Demarcated Landscapes

SOTU SNAFU

2012-01-24T20:09:00.002-07:00

"I'm directing my administration to allow the development of clean energy on enough public land to power three million homes." - Barack Obama, January 24, 2012.

Translation: Fuck you, desert tortoise, golden eagle, bats... we're gonna give it all away.

In which we publicly thank the Arizona Game and Fish Commission

2012-01-16T10:27:00.002-07:00

Dear Arizona Game and Fish Commissioners,

Thank you for coming to your senses and backing off the ridiculous policy of opposing all new releases of Mexican gray wolves until the recovery plan is complete. When you approved that in December, you looked like idiots. Now, however, you look more like rational human beings. Congratulations. We know it can't be easy to unanimously do something that's actually good for the environment and wildlife, what, with the composition of the Commission and all. (Nice hat!)

But, thanks. Replacing wolves lost to natural or illegal causes is the only way to de-incentivize the bad behavior of the wolf killers. We personally think it should be a 3-to-1 replacement rate to de-incentivize it even more, and we'd like you to consider 'evolving' your position even further.

We're so glad that the new year brought an about-face on this issue.

Sincerely,

The Landscapes

Even a Broken Clock is Right Twice a Day

2012-01-11T14:27:00.003-07:00

Obama bans uranium mining around Grand Canyon

The Obama administration banned new uranium mining claims around the Grand Canyon for the next 20 years, a move hailed by conservationists on Monday as key to the president's environmental legacy...

Yes. It is true. President Obama banned uranium mining in the Grand Canyon. But let's not forget that his legacy includes expanded offshore drilling, the BP oil spill, imprisoning a young activist seeking to disrupt improper mining projects, massive industrial solar development in western deserts, and probably, the Keystone XL pipeline. (We'd love to be wrong about this last one. UPDATED 1/18/12: Looks like we are wrong! Yay Obama!)

So when you are sending your little "thank you note" to Cowboy Ken, you might consider amending the text to read, "The Grand Canyon is one our nation's most beautiful and priceless treasures and deserves to be protected for future generations to enjoy. Ditto for the rest of America's public lands. Ahem."

Three hundred reasons to release more Mexican gray wolves

2011-12-20T08:45:00.005-07:00

While we are still struggling to understand exactly what happened with F1105, the Mexican wolf who was killed last week in New Mexico, we just keep thinking that the answer is to release more wolves into the wild. The blow of F1105's death wouldn't be quite so tragic if there was a robust wild population, and if it hadn't come on the heels of three other deaths in the last two months. (More here and here; all three are suspicious in our opinion.)

From the comments on our previous post about F1105's death,

There are only about 50 Mexican gray wolves("lobos") in the wilds of New Mexico and Arizona--not enough to ensure their survival. More than 300 lobos are in captivity, waiting to be released into the wild as part of a reintroduction program. Releasing wolves directly into New Mexico--where the best remaining unoccupied habitat exists--is critical to quickly boosting numbers and gene diversity in the wild population, but for bureaucratic reasons the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) won't do it, citing an outdated rule that prevents direct releases into New Mexico. The FWS could easily change this rule by issuing an Environmental Assessment and putting it out for public review, but it refuses to do so. Tell the FWS to take action before it's too late for Mexican wolves.

Please tell US Fish and Wildlife Service: Release Mexican wolves into New Mexico before it's too late. Sign our petition at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/tell-us-fish-and-wildlife-service-release-mexican-wolves-into-new-mexico-before-its-too-late/

Thanks, Anonymous, for alerting our readers to this opportunity to weigh in. Now, Dear Readers, please do!

Another blow to a stable wild populations of Mexican wolves

2011-12-16T08:40:00.004-07:00

This sad news from yesterday: Environmentalists troubled by shooting death of female Mexican wolf in southwestern New Mexico. Turns out this lonely female wolf started hanging around houses, attempting to get close to other canids after a long solo year. And who can blame her, really? Wolves are intensely social and she was prime breeding age. Anyway, the feds were called in and shot her to death. It's a crying shame.

The usual suspects blame the wolf and try to portray her as a child-eater, again. In the comments of the above story, notorious wolf hater Laura Bryant Schneburger has this to say:

Two babies playing in the yard while mom unloads groceried, she comes out wolf is in yard with babies. F1105 nearly gets elderly woman bucked off while working heifers, f1105 stays at house and breeds with dog that is just her past year.

We personally love the one about the elderly woman "nearly" getting bucked off- like she somehow did it on purpose so she could eat the old lady. (Why not blame the horse?) These are the folks with the bus shelters, remember. They have an agenda to make wolves seem as menacing as possible.

We have no idea what F1105 was doing and maybe we would have felt threatened, too. Would we have called for her death? No. And the greater issue is that the ongoing hysteria and resistance to a biologically-sound recovery program and recent opposition to new releases isn't making things better for the project. Unless the project can get new wolves on the ground to form healthy packs in the wild, we're going to see a lot more unhappy endings.

It's creepy and wrong how much these guys like their job.

2011-12-15T10:47:00.002-07:00

Probably most folks have already seen this post over at The Wildlife News. The photo is of a government plane marked with pawprints to indicate aerial wolf kills. There are really no words to describe how angry and sad this makes us. Who are these people? Have they no shame? No respect for life? It's sick and it's a sickness.

Reminds us of that Ed Abbey quote: "Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsmen grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live one."

More about the story behind those photos in the LA Times.

Up against it: Funding the resistance

2011-12-12T15:57:00.003-07:00

(Via)

It's that time of year where you are being asked for your checkbooks every time you turn around, whether it is families in need or families in "want." To boot, every NGO sends out year end appeals for funds, the tax benefits of which are minimal unless your checks are maximal. But we good people of the world know that these groups need our support to keep doing what they are doing.

So here's one near and dear to our hearts: The Sierra Club Borderlands Campaign. If the border infrastructure ain't a symbol of what's wrong with this country, we're not sure what is. It's the habitat fragmentation of demarcated landscapes writ large. It's short-sighted posturing at the expense of the environment like few things are. The Sierra Club's Borderlands Campaign is the ONLY staff person of any environmental organization in the country working full-time on border issues. Isn't that amazing?

Please support this campaign by getting in touch with dan.millis@sierraclub.org or sending a check to 738 N. 5th Ave, Suite 214, Tucson AZ 85705 made payable to "The Sierra Club Foundation" with "Borderlands Program" written in the subject line.

Obama No!

2011-12-09T14:20:00.002-07:00

We admit we were wrong about President Obama at the outset of his candidacy. We were speechlessly happy. We were stoked.

And we were quickly disappointed. Again. And again. [The list is lengthy and we'll spare you the repetition.]

So when Mrs. Obama's little holiday card/campaign fundraiser came in the mail today, it was all we could do not to barf. Not only will we not be giving money this year, Michelle, we won't be giving your dearest Barack our vote next November either.

Seriously, with announcements like these, you're asking us to donate?

Uh-uh. We'll be sending our year-end donations to groups that fight back against the Obama Administration. It's a sad fact that they have to.

Yes, it makes a sound, and we hear it

2011-11-28T09:51:00.002-07:00

The documentary, "If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front" is not just a compelling tale of environmental activists frustrated by traditional methods to thwart (usually unsuccessfully) the destruction of the living planet, but also an exposé of the ratcheted up government response to what was really just property damage. (See: "Eco-terrorism.")

There are two kinds of brutality shown in the film. The first, short clips of oil spills, smokestacks, logging, slaughterhouses and mountain top removal mining. The second, law enforcement's excessive force against protestors, including direct application of pepper spray in the eyes of non-violent resisters, billy-club beatings, etc. Both of these are hard to watch.

A third kind of violence was depicted: that of black block protestors smashing store windows at the "Battle in Seattle," of unoccupied buildings burning, and similar actions. Even a sensitive viewer can watch these without visceral empathy, compassion, or despair. And for us, that's the difference. One thing causes economic pain; the other true, physical suffering. The slaughter of a whale, or a wolf, or a mountain is considered a legitimate transaction; an attempt to harm a corporation's bottom line is a federal crime. It's a fucked up world.

And speaking of suffering, Daniel McGowan is [one of many environmental activists] still in prison. He is the tree that they tried to chop down; let us be the forest that continues to resist.

We're with Tim DeChristopher on this, too

2011-11-17T10:39:00.003-07:00

Via Grist.

It goes without saying that politics is a dirty system. It's so dirty that I believe there are only three reasonable approaches to politics: apathy/despair, overthrowing the system, or playing dirty to win...

[T]his is actually about the third option, playing dirty, and it's intended for those of you who intend to vote next year. I know lots of smart, engaged people who don't participate in politics because they don't want to play dirty. I understand their position as a sensible one. What I don't understand is the large percentage of liberals who avidly engage with the political system but refuse to win.

His analysis is smart and coherent, and he takes on the "What are you going to do, vote for someone worse than Obama?" argument that we hear so much.

For the record, we're not going to vote for someone worse than Obama. We're not going to vote at all, unless there is a huge shift in the candidate pool. Obama is a spineless mess of a President, not the President we hoped to elect by donating large-for-us sums of money to his campaign. Not the President we hoped would select a reasonable person to run the Department of Interior instead of Cowboy Ken Salazar and his Posse of Oil & Gasbags. Not the President who makes hard decisions instead of punting them (e.g. Keystone Pipeline).

We had such high hopes.

Thank you, Tim DeChristopher. You've got our vote.

Ooohh, Take the money and run.

2011-11-16T10:54:00.003-07:00

Gentle readers,

A bit of good news: A legislative fix to endorse, promote, and be optimistic about!

Voluntary Grazing Permit Retirement Legislation Introduced in Congress

Bill would Provide Cash Option for Grazing Permittee

Conservationists hailed the introduction of the Rural Economic Vitalization Act (H.R. 3432) in Congress today, a bill that would allow federal grazing permittees to voluntarily relinquish their grazing permits back to the managing federal agency in exchange for compensation paid by a third party. The bill was introduced by Representative Adam Smith (D-WA-9th) and six original cosponsors.

"When enacted, this legislation will help resolve endless conflict on public lands, while providing ranchers with opportunities to restructure their operations, start new businesses, or retire with security," said Mike Hudak, author of Western Turf Wars: The Politics of Public Lands Ranching and leader of the Sierra Club Grazing Team.

Domestic livestock grazing is the most pervasive and damaging use of federal public lands. On public land across the West, millions of non-native livestock remove and trample vegetation, damage soil, spread invasive weeds, despoil water, deprive native wildlife of forage and shelter, accelerate desertification and even contribute to global warming.

Unfortunately, antiquated federal law generally prohibits closing grazing allotments to benefit fish, wildlife and watersheds. The Rural Economic Vitalization Act would authorize federal agencies to permanently retire grazing permits if requested by ranchers.

"Grazing permit retirement has been implemented in a few places around the West with marked success, but there is much greater need-and demand from ranchers-to retire grazing permits," said Mark Salvo of WildEarth Guardians.
One landscape that has benefited from grazing permit retirement is the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem where grazing allotments have been closed to reduce conflicts with wolves, grizzly bears and bighorn sheep, and to expand winter range for bison outside Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone bison, the last remaining genetically pure wild herd in the U.S., are subject to intensive management and control based on the irrational fear that they will transmit disease to domestic livestock.

"Bison are hazed, captured, shot and slaughtered to protect grazing interests on public land in Yellowstone country," said Josh Osher of the Buffalo Field Campaign. "REVA is the tool we need to finally, permanently address these conflicts."

In addition to being the source of immeasurable environmental harm, the federal grazing program is a fiscal boondoggle for federal taxpayers. The Government Accountability Office reported that the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service annually spend $132.5 million on grazing management, but collect only $17.5 million in grazing fees for a net loss to taxpayers of $115 million.

"We want to save public lands and do our part to solve the deficit," said Brian Ertz of Western Watersheds Project. "We just need Congressional approval to buy out willing ranchers and retire their grazing permits."

Grazing permit retirement is a voluntary, non-regulatory, market-based solution to public lands grazing conflicts. Permittees determine if and when they want to retire their grazing permits. Permittees and third parties separately agree how much a permittee will be paid for relinquishing their permit. And federal agencies facilitate the transaction by immediately retiring grazing permits received from a permittee. The Rural Economic Vitalization Act caps the total number of grazing permits that may be retired each year at 100.

"This is a win-win-win for ranchers, the environment, and taxpayers," said Rose Chilcoat of Great Old Broads for Wilderness. "Let's pass this bill so that we can finally take some common sense steps to ensure healthy public lands.

See also the press release from the office of Rep. Adam Smith.

THANKS TO ALL WHO MADE THIS HAPPEN! Let's get this puppy passed!

¡Viva Mexico! ¡Que vivan los lobos!

2011-10-21T08:16:00.004-06:00

¡Muy bien, Mexico, y felicidades!

