CNOW week of Jan. 17, 2022

This week's notices:

• Oppose AB 505 & SB 494: Poisoning Our Ponds
• Oppose AB 673 & SB 612: Mandating Fish Stocking Quotas
• Support SB 692: Expanding the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) Programs
• Oppose AB 598 & SB 563: Creating Conditions for Chronic Wasting Disease
• Oppose SB 609: Mandating Pheasant Stocking Quotas

Wisconsin Conservation Voters urges you to oppose AB 505 & SB 494, which are before the Assembly Committee on Environment and the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy on Tuesday.

Wisconsinites should have a right to know and influence what chemicals are being added to our water. SB 494 & AB 505 allow individuals to add certain chemicals to shared waters without DNR oversight and without the consent of impacted neighbors.

Wisconsin Conservation Voters urges you to oppose AB 673 & SB 612, which are before the Assembly Committee on Environment on Tuesday.

To protect the health of the Great Lakes, we need to follow the lead of conservation experts who make decisions based on best practices in science-based management. This is especially true when it comes to introducing legislation that sets specific stocking quotas. AB 673 & SB 612 would invert the ideal process for policy development by creating an arbitrary, legislature-led brook trout stocking quota for Lake Michigan. This would undermine the DNR’s capacity to implement adaptable, science-led lake management approaches that protect the health of the ecosystem.

Wisconsin Conservation Voters urges you to support SB 692, which is before the Senate Committee on Government Operations, Legal Review and Consumer Protection on Tuesday.

Wisconsin’s Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program has been a key tool for incentivizing building improvements that support energy efficiency, renewable energy, and water conservation. SB 692 would expand financeable projects under PACE to include energy reliability improvements, weather-related resiliency projects, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and stormwater control measures. These important additions would add to the ongoing success of the PACE program.

Wisconsin Conservation Voters urges you to oppose AB 598 & SB 563, which is before the Assembly Committee on Sporting Heritage on Tuesday.

We need to do everything we can to limit the spread of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), a fatal, infectious nervous system disease often associated with farm-raised deer. AB 598 & SB 563 would make changes to Wisconsin law so that farm-raised bison, buffalo, and antelopes could be hunted in the same way as farm-raised deer. Given existing CWD-related concerns with how we manage farm-raised deer, we should not be creating new opportunities for the disease to spread.

Wisconsin Conservation Voters urges you to oppose SB 609, which is before the Assembly Committee on Sporting Heritage on Tuesday.

To protect the health of all species in our state, we need to listen to conservation experts who make decisions based on best practices in science-based management. This is especially true when it comes to introducing legislation that sets specific stocking quotas for any species. SB 609 would invert the ideal process for policy development by creating an arbitrary, legislature-led pheasant stocking quota. This would undermine the DNR’s capacity to implement adaptable, science-led management approaches to ensure that the entire ecosystem is being maintained.

Conservation Notices of the Week (CNOW) announces the pro-conservation positions on issues before the senate, assembly and/or governor in the week ahead to state legislators. Others wishing to follow activities in the state legislature also receive CNOW, including legislative staff, conservation voters, and media. All of these issues are tracked on the Vote Tracker. Issues in the CNOW may appear in the Conservation Scorecard.