This page identifies a number of informational items regarding conservation and environmental practices that you might want to consider implementing in conjunction with your daily living. Often it is simply a matter of developing new habits that may results in cost savings as well as being beneficial to our planet.

Another aspect of 'Take Action" is actively communicating with your Federal and State government representatives regarding legislative issues. E-mails have value and hardcopy letters have been determined to have an even greater value and impact.

Action Items

We encourage our members (and visitors) to be pro-active and communicate with our State and Federal government representatives regarding important legislation pertinent to the conservation of our natural resources and to environmental issues that are potentially detrimental to the mid-shore and the Chesapeake Bay. -- We ask you to communicate with your government representatives by sending an e-mail. Please follow the following guidelines to do so.

1. Review and select the topic(s) that may be of interest and concern to you.
2. Review the suggested text to determine it conveys the message you wish to communicate.
3. Start-up your e-mail program and initiate a new e-mail message.
4. Compose your message or copy text into the e-mail message block (after copying, modify if desired).
5. Select the government personnel to whom you wish to send the e-mail.
6. Copy the names (and e-mail addresses) into the "To" section of the e-mail.
7. At the end of your message add your signature block or enter your full name, e-mail address, home address with city/state/zip-code, and your phone number.
8. Send your message from your e-mail program.

Federal Government Legislators:

Each Federal legislator must be contacted thru their website and they require that you complete an input panel identifying oneself. Once the requested data is provided, you should be able to copy in the suggested text into the message block and then edit (customize) it before sending the message.

Mr. Benjamin Cardin (www.cardin.senate.gov)

Mr. Chris Van Hollen (www.vanhollen.senate.gov)

Mr. Andrew Harris (www.harris.house.gov)

State Government Legislators:

You should be able to select one or more state legislator by holding down the control key and moving the cursor over multiple persons. Then doing a "copy" function to select the individuals then a "paste" function into your e-mail program.

Mrs. Addie Eckardt (adelaide.eckardt@senate.state.md.us)

Mr. Johnny Mautz (johnny.mautz@house.state.md.us)

Mr. Chris Adams (christopher.adams@house.state.md.us)

Many other conservation and environmental organizations have websites that facilitate the sending of e-mails to various legistators. Following are some links you may want to explore and consider initiating an e-mail or letter to your representative(s) from the information available on their sites.

Izaak Walton League (National Organization): www.iwla.org/advocacy/

Chesapeake Bay Foundation: http://www.cbf.org/join-us/take-action/home

MD League of Conservation Voters (MDLCV): http://marylandconservation.e-actionmax.com/alertlist.asp

Also see MDLCV "HotLists" for current legislative activity: http://mdlcv.org/issues/hotlist/

Coastal Conservation Association: http://www.ccamd.org

MidShore River Conservancy: http://www.midshoreriverkeeper.org