A consortium of Mexican conservation groups released Mexican wolves into the wilds of Sonoran last week. This was one of the primary goals of Mexico's President during his tenure. Mission accomplished! Hurray!

Mexican authorities released five Mexican wolves in the San Luis Mountains in Sonora, Mexico, on Oct. 12, 2011, approximately 80 miles south of Douglas, Ariz.

Mexico’s desire to release wolves in Sonora as part of its recovery effort has been known for the past two years, although the exact timetable for release was unknown. (Via)

This really is awesome news, especially with such mixed success in the U.S. recovery effort.

So, Suck it, Arizona Game and Fish Department. Try as you might, MEXICO IS A SOVEREIGN NATION! Ha! We're really glad that acts of intentional sabotage from a certain retiring Anti- Environmental Species Conspirator didn't stop this conservation success.

(More inspiring photos of the release can be found here.)

Acting to Endanger Species

2011-10-06T10:13:00.005-06:00

Remember this "groundbreaking" settlement deal that Center for Biological Diversity and WildEarth Guardians cut with the feds last summer? The one in which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to provide timely and/or date certain listing decisions?

Question: How's that working out?

Answer: The agency has been issuing a slew of findings, right on time. However, so far, the decisions are mostly to deny species' protection under the ESA. Including the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl, the Mohave ground squirrel, the Northern leopard frog-- all clear cases of species tanking in the US due to loss of habitat-- and yet, USFWS inexplicably finds ways to keep them off the list.

So, MORE QUESTIONS: can these determinations be litigated as Section 4 merits challenges? Can other organizations bring litigation to challenge these determinations? Is there anything in the agreements precluding litigation by CBD or WEG about the determinations for any time frame?

Score 2.5 million acres for the good guys

2011-09-30T14:54:00.004-06:00

In what is just the beginning of litigation in one of the largest environmental cases ever filed, an Idaho judge just kicked some cowboy ass, ruling against the BLM on 2.5 million acres of sage-grouse habitat. Oh yes he did.

The federal court ruled that resource management plans in Wyoming and Idaho failed to comply with legal obligations to adequately consider negative environmental impacts to wildlife and other environmental values that are affected by livestock grazing and oil and gas development. The two RMPs considered were just a subset of the larger case affecting 30 million acres, and its unclear where the ruling will go from here. This is just the first round, but it's a KO.

See that sage-grouse swagger? We're guessing that Western Watersheds Project and Advocates for the West, the two prevailing plaintiffs, have got a little of that today, too.

More here and here.

Cowboy Ken hands it over to Wyoming

2011-09-23T10:06:00.003-06:00

Wyoming wolf-haters have a friend in Cowboy Ken Salazar, that much is clear. This editorial from the NY Times spells out exactly how little regard the Secretary of the Interior has for imperiled species.

Wyoming got nearly everything it wanted. The federal Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the status of endangered species, got almost nothing. And wolves will lose out entirely. The state is obliged to keep only 100 of its 340 wolves alive, including 10 breeding pairs.

The American public gets almost nothing too, except the opportunity to (once again) thank the livestock industry for depriving us of intact, resilient, and diverse ecosystems.

Moo.

A thousand (cuss) words

2011-08-23T11:01:00.004-06:00

Via this fun little post on www.mexicanwolves.org

Tea Party Rockstar or Crazy person? You decide.

2011-08-22T14:05:00.004-06:00

Dear Reader,

Please keep in mind the following definition as we proceed through our little tale of the postfire politicking on the national forests of Arizona.

se·di·tion [si-dish-uhn] noun
1.incitement of discontent or rebellion against a government.
2.any action, especially in speech or writing, promoting such discontent or rebellion.
3. Archaic. rebellious disorder. (via)

New Mexico congressman Steve Pearce, who we've, uh... portrayed here before, was recently up in Arizona (emphasis added to ensure reader awareness of the geographic mismatch between where his business actually is and where he's just getting into others' business), explaining - nay, urging- counties to take back control of all the land within their boundaries, even land considered to be in the possession of the federal government. In this case, he meant the National Forest.

Pearce, speaking at a Town Hall in Eagar with Rep. Paul Gosar (AZ1), recommended several tactics for the retaking of America....Pearce talked about three counties in the U. S. in which local officials are taking control.

Otero County, NM, after seeing the results of handling of the Wallow Fire, is not waiting for the government to clean up its forests. The county commissioners have told the U.S. Forest Service they will clean it themselves, and have issued requests for proposals (RFQ) for loggers to come in and start thinning around towns.

The County Sheriff, he said, is backing up the commissioners, and has threatened to arrest any Forest Service personnel that try to interfere. They expect to start cutting as early as Sept. 17.

Apprently, Pearce used this and several other frightening examples to demonstrate how the road closures following the Wallow Fire are "illegal" and urging citizens (emphasis on U.S. citizens, we're sure) to go back into closed areas and take back their land.

Fucking genius idea, Boss.

Seriously, have you seen the employment stats on Apache County, where he made his little stand? Government employment tops the list, with USDA Forest Service in the top five major employers. Or what about the literacy rates? Apache County weighs in with a "low literacy" rate of 41 percent. Sixteen percent of adults don't have high school diplomas. Over a third live in poverty.

Given these depressing statistics, we're pretty sure that:

a) Apache County isn't quite ready to run itself.
b) Unless the county wins the lottery, it's not likely to be able to provide the services that the federal government is now supporting.
c) Where would all the jobs go? To private logging companies? That's really short-sighted thinking, no? Sure, it would be a hell of a boom time. And in five to ten years there would be no more forest. Duh.

So, we're going with crazy person on this one. If not worse. (See above.)

We Heart the Tar Sands Resisters!

2011-08-20T17:34:00.002-06:00

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts, Bill McKibben, et al, for reminding us today that even if you lose (and you likely will), there are still some people stirred up enough about the future to put their bodies on the line.

The largest act of civil disobedience by environmentalists in decades began outside the White House this morning, as over 70 activists were arrested at the north gates during a protest against the Keystone XL pipeline, which if approved by the administration, would carry 900,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

The activists, who sat down at the gates at 11 a.m. holding large banners reading “Climate change is not in our national interest,” were warned three times by U.S. Park Police to move along, and were handcuffed and removed after they refused. Over 2,000 people have pledged to be arrested outside the White House every day until September 3, in daily installments of 75 to 100 people. Via The Nation

It ain't gonna work. Obama is a complete freaking sell-out. And we're basically doomed. But it's mighty sweet of y'all to try.

It's game over, but we might as well keep playing our final cards. What more have we got to lose?

Skiers have rights, too. Because recreation and core beliefs are the same thing.

2011-08-19T12:20:00.002-06:00

We just read this poignant piece by Mary Sojourner regarding the Snow Bowl effluent snow-making on San Francisco Peaks. She writes about going to the resistance camp on the mountain

A mile or so of the road is reduced to one lane because the ski resort is dynamiting and gouging a trench in which they plan to lay pipes in which treated wastewater will be carried to make fake snow. Thousands of Native Americans, their supporters and environmentalists have battled the Snowbowl’s plan for at least ten years — in the courts, on the streets, in the parking lot of the resort, in front of Flagstaff’s local newspaper office, on-line and, most recently, by locking themselves down to the equipment that is now lacerating the face of the mountain.

Fucking capitalism. Once again.

Friends don't let friends ski the Snow Bowl.

Book review: A World Made by Hand

2011-08-18T19:23:00.005-06:00

A near-future fiction novel by James Howard Kunstler. And optimistic as hell.

The basic premise of the book is that America has gone down the tubes, sometime shortly after what seems like now, with nuclear attacks in D.C. and L.A., and everyone in between scrambling for what's left of law and order, wheat, and anti-biotics. There is a lot of death and melancholic looking back, but there is also still small scale agriculture, some trade, new communities and hierarchies and anarchies, and there are still some bullets. Apparently.

What most struck us were the descriptions of the ecosystems rebounding, with fish sizes and populations returning to pre-1900s levels, and of wolves interbreeding with coyotes and making their way back as predators. Now that is something to look forward to! No bureaucrats with enough power to doom them and not enough bullets to finish the job...

Yes, it's actually quite optimistic from a non-human perspective, especially because the humans have apparently been impacted reproductively and aren't making as many kids as they used to. Which means that even the rebuilding of some of the social structures and other markers of "civilization," one is left without the impression that it will be an instant replay of our time.

It's kinder than The Road and Oryx and Crake, while still being brutally honest about the future without fossil fuels, grocery stores, and clear lines of top-down power.

So, a quick read with a pro-collapse message, without being too maudlin about the folks who don't make it through the "hard times." And end of summer read.

We welcome your comments.

Screwing Mexican wolves: Pearce's grand plan

2011-07-29T13:03:00.003-06:00

Representative Steve Pearce (R-NM) intends to introduce a rider on the current Interior Appropriations Bill that would defund the Mexican gray wolf recovery program. What an ass! This, despite evidence that the majority of voters in New Mexico support wolf recovery!

The program, which has limped along despite major setbacks in the form of anti-wolf policy and livestock-industry directives, has recently been doing pretty well for itself. The wolves themselves are doing swimmingly, despite major fires in their home ranges and a lack of new releases of potential mates in the recovery area.

This is the most endangered mammal in the United States. Defunding their recovery program will doom them to extinction.

Please go to this website and take action. This will be heard on the House floor as early as tomorrow (July 30) and Congress needs to hear from all of us.

--
It's true, there are lots of crappy riders.

The sweetheart deal for the sheep industry, introduced by Idaho's Mike Simpson, is also ridiculously egregious, especially in a Congress that isn't supposed to allow for earmarks. (Repubs, always there to be hypocrites...)

We Heart Bidder 70

2011-07-27T15:55:00.006-06:00

In what is surely one of the better speeches of 2011, Tim DeChristopher used his pre-sentencing speech yesterday to deliver an eloquent paean to justice, truth, and defense of Earth. The full text can be found here, but here are some highlights:

The rule of law is dependent upon a government that is willing to abide by the law. Disrespect for the rule of law begins when the government believes itself and its corporate sponsors to be above the law.
...
The reality is not that I lack respect for the law; it’s that I have greater respect for justice. Where there is a conflict between the law and the higher moral code that we all share, my loyalty is to that higher moral code.
...
The majority of the public is exploited by the status quo far more than they are benefited by it. The young are the most obvious group who is exploited and condemned to an ugly future by letting the fossil fuel industry call the shots.
...
The power of the Justice Department is based on its ability to take things away from people. The more that people feel that they have nothing to lose, the more that power begins to shrivel.
...
The people who are committed to fighting for a livable future will not be discouraged or intimidated by anything that happens here today. And neither will I. I will continue to confront the system that threatens our future. Given the destruction of our democratic institutions that once gave citizens access to power, my future will likely involve civil disobedience. Nothing that happens here today will change that. I don’t mean that in any sort of disrespectful way at all, but you don’t have that authority. You have authority over my life, but not my principles. Those are mine alone.
...
I’m not saying any of this to ask you for mercy, but to ask you to join me.
...
At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like. In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like. With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow. The choice you are making today is what side are you on.

It is clear that the Court was on the wrong side, like the BLM is on the wrong side, like the Department of Interior is on the wrong side. It's systemic, and it's not going to change until we stop participating.

People like us, well, sure, we go to public meetings and we speak up even when no one in the audience agrees with us. We call our Congresspeople to thank or spank them when necessary. We support myriad conservation groups and ride our bikes. We write our snarky little blog posts and wear political T-shirts. But have we ever actually put our bodies in front of the bulldozers or our bidding paddles in the air at a corrupt auction?

No.

And it's clearly not enough.

The Good, the Bad, and the Fugly

2011-07-25T16:09:00.006-06:00

The Good: Once again, Congressman Grijalva tells it like it is.

His honest comments about future generations, the environment, and the Repugnanticans pandering to economic interests is like a light in the darkness that is Congress these days. In the speech linked above, he mostly focuses on the Grand Canyon uranium mining rider as a specific example (and it's a good one), but he also provides a general list of the ridiculous Appropriations amendments that the GOP has tacked on.

The Bad: what he said. And more.

The Fugly: Representative Steve Pearce (NM). The guy is a complete dumbass. His rider defunds the Mexican gray wolf recovery based on the shaky claims:

In 1998 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), acting under authority granted to them by the Endangered Species Act, began implementing a plan to reintroduce Mexican Gray Wolves in southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona. The goal of the program was to establish a population of 100 wolves by 2006. After thirteen years, the reintroduction program is clearly failing with only 50 wolves reintroduced into the wild. Wolf populations are still struggling significantly, and the USFWS has been unable to foster significant growth among the population. It is irresponsible to continue spending money on programs that continue to underperform, and this is one of them.

What Pearce fails to admit is that the program has worked- it's saved a unique, amazing, and magnificent species from extinction.

