diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 9f1b145af56..5bd32fb277d 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -79,6 +79,9 @@ Core and Builtins
 Library
 -------
 
+- Issue #7597: curses.use_env() can now be called before initscr().
+  Noted by Kan-Ru Chen.
+
 - Issue #7310: fix the __repr__ of os.environ to show the environment variables.
 
 - Issue #7970: email.Generator.flatten now correctly flattens message/rfc822
diff --git a/Modules/_cursesmodule.c b/Modules/_cursesmodule.c
index da19216bef1..ab17b0b9cdf 100644
--- a/Modules/_cursesmodule.c
+++ b/Modules/_cursesmodule.c
@@ -2659,8 +2659,6 @@ PyCurses_Use_Env(PyObject *self, PyObject *args)
 {
   int flag;
 
-  PyCursesInitialised
-
   switch(PyTuple_Size(args)) {
   case 1:
     if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(args,"i;True(1), False(0)",&flag))