Yellowstone/Greater RockiesKeep Drilling Out of Pristine Wildlife Habitat
In the heart of Wyoming's heavily developed Powder River Basin lies the area's last pristine haven for
wildlife: the 120,000-acre Fortification Creek region, home to sage grouse, pronghorn, bobcats,
songbirds and elk. With more than 25,000 natural gas wells already surrounding Fortification
Creek, agency officials are now targeting this rare wildlife oasis for industrialization. The Bureau
of Land Management is drawing up a plan for coalbed methane gas development in the region,
but it has begun issuing drilling permits before a full environmental analysis is completed.
Without a thorough scientific review, the agency has no way of knowing the full impact of roads,
power lines, pipelines and other infrastructure on this sensitive wildlife habitat.
» Tell the BLM to keep gas wells out of Fortification Creek until it has completed a full environmental study.
Last Thursday, the Center for Biological Diversity and allies filed an emergency legal motion Idaho and Montana from killing hundreds of wolves. It is the latest move in our ongoing lawsuit to put northern Rockies wolves back on the endangered species list.
In response to a lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity, this week timber giant Sierra Pacific Industries abandoned plans to clearcut a sizeable swath of Sierra Nevada forest -- and emit way too much carbon-dioxide pollution in the process. Earlier this month, the Center filed a trio of suits against the California Department of Forestry for illegally approving three of the company's logging plans without analyzing the greenhouse gases the logging would cause. The three projects would have decimated more than 1,600 acres of forest and spewed out tons of CO
This Wednesday, the Center for Biological Diversity led more than 320 organizations in sending a letter to senators calling for a strong energy and climate bill -- much stronger than the one passed by the House this summer. That bill had small goals and big loopholes that would hinder a fast transition to clean energy and give us a 50/50 chance of suffering catastrophic global warming. Our letter asks for legislation that reduces atmospheric 
After two Center for Biological Diversity lawsuits, two near-extinct plants on the Virgin Islands -- Agave eggersiana and Solanum conocarpum -- may finally receive Endangered Species Act protection. Almost 13 years after petitions to protect the plants were first filed, last week the Center reached a settlement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service setting a timeline for the agency to decide on protections. Agave eggersiana, which lives only on the island of St. Croix, is a perennial herb with large, funnel-shaped flowers and can grow up to 16 to 23 feet tall. The thornless, flowering shrub Solanum conocarpum is found only on the island of St. John and is down to about 220 plants. Habitat for both species was first gobbled up by intense deforestation for cotton and sugar-cane cultivation. Now residential and commercial development, as well as grazing by feral animals, also threaten the plants.
Dealing a bad blow to lands and people near mountains blown up for coal, this month a federal judge blocked an Obama administration move to rein in mountaintop removal coal mining. The judge decided in favor of a Bush administration directive that scrapped the "stream buffer-zone rule," which prohibited stream-harming mining within 100 feet of streams. The rule was a first step toward preventing mountaintop-removal coal mining, a highly destructive practice that explodes the tops off mountains and dumps debris directly into waterways. The Obama administration rightly asked the court to overturn Bush's rule, but the effort was shot down last Wednesday. Also last week, the Environmental Protection Agency approved yet another permit for a mountaintop-removal project -- this one predicted to fill eight valleys with mining waste. That makes 43 out of 48 permits approved, despite the agency's vows to scrutinize them to the letter of the law.
The western Atlantic bluefin tuna, one of the fastest fish in the ocean, is also on a fast track toward extinction -- and a new federal proposal would speed its demise.
2010 has been declared by the United Nations to be the International Year of Biodiversity. It's also the year the UN set as a target for "significantly reducing the rate of biodiversity loss." Will that goal be met? Fat chance, confirmed a European Commission conference that met in Athens this year. In fact, we're in the middle of the world's sixth mass extinction event, and it's only getting worse. Globally, 12 percent of mammals and birds, about a third of reptiles and amphibians, and 37 percent of fish are threatened with extinction. 
Flowers are attractive, sure, but . . . sex objects for bugs? Thanks to the wonders of evolution, some orchids have made themselves look like ideal mates for pollinating bees and wasps. The Ophrys orchid, for one, has evolved to look just like a female bee's rear end protruding from a green flower, enticing male bees to . . . to do what male bees do -- and in the process, spread the orchid's pollen around. The flower of the tongue orchid does such a good female wasp impression that male wasps actually release sperm onto its petals before flying off to spread pollen to other orchids. And according to orchid-pollination expert Michael Pollan (yes, that's pronounced pollen), trying to have one's way "with anything that moves" is a good reproductive strategy for the wasps, too -- even if the object of desire is just blowing in the wind.
Swooping into office to save the species this week, President Obama started his administration off right by immediately announcing a freeze on publication of all the Bush administration's last-minute, biodiversity-harming rules not yet put into print. This means the new administration will get a chance to review -- and hopefully trash -- bad Bush-era policy decisions, including the heinous removal of Endangered Species Act protections from gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains and Great Lakes regions. The freeze will also put stop to Bush's laughably low fuel-economy standards and a rule that would have injuriously changed the format of the endangered species list to redefine the extent of coverage provided to endangered species.