Sure, it could be better. Killing and removing wolves for being wolves hasn't helped. And who does this, you ask? Well, none other than the captured agency, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, who have "removed" (lethally or permanently) approximately 60 wolves from the wild for eating cows. Cows that are displacing the native prey species, mind you. Cows whose owners are paying $1.35 a month per cow to eat ~1000 lbs of wildflowers, crap in the creek, and cause soil erosion. Such a deal!

So, Mr. Pearce, while you hold up the budget reconciliation project with your nonsense about programs losing money, we hold our noses at the stinking mess your cowboy buddies have made of our springs, seeps, and rivers, all the while losing MILLIONS EACH YEAR of taxpayer dollars.

Talk about an underperforming program!

Trap Free New Mexico!

2011-07-19T12:18:00.003-06:00

This is a new website for an organization that seeks to end private trapping on public lands of New Mexico. Rather than repeat their content here, we urge you to visit their site, poke around, and sign the petition.

(Do you ever just feel like screaming: "It's 2011! It's 2011! COME ON, PEOPLE!")

Arizona Maim and Squish Department persists in cruel and unusual entertainment

2011-07-14T17:12:00.004-06:00

Sick. We follow Arizona Game and Fish Department on Facebook, but today they posted this announcement:

We're looking for some help for this upcoming camp. We need a few folks that can call in coyotes for this youth varmint hunting camp. If you can call, contact the folks at Youth Outdoors Unlimited, they do great stuff for passing on the hunting tradition.

The hunting tradition, indeed. That tradition of wantonly killing predators. That tradition of calling native wildlife "varmints" because they don't serve a (direct) purpose for humans, i.e. they can't be eaten or made into coats.

We suggest you do contact the folks at Youth Outdoors Unlimited, and their friends Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Arizona Game and Fish Department, and tell them all about how cruel and disgusting you find their traditions.

youthoutdoorsunlimited@gmail.com
(602)540-8004

That is, after you're done being sick to your stomach.

The pot calling the kettle black

2011-07-13T14:00:00.002-06:00

We've been hearing a lot of hemming and hawing about how the Obama Administration has let us all down, and we've been hemming and hawing ourselves. Upon further reflection, however, is it really any different than what most enviro groups do? Seriously, folks. We ought to take a good hard look in the mirror before we insist that Obama grow a spine.

For example, we dutifully pay membership fees (similar to voting) to organizations that are supposed to represent our interests. Oh, say: wolves. They pledge to recover wolves, restore wolves, keep wolves around for future generations... yada yada yada. And yet, when it comes to speaking out about the public land use that most endangers wolves (and many, many other species)?

Completely fucking silent.

Salazar must go! An open letter to President Obama.

2011-07-08T10:41:00.004-06:00

Dear President Obama,

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar sucks.

We weren't particularly impressed with this appointment when it happened, given the man's background and the fact that you passed over the fantastic Representative Raúl Grijalva. We were mad, and unlike some conservation groups, saw the light about Salazar's dimness immediately.

And he's basically proved us right. He represents the livestock industry and has spent his non-fossil-fuel-disaster-making tenure basically fulfilling their wishlist: He failed to extend ESA protections to prairie dogs. He failed to protect sage-grouse. He delisted the Northern Rockies gray wolves and then, when they were relisted by the courts, colluded with rancher/politicians to legislate the ESA away.

And now, now he has colluded with Wyoming, that great state that represents itself with a bucking bronco on its license plate, to shoot wolves on sight outside of Yellowstone National Park.

How is this "change we can believe in"? It's regressive, pathetic, and contrary to the science you promised to lead with.

We're planning to call in sick on November 6, 2012. Because if you don't fix things pronto, we're pretty sure we will be.

Sincerely,
The Landscapes

What worries Margaret Atwood worries us, too

2011-07-03T19:08:00.003-06:00

(Image)

We just finished reading Oryx and Crake, which Wikipedia summarizes better than we can. It was published in 2003 and so we're a little late to this particular party, but better late than never. Maybe. It definitely requires a stiff upper lip and a pitcher of mojitos.

Basically, it's a post-apocalyptic vision of a world in which bioengineering solutions to famine, over population, and climate change become the future's worst nightmare, a world where spliced artificial species replace all the real ones when corporations profit motives replace good sense. It's a troublesome book because, as the author says, nothing she write about hasn't been invented or begun to be invented.

Particularly troublesome to us was the descriptions of future climate including daily storms, searing heat, cessation of all snowfall, changed locations of major cities, etc. Having just read Elizabeth Kolbert's excellent call-out of President Obama in the New Yorker (full text here), we're freshly convinced we're doomed in this department.

Obama knows—and, indeed, has stated as much—that if we continue along our present path we’ll guarantee our children a much more dangerous future. Taking the steps that would reduce the risks of climate change is not going to be politically popular, which is why it is the President’s obligation to press for them. It may be beyond our power to control the climate, but we can determine it. This is precisely what we’re doing right now, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

President Obama is failing us, and failing future generations (and present non-human ones) by acting like the unusual weather patterns this summer are merely an Act of God and failing to act like the leader of a country that needs to get its head out of its ass.

We'd rather not end up like Atwood's Snowman or any of the other humans in her novel. This isn't a joke. This isn't researchers looking for grant money. This is a possible future, an ugly, awful, painful future.

Wallow Fire update: All the other critters, too.

2011-06-28T14:43:00.003-06:00

(Image source and MSO factsheet.)

We've mostly focused on the effects of the Wallow Fire on Mexican wolves because, well, these wolves are pretty well screwed six ways from Sunday and, as a result, are the most imperiled mammals in North America. (See wolves and livestock, wolves and jackasses, wolves and politicians, etc.) But, obvs, as much as we like wolves, we're really enamored with the entire ecosystem, from the nondescript sedges to the fantastic pines. Wolves serve as proxy for an intact landscape.

So, sadly, while it appears that Mexican wolves have more or less made it through the Wallow Fire, there's also this:

The flames spared three packs of endangered Mexican gray wolves but likely killed at least some threatened Mexican spotted owls as it roared through more than a half-million acres of a pristine forest on the New Mexico border.

Though some spots were untouched or had only undergrowth burn, the effect of the human-caused Wallow fire will last for decades because it burned so hot in many areas that it completely denuded the landscape, forest specialists said. (Via)

Surviving the fire isn't enough. It's going to be a long road to ecosystem recovery, including sufficient vegetation and prey base for higher-order taxa. It remains to be seen whether the lands still have enough inherent resilience to make a comeback, especially in light of climate disruption, ongoing drought, invasive species, and ongoing demands for extractive uses.

Fish and Wildlife is looking to see if prey for the wolves and owls will return quickly enough to let the animals stay in their regular areas.

The burned forest supports more than a dozen other endangered or threatened species, including snails, frogs and fish. Dozens of other species live in the forest that aren’t rare, including bear, deer, antelope and a herd of elk that, at about 6,000, is among the state’s biggest.

Stay tuned. The fire may be 89 percent contained, but it will be affecting the landscape for decades to come.

BTW, that flame retardant? No one really knows what effect that will have either.

Those who cannot learn from history....

2011-06-24T17:47:00.001-06:00

Image source.

Oh brother. On this recent news story from the White Mountain Independent about the Wallow Fire, our eyes got stuck on this little tidbit:

Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) Team members continue working in the fire area evaluating soil and vegetation impacts from the fire and formulating plans to mitigate future damage. Plans are underway to obtain large quantities of straw and grass seed and to spread it over the most significantly damaged Forest Service lands prior to the monsoon season.

Who wants to bet that grass seed is native species?

Not us.

It kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it? Really. With non-native species like Lehmann's lovegrass fueling the fires on the Coronado National Forest, non-native cheatgrass having been responsible for the Murphy Complex fire, and non-native buffelgrass being the primary fuel for fires in the Sonoran Desert, one wonders what the hell the agency is thinking. That it will be different this time?

It's depressing that the agencies don't see the tail they keep chasing. What looks like soil stabilization this year looks like cow feed next year and looks like a habitat-destroying nutrient-sucking highly-flammable pest for decades after that.

The stupidest thing we've read all day.

2011-06-16T14:16:00.005-06:00

We've been reading lots of media coverage about the Wallow Fire, for obvious reasons. We've been watching the back and forth about the cause of the fire and are frankly glad that the racists haven't reared their ugly heads to offer explanations regarding the Wallow Fire yet. (But god help us if the folks they are investigating aren't White.) And we've been patient, reporting only on the fire impacts to Mexican wolves and refraining from any finger pointing here.

But the kid gloves are coming off right now: Ranchers, shut the hell up already.

An eastern Arizona rancher blames the U.S. Forest Service and environmentalists for the Wallow fire that has burned more than 440,000 acres in the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest and White Mountains....

Rancher Gary Khiene said he knows exactly what caused the disastrous fire: "The special interest groups that have stymied and handcuffed our national Forest Service and invaded the national Forest Service with their own personnel to keep them from allowing livestock to be raised on our national forests and the logging the same way."

(Via KTAR.com) This barely literate explanation defies logic. For one, every time we've been over on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, we've been shocked by the levels of livestock grazing- not exactly a cow free zone. [Ed.: Also, if any special interest groups are handcuffing the Forest Service, we'd love to see the photos. That's sure juicy.]

In fact, actual experts had this to say about the fires:

Others, like William Wallace Covington, a forestry expert at Northern Arizona University, countered that the leading factor was the grazing of forest grass for generations. The government’s longstanding practice of quickly extinguishing forest fires was also seen as adding to the thick clusters of highly combustible trees.

Via the NY Times. And, so, maybe, just maybe, enviros aren't to blame, though you can't blame the ranchers for giving it a good old non-college try. Especially in light of the evidence (PDF) that grazing has completely changed the ecology of the southwest pine forests. Wouldn't want anyone looking too closely at that, now would we, Cowboy?

Some good news about wolves and the Wallow Fire

2011-06-13T10:32:00.004-06:00

What a relief! This USFWS report on the status of Mexican wolves in the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area bears some good news (paraphrased) about the fire impacts in critical denning areas:

As of June 9, 2011 the Wallow Fire has burned over three wolf pack dens:

The fire burned through the Rim Pack den area on Friday June 3rd, and burned with a high intensity in the immediate area of the den. The Rim Pack adults were located in the den area on the 6-8-11 wolf telemetry flight.

The fire moved through the Bluestem Pack den area on Friday June 3rd, and was spotty and burned with a low intensity in the immediate area of the den. Both adults were located in the den area on the 6-8-11 wolf telemetry flight.

The fire moved through the Hawk's Nest Pack area on Saturday, June 4th and was spotty and burned with a low intensity in the immediate area of the den. Ground tracking conducted in the area on June 5th indicated that the adults remained in the area following the fire. Previous efforts documented a minimum of 5 pups with this pack.

The adults hanging out post-fire in the den area likely indicates the pups survived the fire! Hurrah! (See the link for a detailed account and more info about denning packs and the fire trajectory.)

The Wallow Fire rages on, however, so stay tuned. Fire impacts on the prey base for these wolf families is going to also affect their survival.

Fire evacuations in the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area

2011-06-03T10:36:00.004-06:00

(Bluestem uncollared wolves - Mexican Wolf Interagency Field Team)

The Wallow Fire in eastern Arizona is blazing right through the habitat of Mexican wolves. As headlines focus on mandatory evacuations and the necessary abandonment of towns for human safety, we haven't seen one news article that has mentioned the serious threats this fire poses to the most imperiled mammal in North America. (SEE UPDATE, BELOW)

While we've certainly got sympathy for our fellow humans who might lose their houses in this blaze, we can't help but note the enormity of this stochastic event on wolves already teetering on the brink of extinction. Three packs (Rim, Bluestem, and Hawk's Nest) are in harm's way, and any young pups in dens are surely doomed even if the parents make it to safe ground. Given the low numbers of wolves in the wild to begin with, any further losses creates a scary scenario.

We could rant and rave about the land management practices that create this situation, everything from climate alteration to changed fuel availability. But in light of the potential outcomes for Mexican wolves here, we don't much feel like it. Some other day, when the rains come and the smoke clears. Right now, we'll just hope against hope that those dens are deep, the fire leaps the canyons, and the critters and their ancient wisdom know what to do to survive.

UPDATE 6/6: There are now a couple of news stories about the impacts of the Wallow Fire on wolves.
Here and here.
Arizona Game and Fish Department has also issued a statement. Whenever AGFD tells us everything is hunky-dory, we get a sinking feeling in our stomachs.

Talking out both sides of their mouths

2011-05-31T15:53:00.003-06:00

An interesting week in Washington.

On one hand, the Equal Access to Justice Act is bad (because it rectifies environmental injustices) and on the other, it's good and should apply more widely (to ranchers). Uh... what?

