Every win is temporary, every loss is permanent

After a decade of having their old growth Jacob Ryan timber sale/logging project on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon blocked by environmental litigation, the Forestry Service finally got to log those bothersome old trees this spring. They wasted no time following the January 2013 ruling in laying waste to the beautiful forest. This photo from April 28, 2013:

That's an old tree in Arizona! More about this devastation and the photo source is here. Thank you, wanderers, for bearing witness to the agency's old tricks.  Forest managers plan to begin project implementation this year and expect work to continue for five to seven years.

Or however long it takes to sell out the ecological resilience of the North Kaibab Plateau.

It all depends on how one defines "protected"

It's been a mixed week for wolf-related news, what with Secretary Salazar's parting shot to delist wolves nationally. Thanks, Cowboy Ken! Heckuva job, Kenny.

Puke.

In the southwest, the media has been interpreting this story this way:

Feds plan to keep Mexican gray wolves protected

Federal authorities intend to remove endangered species protections for all gray wolves in the Lower 48 states, carving out an a exception for a small pocket of about 75 Mexican wolves in the wild in Arizona and New Mexico, according to a draft document obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

That is, what is bad for wolves nationally might be OK for the little island of Mexican grays.  "Small pocket" is right, and we're pretty sure that's where the ranchers keep the US FWS.

And an awful lot depends on how you define "protected."

Like, does that mean letting Wildlife Services agents shoot them? Or ranchers bait and harass wolves until the government removes them? Or backroom deals to be made that would limit their recovery and reintroduction from their native range in Mexico? Is this how the feds define protection?

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.  

For shame!

Lately, we here at DL have been thinking about our tendency to use shame as a tactic, and to try to embarrass people into better action by exposing their bad behaviors. It's occasionally effective. Usually we stick to the issues at hand, but sometimes we can't resist the schadenfreude of activities unrelated to, oh, say, hating Mexican wolves and wanting the Arizona Game and Fish Commission to support their delisting. Sometimes a bad apple is bad all the way through.

And sometimes, the bad apple is so obviously rotten that the failure to remove it from the bushel is really the problem. For example, the USDA's Wildlife Services has a few doozies on its payroll, the most recent example of whom is the "wildlife specialist" who shot one of the 72 wolves in the wild after "mistaking" it for a coyote. And apparently, despite having done this killing of an endangered species in January, and having participated in, shall we say, problematic? incidents in the past, he's still on the payroll of said agency and, by proxy, of the American taxpayer. We can't be the only ones outraged by this travesty.

So, we respectfully suggest you call the New Mexico State Director Alan May and ask some very pointed questions about why this person is still employed.

New Mexico Wildlife Services State Director Alan May
8441 Washington St. NE
Albuquerque, NM 87113

Phone: (505) 346-2640 
Toll Free: 1-866-4USDAWS

And if the State Director doesn't have an explanation, ask to speak to the appropriate supervisor at the Western Regional Office in Fort Collins, CO (h/t to our regular readers!). And keep going up and up and up until you find someone appropriately embarrassed enough to provoke some action.

Because really, these folks ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Every day is Earth day.

[insert pretty picture of our blue planet here]

Discuss the roots of Earth Day and the significance of the original Earth Day signifying an emerging consciousness, blah, blah, blah...

Para 2. Mention in passing a few of the pressing environmental problems that everyone is familiar with, then provide a link to a compelling speech or editorial on climate change. Highlight/bold this sentence in order to signify that you know it is the overarching problem facing the planet.

Identify a list of small things individuals can do, turning off faucets, reusing bags, composting. [**Check with advertisers and sidebar Earth Day sales or special promotions on recycled paper journals, fair trade coffee, etc.] Include recommendation to pressure legislators and/or send a letter on Keystone XL (Note the deadline. Pick another petition?)

Conclude by revisiting the need for action, restate "we're all in this together"-type sentiment. Intimate urgency but not so much that people get frightened.

[insert picture of charismatic megafauna and call for donations]

Cruelties we visit upon our neighbors

Seeing the footage of yesterday's horrific bomb blasts in Boston reminded us of all the ways explosives are used to wreak expeditious havoc. We should grieve each one's prompt destruction, each political framing that tells us some lives are less valuable and more expendable than others.

Slash Budgets! Save Money! Do Good!

This post today in the HuffPo regarding ways for the federal government to save money has some real good ideas for ending taxpayer-funded programs that harm animals. Not the least of these good ideas is defunding USDA's Wildlife Services [sic].

