Endangered Species Update

July 3, 2008

The basis of the food web on Earth comprises lowly plants--fungi, algae, bacteria and other genera, families and orders most of us never heard of. And then there are the animals: insects. various orders of worms, crustaceans, molluscs, et al. many of which are endangered. It is easy to forget the essential and more-or-less invisible species that support life on Earth. Not all endangered species are spectacular--jaguars, wolves, whales, bears. We are lucky to have The Xerces Society, based in Portland, Oregon, that fights for invertebrates. (www.xerces.org) Other similar societies carry on these struggles in other nations on our endangered Earth.

However, once again, POLAR BEARS, a pivotal species right now in our political scene as well as in Canada and other nations with big areas of arctic seas and lands.

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Groups oppose Safari Club's attempt to bring back polar bear trophy hunt

by Dan Joling, AP

“Environmental and animal-rights groups are lining up to oppose a lawsuit that seeks to let American sport hunters again import hides of polar bears shot legally in Canada.

Safari Club International wants to overturn a ban put in place last month when the U. S. interior secretary declared polar bears a threatened species.

Politicians from Canada's Northwest Territories this week made the same request to Interior Department officials in Washington, D. C.

The U. S. Department of Interior on May 15 declared polar bears threatened, or likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future, because of habitat loss.

Trophy hunting of U. S. bears in Alaska has been banned since 1972.

Bears killed by subsistence hunters are not considered a threat.

Dirk Kempthorne, the U. S. interior secretary, declared polar bears threatened throughout their range and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service withdrew authorization to import hides from animals killed in approved populations in Canada -- including animals already killed and awaiting a taxidermist mount.

Importation was allowed through an amendment to the Marine Mammal Protection Act passed by Congress in 1994.

Safari Club International on May 23 filed a required 60-day notice of its intent to sue to overturn the ban, not just for bears already killed but also on behalf of members who hope to hunt in the future, including those who booked and paid for hunts in 2009 and 2010.

(NOTE: If Kempthorne had listened to scientific reports and declared the Polar Bear endangered he could have avoided all this hunter angst. MLM).

Safari Club International also argues that sport hunting by U. S. citizens aids bears by supporting Canada's sustainable use harvest programs.

A hunt can cost $40,000 to $50,000 and Safari Club International claims income from hunters helps support polar bear research and provides a direct economic benefit to Canada native communities from supporting and guiding hunts.

A half-dozen groups want more, not fewer, protections for polar bears and filed to intervene in the lawsuit, including the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace, which petitioned for the polar bear listing.”

Florida to buy chunk of Everglades from sugar firm

By Jim Loney

LOXAHATCHEE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Fla., June 24 (Reuters) - The state of Florida announced on Tuesday it intends to spend $1.75 billion to buy a large chunk of Everglades land from U.S. Sugar, one of a number of sugar companies blamed for polluting the precious wildlife habitat.

U.S. Sugar Corp., one of the largest privately held U.S. agriculture firms, will abandon its Florida sugar plantations and go out of business in six years, handing over about 187,000 acres of farmland to the state's efforts to restore the Everglades, company and state officials said.

The purchase, lauded by environmentalists as the "missing link" in the restoration project, will be paid for with $50 million cash and $1.7 billion in certificates of participation, similar to bonds, that will be sold in public debt markets, the South Florida Water Management District said.

The land deal would revive an effort to turn sugar cane fields back into marshes and waterways that would help cleanse polluted Everglades water and carry it from Lake Okeechobee to the southern reaches of the Everglades and Florida Bay.

Environmentalists, who have criticized the sugar industry for decades for dumping fertilizer-tainted water into Florida's famous "River of Grass," raved about the deal.

The deal, which calls for Florida to buy U.S. Sugar Corp., including the land, its sugar mill and refinery and its citrus orchards and processing plant, exists only as a signed statement of principles now. State and company officials gave themselves 75 days to wrap up the details.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican sometimes mentioned as a possible running mate for presidential hopeful John McCain, announced the plan at a news conference on the edge of the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, with sugar cane fields and Everglades marshes in sight.”

NOTE (Ed.): Maybe not such a great breakthrough after all. Land swaps with another huge sugar company are being negotiated, but land swaps are tricky; they can become robbing Peter to pay Paul, doing nothing for the environment. After decades of sugar cane growth what’s left of the soils are in poor shape--cane growth being one of the most efficient robbers of nutrients. And pesticides add to the accumulation of human-caused changes. Federal government authorized big hydro projects to improve drainage to the Everglades, but did’t pay its share. A major highway acts as a dam between Lake Okeechobee and Everglades National Park.