The first bill, a.k.a. "Destroy the Land by Defunding its Advocates Act" would limit the number of payments any organization can receive under EAJA, because the elected representatives have been led to believe (falsely) that enviro groups are getting rich- Rich! I tell ya!- on attorneys fees granted to citizens when we have to sue the government to make them comply with the law. That's a real headscratcher, we know. But people like Karen Budd-Falen have been making wild and unsupported claims about the pirate booty conservation organizations bring in, and apparently, she's gotten the ear of some congressional representatives. She's also gotten the attention of the Government Accountability Office, who will soon be refuting her claims with actual data. Stay tuned.

The second bill, a.k.a. "We'll Always Find A Way for Rancher Welfare Act" is a special little porky bill designed especially to pay two ranchers in Idaho who had to fight the BLM for their water rights. Because the water rights case was heard in state court, the EAJA didn't apply to them. Luckily, they've got friends in high places who will write special little bills to ensure they get their attorneys fees covered. Must be nice.

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P.S.: If any of you rich environmental attorneys want to buy us a congressperson, do feel free to contact us via email. We'd like to spruce up our legislative wardrobe.

A not-so-recent but postive development in the Macho B case

2011-05-30T12:28:00.003-06:00

We were quite relieved that earlier this month the Feds dropped the charges against Janay Brun for her role in the Macho B fiasco.

Criminal charges were dismissed Thursday against whistle-blower Janay Brun in return for her admission that she was involved in an attempt to capture jaguar Macho B without "authorization or permission."

The dismissal of misdemeanor charges alleging violations of the federal Endangered Species Act ends the two-year criminal investigation of Macho B's capture, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office said. No charges are planned against anyone else, said spokesman Robbie Sherwood.

Via the intrepid Tony Davis at the AZ Daily Star.

We always felt like Janay was improperly vilified as a way of letting Arizona's Maim and Squish department off the hook, especially compared to the handslap that the lying Emil McCain got. It still makes our bloods boil to think of that guy, especially his imploring, "can't we all just move along" op-ed in the weeks after Macho B was killed. Ick.

Janay: good luck to you. And thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for exposing the web of lies that led to the capture and death of our much-admired jaguar. It helps us all to know what the agencies were enabling.

The shadows of Montana Peak will never be the same.

There is no "Tragedy of the Commons"

2011-05-03T16:23:00.002-06:00

"Tragedy of the Commons" a la Garrett Hardin, is a myth. What we've got is the "Tragedy of Capitalism," which creates the exploitation that Hardin was otherwise spot-on about. People have managed common resources in sustainable ways throughout our history; non-human communities have similarly figured out ways to balance population with resource availability. But the Empire demands exploitation. Let's all get mad at Empire, shall we?

If everyone got mad at once....

[That Wiki page actually does a pretty good job summing up what would have been our key points. Good editing, wikiers!]

Senator Tester Screws Wolves: Career-ending Miscalculation

2011-04-11T16:36:00.004-06:00

Not sure who Senator Tester thought was going to re-elect him after his ESA-gutting budget rider, and not sure why the Dems let him go ahead with this strategy, but one thing is certain: If the Senate stands by and lets it happen, we will have failed as a country to have protected both an endangered species and the Endangered Species Act.

Tester, a Democrat who faces a tough reelection battle, raises money from conservationists in Seattle but has allied himself with home state livestock interests eager to reduce growing wolf populations in the Big Sky State.

Psstt... Senator Tester.... you might want to strike those "(206)" numbers from your Rolodex. Might be a little awkward to call them EVER AGAIN.

It's the end of the world as we know it....

2011-04-05T14:10:00.004-06:00

The feds declined to protect the meltwater stonefly yesterday, a move that should surprise no one. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has been handing out "Warranted But Precluded" determinations like candy lately, with nary a meaningful listing, nor critical habitat protection, in sight.

Here's what the stonefly is facing:

In the study, scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Montana, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service illustrate that alpine aquatic insects can be good early warning indicators of climate warming in mountain ecosystems. The glaciers in Glacier National Park are predicted to disappear by 2030 and, as its name infers, the meltwater stonefly (Lednia tumana) prefers to live in the coldest, most sensitive alpine stream habitats directly downstream of disappearing glaciers, permanent snowfields and springs in the park.(VIA)

Hey, and you know who else is dependent on glaciers?

We'll give you a minute.

That's right! Humans! (Ed.: Any member of Earth's biota plus a little Kevin Bacon gaming, we'd have given it to you.) We need glaciers to store freshwater and deliver it seasonally instead of torrentially flooding human communities. Similarly, we need polar ice caps to keep some of Earth's ocean water in solid form, lest it come and flood our coastlines. We also need them to reflect back insolation, keeping the Earth's temperature at a comfortable balance for life as we know it to continue.

But, ya know, higher priorities. Like figuring out how to screw wolves, issue more permits for off-shore drilling, permit the wholesale blading of the desert. Department of Interior has been busy!

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Updated to add: There was also a great NY Times article yesterday about the suite of species affected by climate change. Check it out.

The Crown of No Compromise

2011-03-21T14:51:00.005-06:00

An opinion piece in today's LA Times pulled us out of our long winter's nap of blogging. It discusses the recent settlement between "conservation groups" and the US Fish and Wildlife Service to delist wolves. More about the deal has been written here and here and here.

Long story short: the Big Greens decided it would be better to deal with the devil directly than try to fight the Tester bill. And by "dealing with the devil," we mean allow a political agenda to trump the science and cede an important legal victory.

But back to what the LA Times had to say about the insufficiency of the settlement agreement:

The bigger win, if you can call it that, is that the agreement would stave off any legislation, which would be a terrible precedent for turning the science of the Endangered Species Act into a political football over each species.

EXCEPT (and this is a big except) IT MAY NOT STAVE OFF THE LEGISLATION. The settlement contains no promises, just some whispered intimations that someone will talk to someone and the Tester bill will be pulled. The bets are being hedged on a handshake deal.

But if anyone is surprised by the folks making political calculations, you shouldn't be. The "No Compromise" torch has already been passed, with the runners of the first leg having long since ordered their Starbucks and sped away in their Priuses, talking all the while on their iPhones that ring with the howls of imperiled wolves.

Cowboy Ken rides again- this time, in an ORV

2011-02-22T10:49:00.004-07:00

As our readers must know, we despise Cowboy, er, Secretary Ken Salazar. For many reasons, including this and this and this. And we certainly thought that no photo of the man would make us want to puke as much as the photo in that last link, with his cowboy hat and his bolo tie signifying for all the world that the western public lands land grab would continue under his watch.

Until now.

(Via.)

That's right. Secretary Ken Salazar went riding on an ORV in the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area (also known as the Algodones Dunes) last weekend and thought, "It was fantastic."

Not, "Wow. What a unique geological treasure, the largest dunes in North America, with so many awesome species that are found NOWHERE ELSE ON EARTH!"

Not, "Isn't is great that conservation groups have worked so hard to gain closures and protect Wilderness in this area so that there is plenty of room for Peirson's milk-vetch to persist?"

Nope. Instead,

Sunday, Salazar was talking up off-roading on federal land.

“It’s important that we allow the different kinds of uses,” he said.

Salazar said the off-highway vehicle area is an example of the many ways federal lands are used to create jobs. The dunes draw 1.3 million visitors, he said, calling that “a huge contribution to the local economy.”

The reason for this reassurance? Because people are FREAKING OUT that Obama's "Great Outdoors Initiative" might actually mean something about conservation.

They needn't, not with guys like Ken Salazar and Bob Abbey in charge of vast acreages of public lands.

We Heart Congressman Raul Grijalva

2011-02-17T10:36:00.002-07:00

We're glad there is at least one politician that doesn't make us puke. Thank you, Sir.

Follow the bastards gutting environmental laws:

2011-02-16T12:56:00.002-07:00

Via The Wilderness Society

The U.S. House of Representatives begins debate today on a slew of bad amendments to the government’s 2011 budget (the 2011 continuing resolution).

The CR vote is likely to happen this week and vital environmental programs are on the line.

To monitor debate occurring on the floor, The Wilderness Society has launched a live blogging page where we will be posting updates about environmental amendments here: http://wilderness.org/content/wild-lands-under-attack-budget-2011.

Live blogging that will last throughout the debate on the continuing resolutions.

We promise to try to get out a salient explanation of the worst amendments, but here's one to get you started. Feel free to post additional links in the comments section.

Ocelittle

2011-02-10T14:00:00.005-07:00

(Photo: AGFD)

We've got the good news jitters about the recent ocelot sightings in southern Arizona, and we're not the only ones.

Sergio Avila, a biologist for the conservation group Sky Island Alliance, called this week's ocelot discovery "really good news." Back in November 2009, his group's remote cameras captured images of an ocelot, he said, in a Cochise County location that the group hasn't revealed.

The group has photographed four ocelots in northern Sonora, most recently last month.

"It's really good that somebody else is proving there are ocelots in the region," said Avila. "This proves there is connectivity in the region" - that there's habitat allowing the cats to move around. "This is something to celebrate."

Indeed.

Except. Except for if the Arizona Game and Fish Department decides to get involved in "managing" ocelots by capturing, collaring, and killing them the way it did with Macho B, the last known jaguar in the U.S. Or didn't. Or did.

So here's a tip for people who might have see an ocelot in the wild. Don't call AGFD. Call Sky Island Alliance instead. They'll point you in the right direction, which may or may not be the state or the feds.

Wolf Extinction Legislation Update

2011-01-28T10:25:00.004-07:00

Two terrible bills have been introduced in the House of Representatives.

1. Will exempt all gray wolves (Canis lupus) from protection of the Endangered Species Act.

2. Will exempt the Northern Rockies populations of wolves from the Endangered Species Act.

Let us be clear: the move to "exempt" an endangered species from Endangered Species Act protection is simply the opening salvo in a coordinated attack on the Act itself.

Let us continue to be clear: "Exempting" wolves from ESA protections will surely doom them to local extirpations (Idaho and Montana have their bullets loaded) and extinction (there are mas o menos four dozen Mexican wolves left in the wild).

Tester's reelection strategy is clear: "The first step in expanding state discretion is granting a conservation hunt of gray wolves to restore the full range of tools to manage this species." Sounds a lot like having to kill the wolf to save the wolf, doesn't it?

Or maybe just kill the wolf.

Yeah. We get it.

Call your Senator and ask him/her to maintain the integrity of the ESA, disallow exemptions, and let science determine management.

End of year donations

2010-12-30T14:14:00.004-07:00

It's that time of year when good concerned citizens get out their checkbooks and write a few checks to conservation organizations. We are no exception and though our checks tend to be on the small end (i.e. we don't get invited to too many 'big donor' parties), we like to think that our (by which we mean yours, too) collective action keeps these important organizations solvent. A few of our chosen recipients:

Great Old Broads for Wilderness. You don't have to be great or old or a broad to join them and we consider these folks the charismatic megafauna of the movement. While their commitment to protection and conservation is never in doubt, they ALWAYS look like they are having fun doing it. Bless 'em, and send them a check, too.

Western Watersheds Project. Readers of DL know that we've got profound respect for these folks and their "take no prisoners" approach to public lands ranching. They basically kick ass with a small, committed staff and a smart advisory board. Check out the 2010 summary of successes. Good stuff.

Advocates for the West. Despite the ridiculous claims by Karen Budd-Falen, environmental attorneys are rarely well-paid for the tremendous work they do. Supporting them is a way of acknowledging the need for court victories when it comes to changing the west.

Buffalo Field Campaign. These folks are on the front lines in the battle between native species and the "white man's west." We've got nothing but respect for their efforts and we send them checks and anything we can from their "wish list" every winter. Someday we'll join them in the snow.

We also try to send a few gifts to regional conservation groups working on specific campaigns in the places we live. These are the folks we want to be able to call and kvetch about local issues and it helps to grease the skids with some bucks each year, as well as to show a local commitment. We are sure you have a few of those too.

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As far as the organizations getting a lump of coal this year, well, our Facebook friends know we've got a big bone to pick with Defenders of Wildlife. First, we received six sample greeting cards from them, encouraging us to order our own for the holidays. Then, we received wrapping paper, stickers, and mailing labels from them asking us to join/renew our membership. And then, last week, we received a plastic pen in a bunch of mailing packaging asking us to sign a petition and join/renew. If we joined/renewed at a certain level, we'd get a messenger bag or a thermos. But if we only joined at the $25 level- well, it sure seemed like they had already spent nearly that much on the greeting cards, wrapping paper, postage, pen, and paper they had sent us encouraging us to support them. We support some of Defenders' work, but the membership methods are appalling. For a conservation organization to send unsolicited crap in the mail like this is a real turn off. And it makes us think you don't really need our money.
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Please feel free to suggest additional organizations in the comments section. We're an Equal Opportunity Donor; just spare us the plastic crap.

