Did NJ Audubon Dupe NJ’s First Lady Tammy Murphy?

Did Tammy Know She was Palling Around With Trump Partner & Christie Collaborator?

Website Scrubbed Of Controversial Trump Partnership & Corporate Stewardship Council

[5/11/18 – Updates in text]

Today, NJ First Lady Tammy Murphy did a PR event in Cape May sponsored by NJ Audubon and corporate pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co. (see the announcement “Turning the Tide for the Horseshoe Crab“)

The Murphy’s are newcomers to the NJ political scene, so I was wondering if Tammy knew of the the several divisive controversies that NJ Audubon was involved in, including:

• a Partnership with Donald Trump,
• a Corporate Stewardship Council
• collaborations with the Christie Administration
• promotion of Trump days before the Presidential election
• funding by a Wall Street billionaire to log public lands
• defunding State Parks maintenance budget & diversion of DEP clean water funds
• national story of political intervention in Trump wetlands enforcement
• ACRIMONIOUS ARGUMENT OVER HIGHLANDS LOGGING PLAN SPLITS ‘GREEN’ GROUPS
• Budget cuts doom state parks to disrepair
• The Folks Over At AMMO LAND Support the Audubon “Forest Stewardship” Bill

We recently tried to warn the incoming Murphy people about some of that NJ Audubon collaboration, and specifically highlight the parallels between Trump and Christie policies and slogans.

Previously, we also criticized NJ Audubon Society, most recently for their role as:

a self-proclaimed “conservation” organization [that] has: 1) formed a “partnership” with Donald Trump; 2) taken money from a Wall Street billionaire to log forests to enhance opportunities for wealthy private hunters; and 3) formed a “Stewardship Council”with major corporate polluters, developers, and pipeline builders; then something apparently benign like a “buy local” sustainable forestry birdhouse program may seem like chump change, and just a short slide down the slippery slope of the Greasy Pole to Gomorrah (a process that Chris Hedges calls “our descent into corporate tyranny.”)

I am referring to NJ’s Audubon’s latest scam, run in cooperation with NJ State Departments of Environmental Protection (“Forest Stewardship”) and Agriculture (“Jersey Grown Wood“).

[Update: I forgot to mention the fact that Dupont funds NJ Audubon for work on Delaware Bay – “Clear Into The Future” –  another Orwellian corrupt corporate green scam.]

I wonder who does the background political research in the Governor’s Office for the First Lady’s events? Were they aware of these minefields?

Maybe the political background work was done by the same person who recommended that Gov. Murphy’s DEP Commissioner join Trump EPA Scott Pruitt’s self serving press release designed to divert attention from his various scandals.

Dupe me once, shame on me – Dupe me twice….? The Murphy political folks are looking either naive or incompetent.

But maybe the political background researcher just got duped by NJ Audubon’s recent scrubbing of their website of any of this stuff.

Take a look at their new website and Stewardship page and see if you can find the Trump partnership, Corporate Stewardship  Council, or various work with the Christie DEP, like the drafting Commissioner Martin’s talking points and the Sparta Mountain WMA logging plan.

This raises questions, like:

• Was the Trump partnership terminated, as we suggested?
• Was the Corporate Stewardship Council disbanded or just scrubbed from public view?
• Will NJ Audubon refrain from abuses like drafting self serving talking points for the DEP Commissioner?
• Will NJ Audubon abandon plans to log state forests under the guise of “Stewardship”?

[Update – Friends just sent me this NJA spin on the Sparta Mountain logging plan – which I missed on their new website – so they are doubling down. I’ll post on this in more detail soon.]

Inquiring minds want to know!

If NJ Audubon didn’t give the Governor’s Office a heads up on any of these minefields, then they duped the First Lady and should pay a price for that.