Southern Maryland Audubon urges you to write, call or email your Maryland state legislator on these two urgent issues with huge impact on the birds, natural habitat and people of our state. Your voice can make a difference!
- Please express your opposition to a current proposal to slash all funding for some of our state’s most important conservation programs for the next four years: the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays Fund, Program Open Space, Waterway Improvement Fund and Rural Legacy Fund. Please ask to keep these programs funded!
- Please oppose HB 1270 that would allow construction of transmission lines through protected Wildlands and Important Bird Areas in western Maryland.
You can find your state delegates’ email and phone number here. If you put in your address, you will get a list of elected officials. You will want to reach out to your state delegate.
Here’s the background on these two issues:
Right now in Annapolis, legislators are debating a budget proposal to cut all funding from Program Open Space, the Waterways Improvement Fund, Rural Legacy Fund, and the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays Trust Fund for four years. This revenue would be diverted to offset general operating funds, and would be in addition to already proposed budget cuts to our state’s Department of Natural Resources and Department of the Environment.
Without this funding, there will be no new Maryland parks or trails and deferred maintenance of our favorite places. There will be no funding for bird habitat protection through conservation easements and Program Open Space, which is critical for the creation of Important Bird Areas and parks across the state to preserve green spaces for people and birds. There will be no resources to sustain the restoration of tidal salt marshes that are necessary for supporting our economy, protecting threatened birds, and buffering communities from climate change.
We respect the challenge legislators face with a projected $2.9 billion deficit and understand we all have to play role in reaching a balanced budget this legislative session. But cutting all funds to these important programs for four years is completely disproportionate to the cuts proposed for other programs.
This is not only a blow to the environment, but to some of Maryland’s most important industries—agriculture, fisheries and tourism which bring billions of dollars and thousands of jobs to our state.
Our other priority issue, HB1270, would allow construction of large transmission lines through some of western Maryland’s most protected Wildlands.
Construction of transmission lines should never be allowed to be erected in established protected wildland areas. The limited amount of unfragmented habitat that remains in the state of Maryland must be retained. These areas are meant to act as corridors for native biodiversity not corridors for power lines.
Constructing NextEra transmission lines would require clearing large swaths of protected public lands and dividing habitat for plant and animal diversity as well as introducing large-scale land disturbance, opening the habitat interior to invasive plants and predators.
The intact and unfragmented habitats that a wildland designation is meant to protect are vital to preserving vulnerable interior birds and other species along with the health of the ecological systems that support them. This bill represents a dangerous precedent of constructing on valuable preserved lands which must not be tolerated.
Please contact your state delegate today on these two important issues. Speak up for birds and conservation!
(Photo Great Blue Heron by Nathaniel Miller)