A living wage

2010-12-30T13:58:00.004-07:00

We were recently discussing conservation salaries with a professionally environmentalist friend of ours. This person is the executive director of a non-profit and was saying how it is important to pay people a "living wage" for their work, a competitive salary to keep the best and brightest in the field.

Well, we've never been the kind of people who are conservationists for money, and our definition of "living wage" has changed a lot as we've seen how few wages people can live on. Besides, "living wage" basically means "middle class" existence in this context, and many environmental problems are actually caused by the middle class. The super rich cause a lot of problems because of how they got super rich, but it was middle class spending that let them float to the top of the pyramid. Rich people cause fewer environmental problems simply because there are less of them. The middle class ambitions of gadgets and big houses and sprawl and swimming pools and SUVs and Victoria's Secret inspire poor countries and poor counties to fall all over themselves (and the environment) to facilitate production and development of these consumer goods, in the hope they will rise up to the middle class themselves. It's a vicious cycle.

But back to ragging on enviros: It seems as though some people basically work as environmentalists to have their cake and eat it too: that is, to work all year on climate change issues and then, when their two weeks of vacation roll around, fly off to some island to snorkel and see the corals before they bleach. Sure, they might buy their carbon offsets in order to feel better about their trip.

And we know how well those work.

We'll take some "Good News" for $500, Alex

2010-12-10T14:19:00.004-07:00

Photo credit: M. Shultz (via)

OK, look, if this is a consequence of global warming, we don't want to hear it. We'd rather just be happy to report that the short-tailed albatross, once profoundly endangered by fashionable hats, is now expanding its range.

Two pairs of the short-tailed albatross, thought to remain only on two Japanese islands, have been found nesting on Kure Atoll and on Midway Atoll, American national wildlife refuges in the Hawaiian Islands.

And not only geographic expansion, but perhaps a social expansion as well:

The birds that were recently found include one male-female pair, with a fertilized egg, and one female-female pair with two eggs. It is still unclear whether the eggs of the same-sex pair are fertilized.

Good for them. If only they could serve openly in the military. (Yeah, we know we said good news. Sorry about that.)

More about the critter here.

Guest post: Wolves in Trouble

2010-12-07T18:48:00.003-07:00

This repost was kindly supplied to DL by Making Owls Cool (Since 1986) after we admired it on that blog. It sums up the issue quite nicely. Thanks, MOCS1986!

Macho B must be rolling in his grave...er...on his taxidermy mount. Who is Macho B you ask? Macho B was the last know jaguar in the United States. In 2009 scientists from AZFGD intentionally captured Macho B in a cruel leg snare. When it took the jaguar a while to adjust to its new radio collar, the AZ Fish and Genius Department mistook this readjustment for distress. AZFGD recaptured him, shipped him to Phoenix and euthanized him.

The event gained some media attention, but AZFGD just let some low-level workers get crucified for it and resumed making terrible, terrible ecological decisions. Now, AZFGD have like minded people in Washington, including that joke of an Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who, for whatever reason, feels it necessary to try to undo decades of conservation efforts and remove gray wolves from the endangered species list. If you grew up in the 1980's and 1990's, you'll remember how there were no wolves in the lower 48 states when we were young and what an amazing success story their recovery has been. Until now.

The Endangered Species Act requires that decisions to de-list species be made in view of scientific evidence. Now congress wants to de-list gray wolves. Congress is full of idiots, not zoologists, ecologists or biologists, so their qualifications to make such a decision are, well, nonexistent. Only their elevated sense of self-importance could explain why they would meddle with wolf conservation...or their transparent desire to gain votes at all costs. Either way, they are not qualified to decide what happens to wolves. Furthermore, allowing congress to determine the fates of native species sets a dangerous precedent and it must be stopped. You can contact the White House, voice your concern, and talk shit on Salazar here.

This is the wording of the congressional legislation:
"Notwithstanding any other provision of law (including regulations), the inclusion of the gray wolf (Canis lupus) (including any gray wolf designated as "non-essential experimental") on any list of endangered species or threatened species under section 4(c) of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 ... shall have no force or effect."
See how it goes around the need for scientific evidence? It doesn't say they're off the list, just that the wolves' position on the list "shall have no force or effect." Evidence of both cowardice and duplicity.

Here in Arizona, the situation for wolves is particularly dire. Mexican wolves, a subspecies of the gray wolf, have only recently been reintroduced in the southwest. Fewer than 50 wolves remain in the wild. Yet, the worthless clowns making decisions over at AZGFD support the delisting of the gray wolf! You can read their convoluted, short, contradictory, shitsmear of an official statement here. It's not even well-written.

So what can we do? The immature, but oh-so-gratifying, thing to do is to go to the AZFGD Facebook page and voice your disgust over their support for delisting wolves. The mature, responsible thing to do is to write your legislators and tell them not to delist wolves or put the power to decide which species deserve protection in the hands of politicians. You can find your congressman or congresswoman here or your senator here.

Lobos of the Southwest (mexicanwolves.org) are the leading champions for the conservation of Mexican wolves and their website has a full toolbox of options to help concerned nature lovers defend our wild canine neighbors. If you sign up for their e-mail list, they really only send emails when urgent action is needed, not whenever the intern is bored like some other organizations. Or you could make a blog post to raise awareness of the imminent threat to wolves throughout the country. Just sayin'...

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We here at DL would simply add that Endangered Species Coordinator Terry Johnson might want to get his head checked. Something ain't right with that man... like he didn't get enough attention as a child and now he's throwing a very public hissy fit about how important he and the AGFD are to wolf "recovery." Maybe the Arizona Cattlegrowers will give him a medal of honor and he can retire to revel in that glory.

Mexican wolf recovery: a classic hegemonic struggle?

2010-11-29T13:03:00.002-07:00

Hegemony is defined as the ascendancy or domination of one power or state over another. It's often political, but there are cultural, religious, and monetary hegemonic forms articulated in theoretical literature. Here in the western United States we have the cultural hegemony of the welfare ranchers: having obtained power through federal hand-outs of Native American land, and maintained power by thus far retaining control of the western land base and the various federal agencies, that power is now being successfully challenged by common ecological sense. And, boy, does it piss those cowboys off!

So, take the case of the Mexican gray wolf: having been exterminated once because of livestock's basic and general incompatibility with the natural elements of the southwest, the species was reintroduced in the largest wilderness area in the lower 48 states, an area that is 96 percent public land and 98 percent unoccupied. The livestock industry has opposed this recovery at every step because it a) threatens their ultimate power over the landscape by being less dominant than the Endangered Species Act, and b) gives them another chance to whine for federal dollars while simultaneously pretending to be rugged individualists. [Ed: we're generally opposed to whining here at DL]

And then, along comes this opinion piece from the Salt Lake City Tribune suggesting that if ranchers can't make peace with the lobo, then the lobo cannot be recovered.

...in the battle between our deep-seated fears and our hopes, the wolves bear the greatest burden. There is no new narrative of coexistence, of respect for all creatures on the land. We seem stuck in the stories of the old days, when wolves were the enemy that must be eliminated.

Until we change that perception, wolves in the Southwest won’t have a prayer.

Yeah, well, you know what? Fuck that. Let's change the perception that ranchers have any say in the matter instead. Let's let the new power- the power of the majority of voters who want wolves back on the landscape (democracy) and the power of ecological common sense (that predators are important- duh!) be the new hegemonic force. People can't make a living with their cows wandering around in wolf country? Then take a buy-out. Seriously. It isn't rocket surgery how this could work. It's just that opinion writers, academics, bloggers, and even some environmental groups can't seem to imagine a cultural revolution. They are stuck in the old narrative, the old power structure, thinking that we need to adapt to that.

No, sir. We do not.

And moreover, we must not. We need to overthrow the old mindset and power relations that have subjugated the Earth and oppressed its inhabitants to the detriment of us all. The cowboy culture of the American West is just one example. There are many, and each one of them spells doom for native species, native habitats, and ultimately, for humans, too.

Dolphins are amazing

2010-11-27T17:25:00.001-07:00

Quote from "River of Empire" by Donald Worster

2010-11-10T14:18:00.004-07:00

Book review forthcoming, but this little gem for now:

If history teaches us anything unequivocally about empires, it is that they sooner or later begin to falter. The illusions on which they are constructed eventually begin to lose their hold over the minds of people. Contradictions begin to mount, legitimacy to crack and flake away. The unanticipated social and ecological consequences of empire become increasingly unmanageable, just as they always have, and Leviathan starts to wobble, clutching more and more frantically to panaceas......

For all its seeming motion toward some grander destiny, nature is mainly a set of cycles, a tireless repetition of old ideas. ... History is a kind of river too, returning over and over to beginnings, completing cycles, if one stands and watches long enough. How long is hard to be precise about; the time required to complete the cycle of empire cannot be predicted with any confidence. But nothing is more certain in the modern West than that the next stage after empire will be decline.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Another Mexican wolf found dead- WTF?

2010-10-28T11:21:00.002-06:00

We're deeply saddened to hear about the loss of yet another dead Mexican gray wolf in New Mexico.

TUCSON, AZ (KOLD) - Another Mexican Gray wolf has been found dead along the Arizona-New Mexico border.

This latest death is a female found earlier this month in Sierra County, New Mexico.

She had been traveling with a male and he hasn't been located.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife says there's no reason yet to think anything has also happened to the male because he has a radio collar that puts off a mortality signal and they haven't received any.

The body of the female has been taken to a lab to figure out what killed her.

Those radio collars are a death sentence for any wolves and their mates who have to wear them. The yahoos clearly have the frequencies, as they have been taking out collared wolves at a steady pace in 2010.

Between the US Fish and Wildlife Service's reluctance to upset the Arizona Game and Fish Department (read: "Arizona Cattlegrowers Henchmen") by releasing captive wolves, and the attrition rate of wolves by poachers, we are looking at the end of Mexican wolves in the wild.

It's a damn shame.

See Howling for Justice for a more impassioned plea. We just don't have it in us today. Today, we're mourning the dying green fires, the fearless elk and deer. We're thinking like a mountain, and the mountain is full of regret for the actions of man.

Ecosystem Services

2010-10-17T15:19:00.004-06:00

As our readers know, we've lately railed against the tendency of environmental groups to compromise, forsaking land and critters in unbalanced bargains and unsustainable strategies. There's plenty of examples here and here and here.

But here's something else we've been thinking about. We think it's a compromise to talk about the environment in economic terms. Ever since Costanza established a going rate for our planet's production of what we need to comfortably live, we've been watching environmental groups fall in line, discussing the value of intact ecosystems in terms of dollars and cents. Whether it's discussing the value of protecting imperiled species because they might someday have medical applications or protecting wetlands for flood control, it's putting a dollar sign on something we have no right to monetize.

Ah, if only we had a land ethic!

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.

Let's continue to draw nearer to a land ethic, and not keep reinforcing the economic servitude of the natural world. Let's not speak of ecosystem services. Let's just speak of ecosystems, and let them be invaluable.

Is the Arizona Game and Fish Department in control of the Mexican gray wolf recovery program?

2010-10-08T15:58:00.006-06:00

Come on, Fish and Wildlife Service, who's your daddy?

It's the Arizona Game and Fish Department, the agency apparently now setting the policy for the wolf recovery program. (And really, they're just a puppet for the cowboys, but let's leave it with the agencies today, shall we?)

First, AGFD mucked around in Mexico and delayed releases in that sovereign nation.

And now, AGFD has screwed up any possibility of improving the genetic fitness of the wild wolf population in 2010, by convincing the feds to hold back on releasing a wolf pack which has been ready to go since summer.

Fish and Wildlife says it decided to step back and assess concerns raised about the program.

The endangered species coordinator for Arizona Game and Fish, Terry Johnson, says there's a need to get more wolves in the wild, but it has to be done in a way to ensure their best chance of success. (Via.)

Psstt.... Dr. Tuggle.... Not listening to Terry Johnson would be a good start. The US Fish and Wildlife agency's "partners" are sabotaging the last chance of recovery for this critically-imperiled species. Time to ditch those bastards.

More here.

Don't want the carrot? Care for some stick?

2010-09-26T16:52:00.004-06:00

We're written before about the innovative deal between Western Watersheds Project, Oregon Natural Desert Association and El Paso Corporation regarding the Ruby pipeline. Basically, the conservation groups get to help administer a $20M fund to buy out voluntary sellers of grazing permits.

Hooo, boy, did that stir the pot! The cattlegrowers freaked out. El Paso balked* but didn't back out of the deal. The conservation groups caught hell for 'selling out'.

Whatever. The fact remains that there is already a few million dollars to compensate willing sellers of grazing permits on millions of acres in the west. How can anyone deny that this could be win-win?

