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Poll Shows Americans Support
Biodiversity Protection, but U.S. Ducks Leadership at the World Sustainability Summit: Press Release |
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For Release August
30, 2002
August 30, 2002 A nationwide poll commissioned by the Biodiversity Project earlier this year shows strong public support for species and habitat protection. In spite of popular support for saving biodiversity, the United States has not signed the Convention on Biological Diversity, the international agreement designed to avert the mass extinction of species that was initiated in response to the Rio Summit in 1992. This week, world leaders are meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa to address sustainable development issues, which will include updating the biodiversity treaty’s goals toward reducing and stopping biodiversity loss. According to the poll, 55% of Americans surveyed said that maintaining the living variety of plants and animals in the world was personally very important to them. By overwhelming margins, poll respondents strongly agreed that we have a “personal” or “moral” responsibility to “protect plant and animal life” (69% and 65% respectively strongly agreed out of a split sample). “Protecting the living world is simply the right thing to do in the eyes of most Americans. People understand that this is important for our health and well being, and for future generations,” said Jane Elder, of the Biodiversity Project, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to advocate for biodiversity. “Internationally, and at home, the U.S. lags in its response to the biodiversity crisis.” At home, Americans strongly support the Endangered Species Act. According to the poll, 78% of Americans support maintaining a “strong” ESA. This strong stance hasn’t changed in six years, and yet Congress has failed to strengthen the Endangered Species Act – the anchor of biodiversity protection in the U.S. “It is clear that Americans appreciate strong protections for all endangered species,” explained Brock Evans, Executive Director of the Endangered Species Coalition. “Americans recognize that a lack of action will close the door to Noah’s ark and America’s natural heritage will be lost forever. We cannot and will not let that happen,” said Evans. According to A. Dan Turlock, contributing author of Stumbling Toward Sustainabilty (Environmental Law Institute, © 2002, John C. Dernbach, editor): “In the past 10 years, the U.S….has tried to manage large blocks of public lands on an ecosystem basis…These efforts are extremely fragile because they lack a firm legal foundation, they can be modified in response to changed political conditions and no clear performance standards exist to measure their success should they endure.” Turlock goes on to say, “…the future of many of the [U.S.] biodiversity-related conservation initiatives implemented since 1992 is in doubt.” Even in a time of economic uncertainty, respondents rejected the argument that “it is often not worth the cost in jobs to try to save endangered species” (63% disagreed in 2002, up from 53% in 1996, when a prior version of the poll was conducted). The polling firm Belden Russonello & Stewart (BR&S) conducted the survey, which was based on responses to telephone interviews conducted with 1,500 adults nationwide, in January 2002. The poll has a sampling error of plus or minus 2.5%. Poll results are available on the Biodiversity Project’s Web site, Toplines from the 2002 Biodiversity Poll. For more information on
endangered species and the Endangered Species Coalition, see
www.stopextinction.org.
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