Natural Resources Defense Council

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The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) [1] is a New York City-based, non-profit, non-partisan environmental advocacy group, with offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Founded in 1970, NRDC today has 1.2 million members and online activists nationwide, and a staff of more than 250 scientists, attorneys, and other specialists. Along with Sierra Club and Earthjustice, NRDC is widely considered to be one of the leading environmental groups.

The NRDC seeks solutions to defend human health, the environment, and vanishing natural landscapes against urban sprawl, pollution, and habitat destruction. Top priorities include global warming and non-petroleum energy technologies, guarding children's and community health; and protection of ocean habitats.

To achieve these goals, NRDC works to pass strong legal safeguards like the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act, and fights to make sure they are enforced. While NRDC lawyers have used the courts to force dozens of polluters to clean up, the organization has also worked with more than 200 companies of all sizes to devise safe, cost-effective environmental solutions.

In 2001, NRDC launched the BioGems Initiative [2] to mobilize concerned individuals in defense of exceptional and imperiled ecosystems. The initiative matches NRDC's courtroom and advocacy expertise with the passion and determination of citizen activists who have sent more than 7 million messages to corporations and government officials calling for wildland protections.

NRDC was also one of the only major national environmental organizations to become and stay involved with community activists on the ground in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.^{[citation needed]}

The NRDC has also published a number of studies on nuclear weapon stockpiles around the world, both as monographs and as individual studies in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.