The ranchers. Completely afraid that a fist-full of bills might make some of their ilk decide that it's more economical to take the money and move to Florida than comply with the Endangered Species Act. Except compliance with the ESA on public lands is not optional, and the land management agencies are supposed to be enforcing that. When they don't, groups like Western Watersheds Project step in and strong arm the agencies with the law:

Ertz said Western Watersheds goes to court to enforce the nation's environmental laws.

"If they are saying they want the stick, we're ready to produce that," he said. "We're holding the threat of enforcement of existing laws over their head. We have no stick unless they're breaking the law."

How very radical a notion, to enforce federal law on federal lands. Don't want to comply? Would you like some money instead?

Seriously. Why isn't this a solution?

The last lines of Mr. Barker's Idaho Statesman article from today suggests that the deal overlooks 'culture.' We suppose they mean 'cowboy culture,' but we take offense. Just because ranchers have had a stranglehold on the West for several generations doesn't mean we need to persist in empowering them forever, does it? The West has changed. Drastically. The frontier mentality is no longer appropriate, and the consolidation of land in the hands of a few privileged (either financially or temporally) ranchers is no longer an equitable way to deal with natural resources. Sure, culture matters. [Ed: As did Native American cultures. Ahem.] We're sure slave owners liked their plantation-style houses. But was the preservation of that culture more worthy than a new culture which valued justice and equity for all?

The new culture of the West is being built on the principles of sustainability and ecological integrity. Livestock operations may have a niche on private lands, but the public lands are the last, best vestiges of habitat for wildlife and ecosystem service provision that we've got. Finding a carrot with which to induce ranchers off public lands that they can then invest and co-create new ways of existing in the arid West seems more than fair. Culture matters, but culture changes.
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* UPDATED 9/30: We've had some interest in our characterization of El Paso Corp.'s "balking" at the Ruby deal. To clarify: The deal is on, and to the best of our knowledge, El Paso has not tried to get out of paying the conservation groups. However, in many a news account, El Paso reps have said things like, "We regret..." and they did give an extra $15M to the whining cowboys. From our perspective, it looks like El Paso got more flak than it expected and went a little weak in the knees. Note to El Paso: the whining never stops from that crew, and the grabby hands are always begging for money. It's a traditional lifestyle.

The political economy of international policy

2010-09-21T08:45:00.004-06:00

The New York Times *suggested* we would 'like' this article today, "Developing Nations to Get Clean-Burning Cookstoves." (Also, the ghost title, "A Move to Replace Soot-Spewing Stoves in the Third World.") Thanks, Grey Lady, but no thanks.

And here's why. We don't doubt that stove efficiency will improve the lives of the people they are distributed to.

The World Health Organization says that indoor air pollution caused by such cooking methods is the fourth greatest health risk factor in developing countries, after unclean water and sanitation, unsafe sex and undernourishment. The gathering of fuel is mainly done by women and children, millions of whom are exposed daily to dangers in conflict-torn regions. The need to forage for fuel also keeps millions of children out of school.

To give them an alternative is humane, considerate and important. So far, so good, yes?

Except this is the part we dislike:

The [current] stoves also contribute to global warming as a result of the millions of tons of soot they spew into the atmosphere and the deforestation caused by cutting down trees to fuel them....
Although the toxic smoke from the primitive stoves is one of the leading environmental causes of death and disease, and perhaps the second biggest contributor to global warming, after the industrial use of fossil fuels, it has long been neglected by governments and private aid organizations.

Now, lest you think we're objecting to a strategy that might combat carbon levels, let us ask rhetorically: Why is it so much easier to impose our political will on the brown people?

Don't get us wrong. We're into the benefits for the families involved, at least the temporary benefits:

The idea is how to create a thriving global industry in cookstoves, driven by consumers’ desire to have these products at a price they can afford,” Mr. Detchon said.

“These stoves don’t have a long lifetime,” he said. “To produce low cost and high volume, you’ll have to replace them relatively frequently, perhaps every two, three or five years. You’ll need a supply chain and business model that delivers them, not on a one-time basis, but as a continuing enterprise.”

Oh, great. That's exactly what we need. Another opportunity to export our model of disposable crap propping up an economy. Did anyone consider using the money to teach people how to use solar ovens, plant fast growing regionally-appropriate fuels, or, heck, maybe even ask Americans to stop using the behemoths we've grown so fond of?

Despite the fact that the lifestyles of people in the First World has and will contribute to profound health effects on millions of people, no one has asked us (nor mandated) that we change anything about our behavior.

And thank goodness, because we want to be able to bake two double-sheet cakes in half the time so we can load up the SUV and drive on down to the party with the jumping castle and the BBQ! Because our time is valuable!

And cake is delicious!

And another thing.... re: seat at the table

2010-09-20T19:39:00.002-06:00

Sitting at the table isn't enough (if you are already firmly ensconced there, ahem). You need to provoke change. Endlessly studying, discussing, funding, strategizing, planning, cooperating, etc., etc., ad nauseum doesn't mean a goddamn thing to us. Saving the river- say, THE SAN PEDRO RIVER- would mean something. To us, to the Huachuca water umbel, the loach minnow and spikedace, the jaguar, etc., etc. ad un-nauseum. To real, living breathing things that depend on healthy, functioning ecosystems.*
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*Um, that means all of us, whether you know it or not.

A seat at the table

2010-09-16T16:54:00.004-06:00

We think a lot about collaboration and cooperation... and facilitation and tacit endorsement. Because the conservation movement of late cares a lot about these things, and we care a lot about conservation.

So, here's the thing: When people say things like, "Yes, but by being collaborative, The Nature Conservancy* has earned a seat at the table," we just feel like tearing out our hair. Look, if the Destroyers of Nature ask you to sit at their table, you (the conservation group) are not doing your job! They wouldn't be asking you to sit at their table if you were really a threat to them. In many scenarios, you are actually an asset; by being flattered to be asked to sit at their table, you're lending them some credibility for being concerned with the environment. Don't sit at the fucking table, people, and don't think that it's somehow progress that they are asking. It's progress in the wrong direction: you've lost the fight by being an non-problematic placeholder for all the plants and animals and soils and future generations who will never be heard from.

Don't give in before the fight starts by offering to play nice. Capitalists are cut-throat motherfuckers, and you should be on the side of the cutthroat trout.

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*We're not especially picking on The Nature Conservancy here, mind you. Lots of groups have fallen or are falling into this trap.

Songs by Tim Lengerich, A Voice for the Land

2010-08-31T22:17:00.007-06:00

We're especially fans of "Mother Nature's Face" and "Out there, Anywhere, All the Time," but they are all pretty great, authentic expressions of loving the natural world. A keen observer, a passionate activist.

Hozho.

UPDATED 9/5 TO ADD: We were also very sorry, very sorry to learn last week of Tim's passing. We have been comforted to know that he died in the place that he loved, doing his favorite thing. We should all be so lucky.

We should also all be so fearless, outspoken, creative, exuberant, outraged, and unstoppable in our vocal and active opposition to the destruction of our public lands. Those of you who knew and will miss Tim: do something in his memory to restore the federal lands for wildlife. We let Tim do it for long enough. It's time we all start writing letters to the Cow-anado National Forest, to the Bureau of Livestock and Mining, to the powers that be.

The types of meetings we'd like to attend

2010-08-28T22:02:00.006-06:00

We here at DL try to stay in our nests as much as possible. The world out there is a scary place. We especially can't stand meetings with bureaucrats, though sometimes even we put on a suit a tie to talk to the man about environmental issues. You know, get involved. The problem is, it is usually just so darn depressing. Optimistic enviros, hedging Freddies, and way too many fluorescent lights.

But here's one that came across our desk that we think we'd like to attend: Dam removal meeting. We immediately started thinking of our preferred alternative!

Oh, except... it looks like its less about the dam removal and more about managing sport fishing interests.

Removing the dam will eliminate a major barrier to salmon and steelhead migration on the White Salmon, creating new opportunities to restore wild stocks listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act. That’s a good thing. Unfortunately, it will also mean, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service, the end of summer and winter steelhead stocking in the river, since the feds will insist on “natural colonization.”

We're glad the feds are going to insist on that. Real recovery depends on it.

Summertime

2010-08-20T10:54:00.004-06:00

We're pretty lazy in the summer, especially in summers without sufficient monsoon rains to inspire us. We're desert dwellers, and that means we basically spend the summer under a tree, not doing much but sweating and trying not to get sunburned.

Plenty of sun here in the southwest. Perfect for massive solar installations, right? Wrong. The desert is full of archeological and biological wonders, too precious to be bladed over for the sake of a cheap buck or cheap energy. Grid-dependent solar is not renewable energy. We're looking at you, Sierra Club. (See more heartfelt and informative coverage of this issue at Coyote Crossing.)

The answer to the global catastrophe that we've created is one that very few people want to hear: We need to dismantle civilization in order to save what is left of the planet, and perhaps ourselves too. It's depressing, sure, but it's also depressing to see the desert bladed over with the false promise that this will solve the problem of our energy consumption, our capitalist economy.

Shaking in their boots

2010-08-03T11:21:00.004-06:00

Western Watersheds Project and Oregon Natural Desert Association have done it again: put the fear of reality in the public lands ranchers across the west. And the reality is this: get while the gettin's good, folks. Your reign of terror on the ecosystems of the American West is swiftly coming to a close.

Nothing like a cool $20 million to show them the door.

El Paso Corp.'s Ruby Pipeline, LLC will donate more than $20 million during the next 10 years to set up two conservation funds to preserve lands and wildlife habitat near the pipeline, said Jon Marvel, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, a partner in the endeavor.

The two entities and the Oregon Natural Desert Association recently established the Sagebrush Habitat Conservation Fund.

The fund is designed to protect and restore sagebrush habitat for sage grouse through the purchase and retirement of federal grazing permits offered by willing sellers.

The groups had to agree not to litigate or delay the pipeline's construction in exchange, which tends to make the "No Compromise!" folks among us a little nervous.

It's a big gamble, as litigation would have been. No telling whether lawsuits would have stopped the pipeline; no telling whether they still will. But the hew and cry from the ranchers and the counties and the states shows that the conservation groups are definitely onto something:

"Creating a federal buyout program is a dangerous step toward ending grazing on public lands, which would have a devastating impact on local economics throughout the West and would have unintended consequences on the environment," Simpson said in a press release. (Via)

We're dying to know all about those economic consequences, like saving the taxpayers $500 million a year, for starters. Sounds just awful!

We know it isn't simple, and there's a lot of land to be wrecked by the Ruby pipeline if it goes through. We're as devastated as anyone by the extent to which our dependence on oil and gas has completely screwed the planet. But unless we deal with that- with the supply and demand economy- these types of trade-offs are probably par for the course. Let's hope it works.

And let's hope that the ranchers see the writing on the wall and take the buy out. That would be win-win.

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with these people?

2010-07-23T10:22:00.005-06:00

We're obviously extremely pro-wildlife, so when we read stories like this one, we just simply cannot fathom what kind of person does this kind of thing:

An Alaskan man has been charged with intentionally ramming his jet boat into breaching humpback whales in the state's southeast waters, authorities said.

Kevin B. Carle, 44, was charged with a federal misdemeanor for violating the Endangered Species Act by "knowingly harassing, pursuing and harming whales," the Anchorage Daily News reported Thursday.

Like, what happened to Mr. Carle as a child to make him such an asshole?
___
UPDATE: Sweet lord Almighty. Today's news had a whole bucketload of wingnut animal haters. Check out this link to an AZ Game and Fish Department bulletin on a bighorn killing.

Go figure.

2010-07-20T17:47:00.002-06:00

Geesh. With so many of the Mexican gray wolves being serially murdered in the last month, it seems kind of obvious to us where the fingers might be pointing: towards the very people who hate wolves, want them off "their" land, demonize native species to the point of fantasy, and who, oh, by the way, have the equipment to track the radio signal from the collared critters.

Seriously? We give those people radio receivers to help them find the wolves? The very wolves they are committed to wiping out AGAIN? Uh, that doesn't seem like a very efficient way to try to recover the species.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service might want to rethink that plan. ASAP.

Dirty oil

2010-07-13T19:38:00.003-06:00

Via UnF--kTheGulf.com.

We don't necessarily think that one should spend $13 on a new T-shirt, but it's a gimmick that we get. We vote for sending the whole $13 or $130 to a conservation organization based in the Gulf region, riding your bike more than you drive, and rejecting the notion that we should allow privatization of public resources. Whether it's letting BP ruin our oceans for cheap oil or HP ruin our lands for cheap forage, it's totally fucked.

Mexican Wolf Alpha Male killed in Arizona

2010-07-02T10:00:00.005-06:00

(Photo source)

These mo&*#$*@ckers who keep killing wolves really piss us off.

The body of an adult male wolf was found June 18 and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials say it died from a gunshot wound.

