You can help the Red Knot immediately.
Your simple action by this weekend, at the latest, will make a difference.
This is the hot topic in the New Jersey Legislature, now. The legislative
cycle is at a critical moment right now.
My suggestions follow:
Send an Email today.
Your Emails, personal letters (by FAX or Email), and phone calls during the
next two days will most effectively wield favorable influence in the
decision-making process now underway in the New Jersey Legislature,
Environment Committee. They are deciding whether or not to send a Bill to
the floor extending the moratorium on horseshoe crab harvest.
STEP ONE: Go to the Ohio Birds Forum and review the talking-points offered
by New Jersey Audubon in Casey Tucker's post under CONSERVATION. Find
senator contacts there. Use these talking-points to develop a brief
statement of your own, in your words, asking the environment committee to
move the Bill, S1331, to the floor for a full vote. Keep it simple.
STEP TWO: Go to Ohio Birds Forum to see my letter posted under CONSERVATION.
I offer additional talking-points emphasizing sensitivity to all
stake-holders in the debate. A dispassionate broad view sensitive to all
interests may offer the opposition wording for ideas and positions they
agree with and can use to justify supporting the moratorium. REMEMBER: Just
about everyone wants to save the Red Knot. Opposition is gravitating toward
polemic positions to protect their relationships with business, watermen
associations, and other consumptive interests.
STEP THREE: Send an email to each committee member within the next hour.
The SUBJECT line should ask them to send S1331 to the floor for full vote.
The body should simply ask them to move S1331 to the floor for a full vote
to extend the horseshoe crab moratorium. Identify yourself as an Ohio
birder. Tell them if you have traveled to New Jersey and watched birds, or
if you plan to do so, and when.
STEP FOUR: If you have more to say, compose a personal letter to express
your view more fully and send it by Email as an attachment. Your letter
should be shorter than this long Email. Fit the letter to one page.
STEP FIVE: Call each senator on the committee. A staffer will answer.
Prepare facts in advance. Identify yourself as an Ohio birder and
immediately express support for S1331. Ask to speak to the senator (good
luck). Be nice. Offer facts. Tell them you have, or plan, to travel to New
Jersey to watch birds, if this is true.
I have called all the senators and some staffers were interested in
talking-points. I have sent to each a shorter version of the sample letter I
posted to Ohio Birds Forum.
Tom Bain
Chair, Conservation Committee
Ohio Ornithological Society
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