Every year, millions of our taxpayer dollars are used to fund this agency that kills native predators at the request of ranchers and state wildlife management agencies. The methods employed are inhumane and include leghold traps, snares, cage traps, aerial gunning and indiscriminate poisons.

While damage to livestock by predators is a real concern, Wildlife Services also has the authority to kill animals that are simply a nuisance and could be dealt with in a more humane way. The wolf and coyote reduction programs are particularly horrific as often these defenseless animals are shot by sharpshooters in helicopters as they desperately try to escape.

And then there are all the animals WS agents torture and kill for "sport." Keeping these psychopaths employed at all means that taxpayers are funding animal abusers.  It's revolting, in the toss-one's-cookies sense of the word.

And then, there's the cruel and unusual forms of punishment the feds have devised for hungry sea lions. God forbid a native animal eat a native animal in a completely fucked up environment. 

Up to 368 California sea lions face execution by Oregon and Washington state workers for the crime of eating endangered salmon on the Columbia River near the Bonneville Dam. The states are authorized to kill 92 of the federally protected pinnipeds annually through June 2016. The sea lions will be branded with hot irons, hazed with rubber bullets and explosives, and killed by lethal injection or shotgun for eating less than 4% of the salmon at the dam. All of this mayhem, conducted on the dime of taxpayers, takes place while commercial, sport, and tribal fisheries are allowed to take up to 17% of the same endangered salmon and the dam itself claims approximately 17% of adult salmon. (via)

It would be interesting to know what percentage of our tax dollars directly and indirectly support these programs. 

The Killers at Wildlife (Dis)Services have struck again [UPDATED]

Good god, what next? The federal wildlife mercenaries have struck again, killing a Mexican gray wolf in New Mexico.

Few details about the killing have been disclosed, with spokesmen for Wildlife Services, an arm of the USDA, and [the U.S.] Fish and Wildlife Service [Dept of Interior], which oversees the wolf recovery project, saying that the case is under investigation.

However, a brief statement from Wildlife Services indicates the employee asserted the killing was a case of mistaken identity.

The employee, described as a specialist, was investigating a possible wolf depredation of livestock in January when the incident occurred, wrote Carol Bannerman, a Maryland-based spokeswoman for Wildlife Services. “While on-site he lethally removed a canine, which was then identified as possibly a Mexican wolf.”

Let's get this straight: he's looking into a possible wolf depredation in Mexican wolf territory and then he shoots and kills a wild canid? Oops!

Either this person is not a wildlife specialist or s/he's lying to avoid prosecution (mistaken identity is the most common excuse and gets these folks off the hook all too often).

Either USDA Wildlife Services hires and retains wanton killers or, well, we'll be monkeys' uncles. 

In any case, there's one less wild wolf on the ground in New Mexico, U.S. Fish and Wildlife has been covering it up, and Wildlife Services' hired guns (and traps) have once again harmed native wildlife.

---

UPDATED 4/5/2013:

An old endorsement of Wildlife Services from Laura Schneburger, head of the Gila Livestock Growers Association, "We support Wildlife Services officers completely and have never had any problems with their professional demeanor."  Exactly. Real professional-like, in a profession of killers.

And, worth noting, according to the interdiction team notes posted online, the federal agent to call in New Mexico for suspected wolf depredations is Bill Nelson, 575-533-6252. Bill Nelson (same phone number) also runs a hunting guide service out of Reserve, New Mexico. He's the "wolf damage specialist" with the primary area of New Mexico. Seems like a Catron County hunting guide and Wildlife Services agent would definitely know a wolf from a coyote, so it probably wasn't him.

Right? 

Arizona Game and Fish Department Wants to "Manage" Wolves, and we all know what that means

Arizona is a state just full of bad ideas. What's wrong with those folks? From the original five C's (cattle, copper, citrus, cotton, and [air-conditioned] climate, none of which are sustainable in the desert) to Sheriff Joe Arpaio to Colorado City to Macho B to the latest misstep by the Arizona Game and Fish Department: joining up with Senator Hatch and Senator Lummis to remove Endangered Species Act protection for all gray wolves. It's a shitty idea, and one which would surely mean bad things for wolves in Arizona and New Mexico, where numbers are just starting to bounce back. With friends like these, indeed.

Truly, even as conservationists and wildlife lovers celebrate the 15 year anniversary of lobos being released into the wild, the haters keep on hating. Hate all you want, Husted. We've got enough love to conquer all.

