{"id":40356,"date":"2019-06-18T09:51:28","date_gmt":"2019-06-18T13:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/news\/?p=40356"},"modified":"2020-09-14T14:19:42","modified_gmt":"2020-09-14T18:19:42","slug":"defending-the-migratory-bird-treaty-act-and-clean-water-our-conservation-science-director-testifies-to-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/news\/defending-the-migratory-bird-treaty-act-and-clean-water-our-conservation-science-director-testifies-to-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"Defending the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Clean Water: Our Conservation Science Director Testifies to Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amanda Rodewald, senior director of conservation science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, was at the nation\u2019s Capitol last week to defend two core conservation policies at risk of reinterpretation and weakening by the current presidential administration.<\/p>\n

On Thursday June 13, Rodewald testified before the House Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife to speak against the Trump administration\u2019s proposed reinterpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA). The treaty between the U.S. and Canada was ratified by Congress in 1918, and another version of the MBTA was signed between the U.S. and Mexico 20 years later. The act forbids both the purposeful and the incidental killing of a wide range of migratory birds. In December 2017, the Interior Department, under the Trump administration, issued a memorandum<\/a> that sought to reinterpret the MBTA\u2019s applicability in cases of incidental take.<\/p>\n

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