** Pentagon Not Above Laws Protecting Nature **
The Department of Defense is asking Congress for permanent
exemptions from some our nation's most basic environmental
laws. Send a message to Congress opposing blanket military
exemptions from laws protecting the health of people
and the planet. No one, not even the government, is
above the law.

IWC REJECTS SANCTUARIES, WHALING RESUMPTION: During a "bad-tempered
third conference day," delegates to the IWC annual meeting decisively
rejected a bid by Japan to resume commercial whaling but also failed,
despite strong support from over half of the IWC members, to provide
the three-quarters majority needed to establish two new whale
sanctuaries says SFGate.com, AP 6/18. In rejecting Japan's bid to
resume commercial whaling, the U.S. sided with anti-whaling nations,
who successfully argued that "too little is known about whale stocks,"
and other threats such as accidental killing by fishing vessels, to
allow Japan to kill 150 Bryde's whales a year.

From the Wyoming Outdoor Council.
SAVE THE WILD HEART OF WYOMING'S RED DESERT!
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is planning to open up Wyoming's Jack
Morrow Hills Area, the wild heart of the fabled Red Desert, to exploitation by big oil.
The area now shelters the largest migratory game herd in the lower 48 states (50,000
pronghorn antelope), a rare desert elk herd, seven Wilderness Study Areas, and many
rare and declining species, including greater sage grouse, mountain plover, ferruginous
hawks, burrowing owls, pygmy rabbits, great basin gopher snakes, Wortman's golden
mantled ground squirrels and flannel-mouth suckers. The desert is also home to 14
rare and imperiled plants and plant communities, three of which are increasingly in
danger of extinction- the Meadow Pussytoes, Nelson's milkvetch and the large-fruited
bladderpod.
But wildlife and the integrity of this magnificent landscape would be put at risk if BLM's
just-released plan for increased oil and gas development for the 620,000-acre Jack
Morrow Hills Study Area becomes reality. This plan is one of several others being
developed in Wyoming that open up your public lands to nearly unfettered access by oil
companies, and represents another on-the-ground example of the Administration's
energy plan in action. Fortunately, there is an alternative. Concerned citizens have
developed the Citizens' Wildlife and Wildlands Alternative as an option to BLM's drill-
first plan. The Citizens' Alternative would protect wildlife and wildlands in this wild heart
of the Red Desert.