Flutterby-byes

 

Good god, this is depressing stuff: Monarch Butterfy Population Falls To Record Low, Mexican Scientists Say 

Monarch butterflies that once covered 50 square acres of forest during their summer layover in central Mexico now occupy fewer than 3 acres, according to the latest census.

The numbers of the orange-and-black butterflies have crashed in the two decades since scientists began making a rough count of them, according to Mexico's National Commission of Natural Protected Areas.

At a news conference Wednesday, the commission said the count was down 59 percent from December 2011 levels, when the insects filled 7.14 acres of fir trees in central Mexico.

Fewer than 3 acres now. The death throes of a population of some of the world's most fascinating creatures, canaries in the coalmine of corridors and connectivity. We've had reasons to be optimistic about the butterflies in the past, but this, this news is too much.

Las mariposas son los desaparecidos en la guerra prieta de capitalismo.

Coming soon to a species near you.

There once was a woman who swallowed a fly....

Sometimes, a news story will come across our landscape that reflects exactly what is wrong with the world. For example, this story in the Elko Daily Free Press, with the headline, "Elko County commissioners agree to begin sage-grouse program." Sounds promising, until you realize that the plan is TO PUT OUT POISONED EGGS TO KILL RAVENS!

County commissioners formally agreed Thursday to begin a pilot sage-grouse conservation program.

The plan — which focuses on fire fuel control through grazing and reduction in raven predation by planting poisoned eggs — will be carried out on The Devil’s Gate Ranch.

Ranch owner Ken Bowler said he’s eager to be a part of the program. Bowler hopes the sage-grouse population will rebound to the numbers he once observed on his land years ago, he said.

Graze up all the fine fuels (also known as sage-grouse nest hiding cover) and poison native wildlife to save sage-grouse? What about simply NOT grazing, giving the sage-grouse eggs and chicks a better chance of avoiding detection from predators?

The woman who swallowed the fly made things worse by continuing to swallow more critters to swallow the fly to catch the mouse. Western public lands management follows this same stupid paradigm, adding insult to injury and poison to predators.

Is it 2013 and have we learned ANYTHING yet? 

Long, Hot, Indulgent Showers Can Save the World

 (via)

Oh. Wait. That's not what Derrick Jensen meant in his essay, "Forget Shorter Showers?"

Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance.

So, we can take long, hot showers as long as we don't buy stuff?

We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen. 

Aren't we the beneficiaries of agriculture and industry? Municipalities? Golf courses? If it doesn't matter how long our showers are, how can it matter if we golf on weekends? Eat burgers? Have three kids? 


Come on, Derrick, someone, anyone. Please come up with a solution that allows us to maintain our capitalist/consumer/green "lifestyle" and feel better about ourselves. Feel like the world isn't going to shit.

Trap Free New Mexico? Hell yeah!

A bill introduced last week would limit the cruel and unusual treatment of animals, vis–à–vis trapping and poisoning. The New Mexico WildlifeProtection & Public Safety Act, House Bill 579 make it illegal to for:

1. a person to set or use, or attempt to set or use, a trap to kill or capture wildlife;
2. a person to set or use, or attempt to set or use, a body-gripping trap to kill or capture any feral or domestic animal;
3. a person to apply or use, or attempt to apply or use, any poison to kill or injure wildlife or a feral......

And lots of other good stuff preventing the sale of animal fur and pelts that have been so caught. It's a really great bill: THANK YOU REP. GONZALES. It's wonderful when politicians get it so right. Even the hard-to-please enviros are happy. [We're looking at you, WKR. ;)]

UNFORTUNATELY, it doesn't prevent the use of traps or poisons by the federal government, and we all know who the most prolific wildlife killers are, don't we? Let's say it together: the federal government.  [We're looking at you, USDA]

UPDATED 2/21: Thanks to a commenter, we've realized that our interpretation of the proposed law as it pertains to Wildlife [Dis]Services was perhaps too cynical. [Us? Cynical?] Here's the relevant exception: 

The provisions of subsection A of this section shall not prohibit: (1) the taking of wildlife or feral or domestic animals by federal, state, county, or municipal government employees or their duly authorized agents when prohibited devices or methods are the only feasible method available to protect human health and safety. 

We here at DL just instantly rolled our eyes at that exception, knowing that the more-than-a-few bad apples are likely to invoke it at every opportunity. But perhaps not. Perhaps "feasible" will convince them to try other tactics before the old standbys. What do you think, Gentle Reader? 
 