Poll: Most New Mexicans, Arizonans back wolf recovery

Los Cruces Sun Times

By SUE MAJOR HOLMES Associated Press Writer

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.—”A program to release Mexican gray wolves in southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona has more support in Arizona than in New Mexico, according to a poll commissioned by wildlife groups and environmentalists.

However, the endangered wolf has broad-based support among voters in both states, said Brian Sanderoff, president of Research & Polling, which conducted the survey in April and May.

The 19-question poll, released Monday, showed 77 percent of Arizonans and 69 percent of New Mexicans support or strongly support reintroducing wolves on public lands in their states, while 21 percent of New Mexicans and 13 percent of Arizonans oppose the program.

Dave Parsons, former coordinator of the program for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, believes the high support "represents a societal change over time, where people more and more identify with and value nature and wild animals."

There were 52 Mexican gray wolves in the wild in January, the last count by Fish and Wildlife, which began releasing wolves along the New Mexico-Arizona border 10 years ago. The goal is to re-establish the species in part of the historic range where it was hunted to the brink of extinction in the early 1900s.

The 2007 count was seven fewer wolves than the year before. Wildlife biologists had hoped to have 100 wolves in the wild by 2006.

While people who live in wolf release areas should be listened to, program managers "should not lose sight of the fact that these are public lands that belong to the people of New Mexico and Arizona," Parsons said.

The random scientific survey—commissioned by such groups as the Arizona Zoological Society, New Mexico Audubon Council, the Southwest Environmental Center and Parson's organization, the Rewilding Institute—was conducted in Arizona between April 25 and May 4 and in New Mexico between April 24 and May 11. The Albuquerque-based market research and public opinion research company questioned 1,000 registered voters, half in each state, by telephone. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points. Wolves in New Mexico are concentrated in Catron and Grant counties. Catron County Manager Bill Aymar, who opposes the program, was out of his office Monday and could not be reached for comment. Catron County last year passed an ordinance claiming the right to remove problem wolves if the federal government didn't act. Grant County asked the state and federal governments to pay for livestock and pets killed by wolves and compensate the county for lost hunting opportunities and emotional damage.

One poll question asked voters to choose between two statements—one viewing the wolf as beneficial, the other as harmful.

In New Mexico, 64 percent chose the statementthat "the wolf is a benefit to the West and helps maintain a balance of nature." Twenty-one percent agreed the wolf "kills too many elk, deer and livestock and does more harm than good."

In questions regarding giving the wolf recovery program priority over livestock grazing on public lands; 34 percent support that idea. More Arizonans favor giving wolves priority—43 percent vs. 27 percent opposed. The survey showed other support for rancher concerns.

Seventy-nine percent of Arizonans and 72 percent of New Mexicans believe taxpayer money should be used to help ranchers prevent or reduce conflicts with wolves.”

The following dispatch from Scott Silver:

“ It is a very interesting place to which we've come, as the appended article makes clear.

With everything seemingly at risk and with everything potentially on the table the stakes couldn't be higher. Will the big-greens give it all away, will they allow it all to be taken away -- or will they play the environment's hand well? I might further ask, should the big-greens be the ones playing this hand on behalf of environment? Are they still primarily defenders of the environment as they'd been up until the late 60s, early 70s. Or have they now become, as some have claimed and as I believe, captive defenders of the corporatist system that brought us here?

BTW, I agree absolutely with the statement by Defender of Wildlife's, Jean Brennan, that "Climate change will eliminate many ecosystems around the world and create new ones that no longer can sustain the creatures and plants there now." It has been this way since the beginning of time. However, even given that reality, there are many ways in which the cards can be played. Some lead to better outcomes than others.”

Scott

LONG-HELD VIEWS ON SAVING THE PLANET’S ECOSYSTEMS CONSIDERED ANEW.

By ROCKY BARKER - McClatchy-Tribune

BOISE, Idaho -- The Defenders of Wildlife, like many environmental groups, is dedicated to the philosophy of biologist Aldo Leopold - that "saving all the parts" of the world's ecosystems is the foundation of conservation. "To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering," Leopold wrote in his classic 1940s essay "Round River." Those words became part of the foundation of the modern environmental movement.

So when Defenders climate scientist Jean Brennan and others suggest that it may be time to change the Endangered Species Act to allow some species to go extinct, it underscores the crisis they say the West and the world face from climate change. The nation's top scientists say climate warming is "unequivocal," and much of it is "very likely due" to human causes - and that has forced corporations, investors and government officials to reconsider long-held views.