Filing a final challenge to the Bush administration over its political meddling in almost 60 Endangered Species Act decisions, last Wednesday the Center for Biological Diversity filed seven lawsuits over habitat-protection decisions wronging 18 species, as well as one notice of intent to sue over the denial of protection to the Colorado River cutthroat trout. The San Bernardino kangaroo rat, Arkansas River shiner, Riverside fairy shrimp, 12 Texas invertebrates, and three California plants were all robbed of federal habitat protections on Bush's watch -- in the case of the Riverside fairy shrimp, more than 97 percent of the area of habitat deemed by scientists as "essential" was removed from protection thanks to interference by Bush administration officials. In all, more than 158,000 protected acres are at stake in last week's seven suits. The Colorado River cutthroat trout was denied protection despite severe range loss, ongoing threats, and repeated Center action.
Acknowledging the fishiness of one more of its scientifically flawed and politically tainted Bush-era Endangered Species Act decisions, last week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reached a settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity and allies over a rule slashing habitat protections for one of California's rarest freshwater swimmers, the Santa Ana sucker. The small-bodied, big-lipped fish, though highly adaptable, has suffered serious harm from development, water projects, and other threats and is now reduced to just three populations in the middle part of the Santa Ana River. In response to a Center lawsuit, in 2004 the Fish and Wildlife Service protected more than 21,000 acres of habitat along three of the fish's four home rivers -- only to issue a scientifically unjustifiable decision a year later to reduce the protected area to a measly 8,305 acres, eliminating protections from the sucker's namesake river, the Santa Ana.
Following almost two years of being ignored by the Bush administration after we petitioned for nationwide laws to protect species from global warming, the Center for Biological Diversity has filed suit against six federal agencies to compel a response to our action. In February 2007, we jumpstarted our Global Warming and Endangered Species Initiative by petitioning the Department of the Interior, Department of Commerce, Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, Department of Transportation, and Environmental Protection Agency to integrate opposition to global warming into all major federal decision-making processes and speed the recovery of endangered species from the American pika to the yellow-billed loon. Our suit, filed last Thursday, demands consideration of the requests of our petition, including reviewing species to spot those especially threatened by warming and prohibiting all federal actions from appreciably reducing the likelihood of a species' recovery.
To protect one of the most majestic and endangered mammals on hooves, last Thursday the Center for Biological Diversity joined the Lands Council, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Selkirk Conservation alliance in suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to gain federally protected habitat for mountain caribou. Though caribou once roamed by the thousands across the northern United States, hunting, poaching, logging, and roads pushed the entire population into the Selkirk Mountains of northeastern Washington, northern Idaho, and British Columbia. Now disturbance from poorly managed snowmobiling threatens to push caribou out of even this last refuge. Conservation groups filed a petition to protect the caribou's remaining habitat back in 2002, but the next year the Fish and Wildlife Service said it had higher priorities -- and went on to ignore the petition.
After the Bush administration issued an 11th-hour decision to let the timber industry decimate public lands in western Oregon, the Center for Biological Diversity and 12 other conservation and fisheries organizations -- represented by Earthjustice -- filed suit in defense of salmon and old-growth forests. The Western Oregon Plan Revision allows current logging in the area to nearly quadruple, rezoning 2.6 million acres of federal public forests in Oregon tended by the Bureau of Land Management. The Bush administration timber giveaway ignores science clearly showing these dramatic increases in logging will pollute salmon spawning streams, destroy much of Oregon's old-growth forest, contribute to global warming, and seriously threaten winged residents like the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet.
When the Bush administration was three months late responding to our petition to protect California's rare ashy storm petrel, last Wednesday the Center for Biological Diversity officially warned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service we'll sue if it fails to investigate the species' status. The small, smoke-gray seabird resides in the polluted, development-stressed waters near California's largest cities and is further threatened by offshore energy terminals, shipping, commercial fishing, and oil spills. Worsening matters, global warming is changing the marine ecosystem of the bird's home state, leaving warmer, less-abundant waters and causing ocean acidification that depletes the sea of the storm petrel's prey. In the past 20 years, the largest colony of ashy storm petrels decreased by 42 percent, prompting the World Conservation Union and BirdLife International to list the species as endangered. Still, the Fish and Wildlife Service failed to make its decision on our petition to protect the bird, due last October.
Do you have fish guilt? That is, do you care about consuming sustainably but not know if the fish you're eating is good for ocean health or your own? Don't worry. Thanks to New York-based nonprofit Blue Ocean Institute, if you have a cell phone you can use what the group has dubbed "FishPhone." The next time you're in the supermarket or sushi bar and find yourself at sea regarding what fish to ingest, just send a text message reading "FISH," along with the kind of fish you're considering, to 30644. Instantly, you'll get a reply on how healthy your choice is for you and the planet. If your fish is fishy, it'll be red-flagged.
Posts
