Dear NRDC Activist,

There's a dirty secret lurking beneath the lush, swampy land of the Everglades:

While many of Florida's parks and natural wonders are publicly owned, vast amounts of oil beneath the ground are privately owned by powerful corporate interests ready to tear open this precious ecosystem for even more profit.

Big Cypress National Preserve is the next area in their crosshairs. If they succeed in expanding drilling there, they'll push the endangered Florida panther — of which an estimated fewer than 200 remain — even closer to the brink of extinction and wreak irreversible destruction on lands vital to Indigenous tribes who have expressed serious concerns about drilling there.

NRDC is working to block the Burnett Oil Company from getting final approval on its permits to drill in Big Cypress — but we need your support. Make a gift by July 31st to help stop the fossil fuel industry in Florida and beyond — and defend our environment on all fronts & mdash; and your donation will go 5X as far. Even $5 can make a big difference!

Big Cypress is a big deal: in addition to being a critical habitat to wildlife like the endangered Florida panther, the 730,000 acres of vital ecosystems like wetlands there act as carbon sinks, helping stem out of control climate change.

We're facing both an extinction and climate crisis, so how is it that we're this close to seeing an oil company move forward with such a catastrophic oil drilling plan in such a critical national preserve? It must be stopped.

You can help win this fight to save Big Cypress — and protect the rest of our public lands from being ransacked and destroyed for the sake of the dying fossil fuel industry.

Donate by MIDNIGHT on July 31st — and every single dollar will be MATCHED an incredible FIVE TIMES (yes, 5x!) — up to $250,000!

Even just $5 can make a big impact, so please don’t sit this one out.

It's time to move on from the catastrophic legacy of fossil fuels and invest in a cleaner, healthier, and more sustainable future.

Thank you as always for your support.

Sincerely,

Alison Kelly
Senior Attorney, Dirty Energy, Lands Division, Nature Program, NRDC