It was an alpha male in the Hawks Nest Pack that traditionally uses the area east of Big Lake on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest as their spring-summer breeding territory, located west of the Arizona-New Mexico border.

The killers are criminals, violating the Endangered Species Act and depriving our landscapes from the ecological-balance that predators bring. They are also depriving our children of the chance to see Mexican gray wolves in the wild, and they are costing taxpayers millions of dollars by sabotaging the recovery program.

The federal government needs to step in and begin catching and prosecuting these criminals. They also need to step up releases of captive animals, sending a clear message to the criminals that they will not succeed in eliminating wild wolves in Arizona and New Mexico.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,

The Hawks Nest Pack was one of the first wolf packs to be released into Arizona and is well known for its ability to coexist with livestock grazing within its territory. Living in close proximity to actively grazed allotments on the Forests, this pack has a proven record of avoiding domestic livestock in favor of native prey animals like elk and deer. Research indicates that hunting behaviors within individual wolf packs are passed on to successive generations. The ability of this wolf pack to thrive and fit into an area of diverse land uses (including livestock grazing, camping, hunting, wood cutting and other forest activities) without most people even knowing that they are present in this portion of the White Mountains of Arizona makes the killing of AM 1044 all the more regrettable.

Not that livestock predation makes it acceptable to kill wolves, mind you- unless you are Wildlife Services (Ahem)- but the cowboy complaint about wolves and livestock being unable to coexist has not been borne out in this particular home range, making this just another mean-spirited crime against Nature.
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If you know anything about this, please see the information about the $50,000 reward.

From the "You Heard It Here First" Department

2010-06-25T08:31:00.009-06:00

Earlier this week we reported that Janay Brun was getting the sharp end of the stick in the Macho B debacle. Now, it looks like the Arizona Daily Star is reporting the same thing.

Federal prosecutors have added another criminal charge against Janay Brun, the research technician who blew the whistle on last year's deliberate capture of jaguar Macho B.

The U.S. Attorney's Office added a charge of conspiracy to "take" a jaguar onto an earlier charge that Brun had illegally taken a jaguar in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

The change drew a protest from Brun's attorney, Michael Piccarreta. He said the new charge sends a bad message to people: " 'Cooperate with the government, but only at your own peril. If you know of some illegal acts, keep your mouth shut.'

Uh, yeah. We learned that a long time ago.

In Brun's case, she also brought the illegal actions of the Arizona Game and Fish Department to light, justice that still needs to be served. The AGFD is responsible for the infected dart hole in Macho B's leg, the bungling of the sedative, leaving Macho B in the trap too long, and operating without a permit. Let's not forget those screw-ups, U.S. Attorney.

Friends of wolves seek to ban leg traps in New Mexico

2010-06-24T16:23:00.003-06:00

Via.

Cool video, good message, great idea.

No, life isn't fair, but this really sucks

2010-06-20T19:04:00.004-06:00

While Emil McCain, large cat killer, got off to Spain with a tiny little slap on the wrist, it looks like Janay Brun, the only honest person in the bunch, is about to get really screwed by the system.

Apparently, she's been charged not only with violating the Endangered Species Act, but also with conspiracy. That's pretty heavy. Apparently, McCain's plea bargain and whatever Thorry Smith got away with didn't include this juicy bit of criminal activity, even though they are the two that lied, covered it up, and conspired for over a year to keep their screw-ups secret. Brun, on the other hand, fessed up right away, leading to the investigation that is now resulting in criminal charges against her.

This is a broken system.

The Arizona Game and Fish Department has yet to feel the sting of any federal spankings for their role in all of this. Indeed, they've just been re-awarded a "take" permit for jaguars and ocelots despite the complete rarity and preciousness of these critters in the state. We wouldn't trust the AGFD to babysit our houseplants, let alone give them permits to kill endangered species. WTF, USFWS?

La, la, la... fingers in ears... la, la, la...

2010-06-17T15:58:00.003-06:00

Thank goodness for Perez Hilton, the World Cup, the best foods for weight loss, and speaking of weight loss, Tori Spelling, the iPad, elections in South Carolina, etc., etc. and JUST ABOUT ANYTHING that keeps us from hearing anything more about the Deepwater Horizon Disaster.

Because really, we're at our limit.

And so is the ocean. And so are the whales. And the crabs. And the dolphins and sharks, etc., etc.

And, holy fuck, it might get worse!

So, hmmm.... will we all just keep shopping? flying in airplanes? eating meat? buying plastic items meant to be disposed of? driving around in cars with the air conditioning on?

You betcha.

Oiled birds: to clean or not to clean

2010-06-14T16:46:00.002-06:00

We're the type of people who pick featherless blind birdies who have fallen out of their nests off the sidewalk and try to save them, so for us, it's always seemed like a no-brainer that one would try to save the birds mired in crude oil as a consequence of a drilling disaster. However, is this really the most compassionate thing?

Maybe not.

[Environmental biologist and expert on oil clean-up, Silvia] Gaus claims that 99% of the rescued and cleaned birds will die, usually within about seven days, and it will be a more painful death that takes longer than if they’d just been left alone. As a consequence, many recommend quick and painless euthanization. A National Geographic article complicates the story, reporting that survival rates depend on characteristics of the spill, but still reports that scientists largely have little hope that many birds rescued from the Gulf will survive. A better strategy for saving birds, they say, is trying to keep them out of the oil in the first place.

Or maybe so.

[S]tudies indicate that many seabirds do survive the oiling and rehabilitation process successfully returning to their wild condition. And in some cases (when birds are located and observed in breeding colonies) have been shown to breed successfully for many years following their oiling, rehabilitation and release. These studies show that a bird’s survival is often based on how a specific species can cope with the stress of the entire process from oiling to rehabilitation, and that their overall survivorship across species is far greater than Sharp’s assertions. As survivorship may be correlated to individual species it is irresponsible to draw conclusions of survivability from one species to another, rather, in depth studies must be conducted for each species considered if we are to begin to answer this question with any measure of reliability.

In other words, no one really knows. We've put our money on the birdwashers if only because of the starfish parable, which goes something like this:

A person was walking on the beach where thousands of starfish had been stranded by a high tide. The starfish were drying and dying, so the person started picking up survivors and tossing them back into the surf.

Another person walking along the beach asked, "Why are you doing that? You can't save them all and it will hardly make a difference."

The person sent another starfish back into the ocean and said, "It made a big difference to that one."

So, while we know in our hearts that washing crude off the feathers of a few sea birds won't remedy the tragedy of Deepwater Horizon (or industrial civilization), we know in our hearts that it should be done all the same. It is a small chance for humans to act compassionately and with grace towards non-human species, to be kind and caring for wildlife after all the ills we've wrought against them.

The Fish and Wildlife Service isn't the only one, Ms. Schneburger

2010-06-10T17:33:00.003-06:00

"The Fish and Wildlife Service would like to see us shut up and take our medicine," said Laura Schneberger, a rancher who heads the Gila Livestock Growers Association.

Indeed, the majority of Arizonans and New Mexicans would like to see Mexican gray wolves recovered in the wild. The whining (but gun-toting) naysayers get a lot of grease, but generally, little support outside of Catron County. Everyone knows those folks are cuckoo.
Still, the wolf program is undoubtedly at a crossroads:

Twelve years after Mexican gray wolves were reintroduced in Eastern Arizona, their dwindling numbers are putting the population "at risk of failure," says a recent report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Factors such as the rigid borders of the endangered wolves' recovery area, removal of wolves to protect livestock, and illegal shooting of wolves are keeping the only wild population of Mexican gray wolves from growing, says the "conservation assessment" released last month

At last, the USFWS is acknowledging the program's design flaws, but can they get the gumption to fix these problems before the wolves are wiped out?

We Heart Leroy Stick

2010-06-04T16:17:00.002-06:00

God bless Leroy Stick. For one, he's made us laugh a little despite the overwhelming despair for the Gulf oil disaster. For another, he's urging the American public to come out swinging at BP:

In the meantime, if you are angry, speak up. Don’t let people forget what has happened here. Don’t let the prolonged nature of this tragedy numb you to its severity. Re-branding doesn’t work if we don’t let it, so let’s hold BP’s feet to the fire. Let’s make them own up to and fix their mistakes NOW and most importantly, let’s make sure we don’t let them do this again.

He (or she) is right, of course. We've got to stop the insanity that is ruining our planet, the insanity manifest by the oil-dependent culture we're sending around the globe.

Wolves get their groove on

2010-05-29T14:49:00.007-06:00

It's some kind of iPhone app that creates music out of audio input. We don't pretend to understand how this actually works, but it sounds pretty amazing.

Macho B: McCain pleads guilty, gets slap on the wrist

2010-05-16T08:36:00.004-06:00

It's astounding that Emil McCain got just five years probation and $1000 fine for his role in the intentional snaring of Macho B, the last known jaguar in the U.S.

Emil McCain pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor crime: illegal take of an endangered species. To "take" means to knowingly harass, harm, pursue, trap or kill, in violation of the Federal Endangered Species Act, court records show....

In the plea agreement, McCain admitted an allegation that he had previously denied - that on Feb. 4, 2009, he told a female co-worker to place jaguar scat at snare sites in an effort to lure and capture the rare jaguar.

Via.

So, McCain intentionally snares an endangered species without permission, spends a year lying like an effing rug and throwing his friends under the bus, and in general, acting like he's going to get away with his bullshit- and then- five years probation and a $1000 fine. Unbelievable.

The bummer is that his probation is only effective in the U.S. We hear he's off to Spain to "study" lynx. All we can say is, this guy has got a black thumb when it comes to big cats. Etc. We wish he weren't going to be allowed anywhere near a wild animal for at least five years, or until his ego shrinks back down to a healthy size.

Sigh.
___

UPDATE MAY 17: It looks like Janay Brun might bear the brunt on this one. Sucks. Hopefully she can either plea bargain like McCain did or the Judge will let her off easy for her role in exposing the crime.

McCain flies off to Spain, leaves another dead cat and two shattered careers (Brun and Smith's) in his wake. When karma catches up to that guy, it's really going to suck for him. Hopefully he'll know better than to come back to southern Arizona looking for sympathy.

Hunt wolves to save them? Sounds pretty stupid.

2010-05-11T14:45:00.003-06:00

Gee whiz. High Country News has a doozy in its pages today, an article by Hal Herring suggesting that hunting the wolves is a way to save them. We have never been big fans of that kind of reasoning.

Mr. Herring's point is largely socio-political, discussing management, tolerance and opinions in the human community. Unfortunately, he disregards the science like a recent article by Adrian Treves in the Journal of Applied Ecology. Treves argues against many of Herring's conclusions, with more thoughful analyses like:

Sustainable hunting to maintain stable populations is well understood in theory but complex life histories of carnivores, and behavioral changes of hunters and the carnivores they stalk may result in unsustainable mortality for carnivores.

Instead of just wishing it were so, Treves is circumspect about public attitudes changing just because hunting is allowed- the evidence just isn't there to support Herring's optimism.

It seems sort of straightforward to us too- why would we assume that people would have greater respect for an animal they are encouraged to kill?

Thanks again, Cowboy Ken!

2010-05-11T10:23:00.002-06:00

Seems like exempting his old friends in the oil industry from any NEPA review is biting Ken's ass a little bit. We hope it hurts. A lot.

Macho B: The low-hanging fruit

2010-05-07T17:49:00.004-06:00

It looks like Janay Brun may be in a wee bit of trouble for her role in the intentional and illegal capture that ultimately led to the human-caused death of Macho B. She was told to be prepared for charges of violating the Endangered Species Act, likely under the "harm and harass" prohibition. But Ms. Brun had this to say:

Brun said Thursday that if she's prosecuted, she still won't regret coming forward with her allegations last year. But there have been times she wonders whether it was worth it to have said anything, particularly if people beyond her aren't held accountable, she said.

Yeah, like if Emil McCain- who, by her account, told her to put the scat near the snare, and by Thorry Smith's account, manipulated the crime scene- gets out of jail free on this one, we'll know that Justice is truly blind... to the facts.

However, we're still waiting for the higher-ups at the Arizona Game and Fish Department to get their due. We've got a strong hunch that someone there either looked the other way or tacitly endorsed these trapping tactics.

BTW, we haven't always been down on McCain. In fact, we used to rather like him. But this mess- and the way he's handled it- has made him pretty unappealing.

Offshore oil comes home to the roosts

2010-05-03T11:26:00.004-06:00

Via HuffPo; link to more like it.

If you're like us, the news reports of fishermen in the Gulf Coast losing their livelihoods is a nauseating afterthought to the untold creatures losing their lives because of the BP oil disaster. It isn't that we don't care about people- we do- but we care more about the plants and animals who have no choice but to live in the toxic environment we've created.

