The Endangered Species Act has successfully protected bald eagles, wolves, and other wildlife for more than three decades. But you wouldn’t know it with all the attempts in Congress these days to re-write this landmark conservation law.

The House has passed a bill to gut the Endangered Species Act. And legislation has just been introduced in the Senate that would also dramatically weaken protections for our extremely endangered wildlife.

Late last year, Senators Michael Crapo (R-ID) and Blanch Lincoln (D-AR) introduced a bill that would undermine key protections under the Endangered Species Act for plants and animals now on the brink of extinction.

The bill would allow industry officials to dominate decision-making about our endangered wildlife. It would also exclude the public from important decisions affecting our wildlife and exempt federal agencies from important environmental reviews.

The Crapo-Lincoln bill would even allow the killing of threatened or endangered wildlife before experts can say how proposed projects might impact protected species.

The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), is also expected to release his own re-write of the Endangered Species Act soon. Specific details on the bill are still emerging, but committee action on Inhofe’s endangered species proposals could come as early as the end of March.

Unfortunately, any legislation on the Endangered Species Act to pass the Senate would have to be squared with Representative Richard Pombo’s (R-CA) ‘Wildlife Extinction Bill’ that passed the House of Representatives last fall.

Pombo’s bill is a giant step backward from the successful Congressional conservation strategies that saved our bald eagles, grizzly bears, and other wildlife from vanishing forever. Worse, almost any Senate bill is in danger of being “Pombo-ized” when House and Senate negotiators meet to reconcile differences between the Senate and House versions.

Please contact your legislators and demand that earth’s endangered species be once again protected by Congress, and by our nation, before it’s much too late.