Now the emerging and fast-moving realities of climate change are forcing wildlife advocates and environmentalist to rethink their philosophies as well.

Do the benefits of nuclear energy outweigh the risks? Will drawn-out court battles on governmental decisions cause more environmental harm than they do good? And the question that tears at the center of Leopold's doctrine: Can all species be saved? "If you think too much about it, it sends you into despair," said Pat Parenteau, an environmental law professor at the University of Vermont.

But federal and state scientists and managers say they have no choice but to start, and they gathered in Boise last week at the first meeting of federal officials to look ahead at what policies and strategies need to be changed. Twenty to 40 percent of all known species could go extinct, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist and endangered species recovery expert Jeff Burgett said. And scientists say that even if greenhouse gases are dramatically reduced, it will take more than 100 years to dissipate the high levels of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.

The dire news was a wake-up call for agency biologists, regional managers and others who hardly were allowed even to discuss climate change over the last eight years of the Bush administration.

Brennan, Parenteau and most wildlife advocates aren't ready to give up on most species. But they no longer are looking to return ecosystems to a former pristine state. Climate change will eliminate many ecosystems around the world and create new ones that no longer can sustain the creatures and plants there now, Brennan said. ‘Many ecosystems that will exist in 2100 exist nowhere on Earth today,’ she said.

‘Our grandchildren are going to grow up in a world that's unrecognizable today," said Dale Goble, a University of Idaho law professor and co-author of the book "The Endangered Species Act at Thirty." The idea that we can address the threats that species face and bring them back to recovery is the core concept that underlies the Endangered Species Act, Goble said. But "recovery" - as the law requires - is not likely to be an option. At least 80 percent of endangered species and even many game species that survive will need special, individual management into perpetuity, Goble said.

The warmer weather already may be affecting diseases, which could be moving north into new habitat now warm enough for them to thrive in. A parasitic brain worm is killing moose in Minnesota. West Nile virus, carried by mosquitoes, has moved west and north to threaten sage grouse and even kill people. "We have to get a whole lot lighter on our feet," Goble said. "We have to be able to act more quickly. Taking risks means you have to try something, and if it doesn't work, you have to try something else." Parenteau has been training environmental lawyers for years to slow things down so more deliberative decisions are made about development. But now, he advocates changes in the National Environmental Policy Act that would allow the nation to move faster on alternative energy development like wind plants, solar and other non-carbon sources. He points to held-up wind projects and a recent moratorium on solar development in western desert areas.

‘I am an environmentalist who has used NEPA to slow things down," Parenteau said. "I'm now saying NEPA should be used to speed things up.’

In the latest lawsuit against the dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers, salmon advocates pointed out the lack of a definitive discussion on the effects of climate change on salmon.

Tim Personius, deputy regional director of the Bureau of Reclamation, which manages some of those dams, wonders whether the salmon advocates are looking at the big picture.

The salmon groups say the only way to recover Snake River salmon is to breach four dams on the river in Washington - but the electrical generation lost would have to be replaced with sources more damaging to the climate.

"That effectively would increase carbon emissions an average of 4 million tons per year," Personius said. Parenteau believes the trade-off of removing the relatively low-power dams to restore salmon is worth the carbon impacts. But he acknowledged that considerations like the larger impacts on thousands of species - including the salmon - from climate change should be taken in to account in Endangered Species Act decisions. Salmon advocates may have to consider replacing the power from the dams with nuclear power, said Virgil Moore, Idaho Department of Fish and Game deputy director.

"I suspect many of us aren't putting that on the table," Moore said. "We know the risk, and it's scary, but the risks of climate change are really scary."

Parenteau has opposed nuclear power in the past, and he's still not ready to support it as part of the solution for climate change.

"But for people like me, nuclear power is on the table," he said.

That may seem like a major shift, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Burgett said people will have to change their perceptions about many things - even such core ideas as the concept of sustainability.

"If you are talking about sustaining the world we have now, it's too late," he said.

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Scott Silver
Wild Wilderness
248 NW Wilmington Ave.
Bend, OR 97701
phone: 541-385-5261
e-mail: ssilver@wildwilderness.org
Internet: http://www.wildwilderness.org



I agree with Scott that the Big Greens are unlikely to measure up. My opinion is that we desperately need a new attitude toward nature, one that tags us as an endangered species along with The Others. We can do without nuclear power and other techno marvels if we take that bit in our teeth. Let’s break out. Let’s cross that razor wire into a real change in who we are. I’ve spouted this before, can’t help repeating it.

Still looking for good news.

Martin