---
P.S. That link to Rep. Gonzales' webpage ain't for nothing. Here's a hint: Emily Post
P.P.S. Google "conibear trap image." If that doesn't convince you of the significance of this bill, check for a pulse.

When the best you can say is, "At least she's not a rancher..."

In today's installment of "Obama Doesn't Give a Shit About Public Lands," his nomination of Sally Jewell to run the Department of Interior is at least interesting fodder with which to sling some mud at Gang Green and their conciliatory approach to having the interests they are supposed to represent get completely derailed.  

Like this:

Molly McUsic, president of land conservation-focused Wyss Foundation, told the Post in an email Jewell "understands the full economic potential of America's resources."

"She knows the oil-and-gas business from having worked at Mobil and in the banking industry, but also understands the growing economic potential of America's $646 billion outdoor recreation industry," McUsic said. "She knows that to grow the economy, development of energy resources must be on equal ground with the protection of places that drive tourism, travel and recreation."

Or this: 

Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune called Jewell a champion in the effort to connect children with nature and said she has “a demonstrated commitment to preserving the higher purposes public lands hold for all Americans — recreation, adventure, and enjoyment.

Hello, habitat? DOES ANYONE CARE ABOUT PROTECTION OF HABITAT ANYMORE?

Aldo Leopold warned us about monetizing the environment, the risk of viewing the land as a commodity:

One basic weakness in a conservation system based wholly on economic motives is that most members of the land community have no economic value. Wildflowers and songbird are examples. Of the 22,000 higher plants and animals native to Wisconsin, it is doubtful whether more than 5 per cent can be sold, fed, eaten, or otherwise put to economic use Yet these creatures are members of the biotic community, and if (as I believe) its stability depends on its integrity they are entitled to continuance.

When one of these non-economic categories is threatened and if we happen to love it, we invent subterfuges to give it economic importance. At the beginning of the century song birds were supposed to be disappearing. Ornithologists jumped to the rescue with some distinctly shaky evidence the effect that insects would eat us up if birds failed to control them. The evidence had to be economic in order to b valid.

It is painful to read these circumlocutions today. We have no land ethic yet, but we have at least drawn nearer the point of admitting that birds should continue as a matter of biotic right, regardless of the presence or absence of economic advantage to us.

Hello, Leopold? DOES ANYONE READ LEOPOLD ANYMORE?

WildEarth Guardians at least went to bat swinging on this one, discussing Ms. Jewell's poor responses on questions about global climate change:

And what does the President do?  He nominates an outdoor enthusiast who refused to take a stand on climate change for fear of upsetting customers with a “broad array of political views.” 

Yeah, not exactly optimistic. So thanks, Guardians, for still being willing to call a spade a spade.


Congressman Grijalva had a lot of support from the environmental community, but he seemed a little cool on it himself, lately seeming to want to stay in the House and take a plum position on the Subcommittee on Natural Resources. And that's good, as he probably can do more good there and in Arizona for the long-term than the BS he was likely to encounter at DOI. But, goddamn it would have been sweet to have someone who wants to save public lands for their own sake, not for the sake of camping trips and photo ops.

If anyone has a picture of Ms. Jewell in a cowboy hat or boots, please send it along.

No, don't.

Yes, do.

No, don't. It might just be the final straw. 

"We don't want it all. We just want what's left."

We were recently treated to a screening of "Who Bombed Judi Bari?" a film about the fierce activist and forest defender who was bombed and framed by the FBI for her own bombing. It's an old story, being retold now, because to this day, the legal case to win justice continues. The film is well made, perhaps a smidge long, but remarkably constructed of "real time" footage.

It evoked a time and a place where we really felt like there was hope for change, by our collective passions putting a stop to environmental devastation, where tactics seemed to work for us rather than against us. Since the Green Scare, the kinds of direct action/nonviolent civil disobedience has really disappeared, unless you count the protests that occur within the cordoned off areas under the watch of a heavily armed police force at every meeting of the G8. It's sad, really, to have lost the small acts of creativity and provocation that really did change things. We're all fighting from our laptops now, and who knows whether we're succeeding? It's been too long since enough of us cared about the land to go and bear witness on the ground, find which road they are using, and shut them down. [Notable exceptions: Sea Shepard and Buffalo Field Campaign.]
  
There is no "Here's how you can get involved..." message or moment. This is a human story, like "If a Tree Falls," not a story about the degradation that continues and who is fighting for what now. But it's the story of our past, a time and an icon. It's part of the Green People's History.

Rest in peace, Judi. Or not. We could use you shaking some things up from wherever you are.