (S. 2012) through the Senate, and your efforts to carefully craft a broadly supported bill that marks the first comprehensive energy package in nearly a decade. But while S. 2012 represents a bipartisan approach to updating our nation’s energy policy, we are deeply concerned with a number of extreme measures contained in the House-passed energy package that represent attacks against key environmental laws that protect our nation’s wildlife,” the Senators wrote in the letter.

“Among the most harmful wildlife provisions folded into the House energy package are attempts to: expand the use of dangerous and indiscriminate traps on millions of acres of public lands by taking the unprecedented step of codifying trapping as a form of hunting; revoke protections for imperiled gray wolf populations and preclude future judicial review… and block the NPS and FWS from implementing policies to protect native carnivores and limit particularly cruel killing methods on millions of acres within National Wildlife Refuges and National Preserves,” the Senators continued.

“As you work to reconcile the House and Senate bills, we urge you to reject all extraneous and ideological riders aimed at weakening the ESA and undermining the federal government’s work to protect wildlife,” the Senators concluded.

Co-Signers include:

Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) ,Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Tom Udall (D-NM), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI), Gary C. Peters  (D-MI), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Jack Reed (D-RI), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Jeff Merkley (D-OR),  Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

The full letter can be viewed here.