ATADA Legislative Alert 4, 22 July, 2014: Ivory Ban Bills Introduced
ATADA believes that the proposed FWS regulations (ban) on antique ivory will penalize law-abiding US citizens while doing nothing to protect elephants. For a detailed discussion of the issues, see the ATADA Position on the Ivory Ban.
Last week Representative Steve Daines (R-MT) and Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) introduced bills (H.R. 5052 and S. 2587 ) that would remove the proposed changes to the FWS proposed regulations on elephant ivory and allow time to craft a more effective legislative response.
We ask that you contact your senators and congressman immediately to register your support of these bills.
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Writing an e-letter to a Congressman is a lot more difficult than I initially thought.
Here is what I recommend:
1) Create a draft letter in a text editor (not Microsoft Word or your email client), be sure to request that they support the bills (H.R. 5052 and S. 2587 ),
2) Save a copy of your .txt letter file to your hard disk because you will need to come back and get it later,
3) go to the web page of each member of your congressional delegation and do what each requires to send a letter.
Here are some of the issues that you must consider:
-the text of the letter should not contain any .html or markup that is specific to any particular word processor or email client – some Congressional web pages will block any entry of .html and may block data from some particular word processors (Congressmen want to minimize the time that must be spent reading your letter and indexing it in their databases. They also want to make it difficult to submit a form letter to each of many Congressmen).
-you will need to have the text of your letter available in a separate window at the same time that your browser window is open at the Congressman’s site so that you will be able to copy and paste the letter into the data entry box. (you may need to browse to find the correct page allowing data entry into the data entry box).
– Once at a congressional delegation website, you will need to browse to find the page with a web form that allows you send a letter to your Senator or Representative. All web sites seem to be somewhat differently organized, so you will need to browse to find the correct page.
Please request that your friends and contacts do the same as the ATADA membership alone is not large enough to make a big difference in the statistics of public opinion.