…As President, will you uphold our Endangered Species Act and better fund it, to protect imperiled plants and animals?
“The ‘Save Right Whales Act’; I sponsored it. We wrote it in my office and we were able to get a bipartisan cosponsor… that’s the way you can actually get a chance of it going to the Senate and passed into law. And…(to) get a bill like that passed, you have to find the money to fund it. Well, we got the money for it. “And here is why that’s important,” continued Moulton. “There are about 418 North Atlantic right whales left, in the world. We can either be the generation that watches them go extinct – like the generation that saw the dodo bird and passenger pigeons go away, or we can be the generation that steps up and saves them. And every one of these fights – legislation or fights in the U.N. or wherever else – it is a fight. The Maine lobstermen did not like the bill. (They would) have to make some modifications…because a lot of right whales die by getting tangled up in lobster traps. We actually got the Massachusetts lobstermen on board. So this is something we can do. We can get industry partners.” “We can deal with the opposition,” Moulton summarized. “But it is a lot of work. (The ESA) is important and it’s absolutely important that I will continue it as President.”
