BioGems Home | Tell A Friend About BioGems | Donate
		In a groundbreaking meeting with President Michelle Bachelet of Chile on March 31st, NRDC attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. expressed our willingness to work with her government to build a sustainable energy future for her country. During that and other high-level discussions, which also included Chile's Minister of Energy and leading members of Parliament, Kennedy voiced concerns over a destructive proposal to put massive hydroelectric dams and a 1,400-mile transmission line through Chile's pristine Patagonia region. BioGems Defenders have sent nearly 190,000 messages to President Bachelet and other Chilean government officials, as well as to the proposal's corporate backers, urging them to cancel the scheme. If allowed to move forward, the hydroelectric development would destroy critical habitat for a South American deer called the huemul and other rare wildlife. Please join us in encouraging President Bachelet to explore environmentally sound alternatives, including solar and geothermal energy. » Thank President Bachelet for her openness to energy alternatives for Chile. YELLOWSTONE: NO SAFE HAVEN FOR BUFFALO For years, BioGems Defenders have fought to halt the U.S. government's systematic capture and killing of Yellowstone's bison -- better known as American buffalo -- as they roam beyond the boundaries of the park in search of food during the harsh winter months. But this year the rate of slaughter has reached unprecedented proportions with more than 1,400 buffalo dead -- fully 30 percent of the buffalo population. In response, the NRDC Action Fund, our partner organization, is mobilizing a massive outcry to stop the killing. » Tell the National Park Service to stop the slaughter of Yellowstone's wild buffalo. BUSH ADMINISTRATION TARGETS ALASKAN RAINFOREST The Bush administration has announced a plan to open up millions of pristine acres in the Tongass rainforest -- America's largest national forest -- to the timber industry. The 17-million-acre Tongass, an awe-inspiring landscape of ice-capped peaks, glacial fjords, fog-shrouded islands and towering groves of old-growth spruce and hemlock, is home to our nation's biggest populations of salmon, grizzly bears and bald eagles. BioGems Defenders have already protested the administration's efforts to expand logging into unroaded backcountry areas of Colorado and Idaho, and we will be calling on you soon to help protect Alaska's Tongass from a similar assault. NRDC WINS ANOTHER ROUND FOR WHALES A federal appeals court has rejected the White House's unprecedented effort to exempt the U.S. Navy from federal environmental laws during training with dangerous mid-frequency sonar off the Southern California coast. The three-judge panel upheld a lower court order -- won by NRDC in January -- requiring the Navy to put safeguards in place that would protect whales and other marine mammals from needless injury and death. In another court victory, a federal court in San Francisco has issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Navy from deploying its dangerous low-frequency active (LFA) sonar system across 75 percent of the world's oceans. At NRDC's request, the injunction will ban LFA training in sensitive marine habitat, including the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument -- a BioGems Watchlist site. THIS GREEN LIFE In the latest issue of This Green Life, our monthly online journal of green living, Sheryl Eisenberg spotlights American Earth, a recently published collection of outstanding environmental writing edited by Bill McKibben. Wide-ranging contributors include Henry David Thoreau, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and the poet Mary Oliver. While you're there, don't forget to sign up to receive This Green Life -- free each month!
Welcome Activists! Explore American Earth in the latest issue of our online journal of green living. A big thank you to BioGems Defenders who recently sent more than 21,000 messages to help protect the ancient migration route of the pronghorn. BioGems Defenders: 437,975 Action Messages Sent: 10,598,425 » See the timeline of victories we've won You can support NRDC's BioGems campaign to save these and other threatened wild places. » Click here to donate

Nature's Voice: BioGems campaigns are featured in Nature's Voice, our online bulletin of environmental campaigns and victories.
	Photo credits: Notorious Landmark at Southern Tip of South America, Cape Horn, Patagonia, Chile © Tui De Roy, Minden Pictures; huemel © courtesy of Linde Waidhofer (www.westerneye.com); grizzly bear © Florian Schulz.