Oh, sure, we understand... the economy... seafood industry... business... loss of income... blah, blah, fucking blah. We deserve nothing less than complete desperate economic collapse- BECAUSE WE'RE IDIOTS. Why do we think that access to cheap oil to go to the drive-thru and eat cheap beef wrapped in cheap plastic is a God-given right? Why don't we extend any rights to the critters who ask only to lay their eggs in unspoiled rooks, who ask only to swim and surface and breathe?

If you believe that we couldn't have foreseen this type of disaster, you're a fool. And if you think that the environment is somehow an post-script to your right to make a living, you're missing the point. Those of us lucky enough to not be covered in oil right now are nonetheless bathed in the oil-polluted air under the carbon-overloaded atmosphere. We're in a slow-motion oil spill here on planet earth.

And who will be left to wash our feathers, feed us, and do everything in their power to keep us alive? If we don't start collectively resisting and dismantling the system that is killing our planet- our one and only home- we shouldn't expect salvation. We need to save ourselves and our non-human neighbors.

Starting yesterday.

Manipulating Macho B

2010-04-21T10:38:00.005-06:00

Well, well, well. It looks like the whole Macho B disaster may be even worse that we suspected. It turns out that the use of female scat to lure jaguars to camera traps in the borderlands may not have only killed Macho B. It might have also confused him into thinking there was a female around, causing him to hang out in Arizona longer than he would have.

[F]rom Thorry Smith's interview with Arizona Game and Fish for the agency's internal investigation. Talking about Emil McCain, he described McCain pulling a scat out of a bag. "He said -- it's kind of hush hush. And I assumed that wasn't because we were doing our snaring up there it was because he had published a paper in the Journal of Mammalogy and that wasn't in the methods."

Later in the transcript, Smith takes on the point more directly. He said of McCain "His point in that paper was that there was a male jaguar that may have been residential in the United States. He didn't say that he put female jaguar there maybe to keep him that way. So that might blow that paper out of the water."

So, not only does it appear that Mr. McCain was heavily invested in getting a collar on Macho B, but perhaps he was already manipulating his movements. Not disclosing this in the methods section is a big, fat mistake.

----

The Arizona Game and Fish Department has published its critique of the Office of the Inspector General report on the Macho B investigation. The AZGFD is quick to point its fingers at the errors of the OIG report and to distance itself from Emil McCain.

Interestingly, and perhaps revealingly, the AGFD specifically calls out the OIG out this quote, from an unidentified FWS biologist:

"he was intimidated by [AGFD employee] Terry Johnson and his attitude that the AZGFD could do whatever it wanted in Arizona."

The AGFD response:

"Not only does this quotation prove nothing more than the state of mind of its anonymous speaker, the use of the quote invites the reader to draw the inference that AGFD's leading jaguar conservationist and, by extension, AGFD itself, are scofflaws who blatantly disregard federal wildlife laws when it suits them."

Uh, yeah. That's kinda what we think, but not just because of the OIG report. Because of interference with releases of endangered species in Mexico, because of trying to block critical habitat designations, because of, oh... all kinds of things really. Terry Johnson may have a black eye, but it isn't the OIG that punched him. The OIG just pointed it out.

---

If anyone is interested in the latest he said/she said on whether or not the snare that trapped Macho B was baited, you can read this piece at the AZ Daily Star. We're with Janay on this one, but you can decide for yourself.

---

Dear Spanish lynx,

Please watch where you walk. And be on alert for a shortish, blondish, bearded fellow who apparently has no shame or integrity.

Love,
Demarcated Landscapes

Endgame (Vol I): The Problem of Civilization

2010-04-04T19:39:00.004-06:00

A tanker carrying coal crashed into the Great Barrier Reef today.

This is not a metaphor.

_____

We were gifted with a copy of Derrick Jensen's book, Endgame, about a week ago. We're sort of listening to sermons here, and we're already believers. But he's a good writer, and mostly rather succinct. As such, it's been a bit difficult to put down.

We're struck by his love of the world and his clear calls to action. He asks repeatedly what it will take for us to stand up to the life-killing capitalists that are destroying the planet. He actively encourages the dismantling of civilization. But he's got options too:

If you agree with all this, and if you don’t want to dirty your spirituality and conscience with the physical work of helping to bring down civilization, and if your primary concern really is for the well-being of those (humans) who will be alive during and immediately after the crash (as opposed to simply raising this issue because you’re too scared to talk about the crash or to allow anyone else to do so either), then, given (and I repeat this point to emphasize it) that civilization is going to come down anyway, you need to start preparing people for the crash. Instead of attacking me for stating the obvious, go rip up asphalt in vacant parking lots to convert them to neighborhood gardens, go teach people how to identify local edible plants, even in the city (especially in the city) so these people won’t starve when the proverbial shit hits the fan and they can no longer head off to Albertson’s for groceries. Set up committees to eliminate or, if appropriate, channel the (additional) violence that might break out.

We need it all. We need people to take out dams and we need people to knock out electrical infrastructures. We need people to protest and to chain themselves to trees. We also need people working to ensure that as many people as possible are equipped to deal with the fallout when the collapse comes. We need people working to teach others what wild plants to eat, what plants are natural antibiotics. We need people teaching others how to purify water, how to build shelters. All of this can look like supporting traditional, local knowledge, it can look like starting rooftop gardens, it can look like planting local varieties of medicinal herbs, and it can look like teaching people how to sing.

Do you find this inspiring or frightening? For us, it's a little of both. We're afraid of the post-civilized world even if we know that the "civilized world" is equally brutal.

Anyway, we're only about a half inch into the book, so if any of our readers are also reading it, let's work through it together. You can contact us via email, send us your thoughts, hopes, deconstructions... we'll think on it and paste it here (anonymously, if you prefer).

What if climate change wasn't real?

2010-04-01T17:11:00.005-06:00

Climate skeptics have been clamoring ever so much more loudly since the Climategate scandal of late 2009. ["Climategate" is the first option that pops up when one starts typing "clima..." into Google, if we need further proof.] It's ridiculous. The amount of airtime this non-controversy is hogging just serves to validate the spin a few highly-paid oil industry shills are selling. So, that's the last you'll hear from us here on that topic. Moving on to real discussions....

What if human-caused climate change were not real? Would thinking people still be modifying our behaviors for economic and social reasons? For example, the choice to bike instead of drive can be justified for a host of reasons- none of them carbon-footprint reducing- that still add up to a reasonable person making this choice. War, for one. Air pollution (non GHG), for another. And hey, how about health if you are entirely self-centered? There are lots of reasons to ride bikes.

What about changing your lightbulbs? Does that still make sense without climate change? You bet. So does eating less meat. Many of the "green living" changes people are making in context of climate change are valid changes whether or not the world is heating up. So, isn't it rational to simply create a better world- individually and collectively- regardless of what happens when greenhouse gases hang out in the atmosphere? Why is that so hard to accept?

We'd posit that it isn't hard to accept as individuals, but the corporations have no such incentives. Corporations don't care about making the world better; they care about their shareholders wallets. It is a threat to the corporations for us to stop consuming-disposing-consuming and instead invest our time and energy in other ways. With less money, they'll have less power, and with less power, they'll have less influence on legislation. With less corporate influence on legislation, we might just have a rational policy response to the massive evidence that climate change is occurring, and at an alarming rate.

Movie Review: Tapped

2010-03-30T15:36:00.002-06:00

Though we do tire of documentaries, we're often compelled to part with our money when a new film detailing some new horror comes out. Call us sadistic.

So, with that warning, "Tapped" which aired in our community during World Water Week, is worth supporting. It chronicles the inanity of the bottled-water craze and the problems of corporate-exploitation of a resource that ought to be a basic human right. It also, most depressingly, talks about all the plastic in the ocean though, thankfully, doesn't show too many images like this one. Ocean-bound plastic is a major problem, so it's good that "Tapped" focuses in on this end game of bottled beverages.

The movie moves along quite quickly and covers a lot of topics in its pursuit of persuasion. Particularly damning are the clips with the Food and Drug Administration and the Industry representatives, if those can actually be considered distinct groups anymore. After seeing "Tapped," you'll likely have doubts.

"Tapped" covers some of the same ground as the shorter, "Story of Bottled Water," but adds real people to the narrative mix.

At the screening we attended, "Tapped" folks were also giving away Klean Kanteens if attendees signed a pledge to give up bottled water. We're awaiting the documentary that exposes the Story of Stainless Steel.

A thousand words: The effect of fences on wildlife

2010-03-23T15:21:00.005-06:00

Shamelessly stolen from Lobos of the Southwest.

And one kindly provided:

These are some of the impacts of livestock grazing operations on our public lands (in this case, wolf territories on the Gila National Forest).

Sage-grouse

2010-03-08T19:18:00.005-07:00

We really have nothing more to say, except, once again, we're impressed with Western Watersheds Project and Advocates for the West for grabbing the agencies by the nether regions: Group challenges sage grouse finding

The department announced Friday that federal protection as an endangered or threatened species is warranted but precluded by higher priorities - species deemed in more dire need of protection right now.

Western Watersheds questioned that finding in a supplemental complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Boise, Idaho.

"The sage grouse is, in our judgment, as qualified as any species on the candidate list for the protections of the act," Jon Marvel, director of Western Watersheds, said Monday. "Of course they should be acting on all of these species, and why aren't they?"

The new complaint calls the candidate species list "a black hole from which few species ever emerge, and under which they receive no ESA protection." The decision to put the sage grouse on the list was "arbitrary, capricious and contrary to law," the group claims.

The agencies apparently don't do a goddamn thing their corporate handlers don't approve of. The Court is the only thing keeping species viable, wildernesses intact (sort of), and the process open and transparent.

Thank heaven for lawyers!

Good on ya, WWP. (And, despite all the press releases from myriad conservation groups last week, it was really WWP and the Sagebrush Sea Campaign of WildEarth Guardians that did the heavy-lifting on sage-grouse. It will be their eventual victory. Writing press releases doesn't count as work.)

The canary has fallen off its snowy perch

2010-02-15T11:03:00.002-07:00

Not sure what to say that Bill McKibben didn't say far more eloquently in this op-ed in the Washington Post re: how snowstorms actually are evidence of global warming.

In most places, winter is clearly growing shorter and less intense. We can tell, because Arctic sea ice is melting, because the glaciers on Greenland are shrinking and because a thousand other signals send the same message. Here in the mountains of the Northeast, for instance, lakes freeze later than they used to, and sometimes not at all: Lake Champlain remained open in winter only three times during the 19th century, but it did so 18 times between 1970 and 2007.

But rising temperature is only one effect of climate change. Probably more crucially, warmer air holds more water vapor than cold air does. The increased evaporation from land and sea leads to more drought but also to more precipitation, since what goes up eventually comes down. The numbers aren't trivial -- global warming has added 4 percent more moisture to the atmosphere since 1970. That means that the number of "extreme events" such as downpours and floods has grown steadily; the most intense storms have increased by 20 percent across the United States in the past century.

He makes the point that the snowstorms in Washington, D.C. are the backdrop for much-needed global warming legislation. Hopefully, the snowbound Senators can see the big picture.

Mexican wolves: The good, the bad, and the ugly

2010-02-11T21:33:00.006-07:00

First, the good: Ándale pues! The Mexican Mexican wolf program looks to be getting off the ground. (Despite the ugly ambitions of Arizona Game and Fish Department, we hasten to add.)

BTW, the decline in Mexican wolves in Arizona and New Mexico is really much worse than the stories last week (including this blog's) suggest. At the start of 2009, there were 52 wolves. 31 pups were born during the year, bringing the total to 83. At the end of the year, there were only 42. Not all pups make it, even in good years. But this was a very bad year for wolves.

And now for some more good: The Arizona Republic said Ya Basta to the ranchers today:

Wolves are on public land. Those privileged to hold grazing leases have a duty to accommodate other public uses of the land.

Benjamin Tuggle, Southwest director for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, says he's "determined" to "see more Mexican wolves in the wild."

He had better make that clear to the ranchers.

Those rugged individualists sure are the whiney type. We join the AZ Republic in hoping the agency plugs its ears.

Mexican wolf numbers dropped in 2009

2010-02-06T07:38:00.007-07:00

Image via.

Not that they have ever been high enough to begin with- but Mexican gray wolf numbers dipped about 20 percent in 2009, from 52 [in 2008] to 42 individuals estimated to be remaining in the wild. Full story from the AZ Daily Star (thanks Tony Davis, as usual).

An unusually poor survival rate among wolf pups appeared to play a key role in last year's population decline, officials indicated. Thirty-one pups were born last year in seven wolf packs. Seven survived, the wildlife service said.

Normally, the wild wolf pup mortality rate is about 50 percent, Tuggle said. Only four of the non-surviving pups were found dead, meaning that the rest either "slipped under the census or they are no longer on the landscape," he said, meaning they are dead.

Isn't that sad? The mortality among the pups is a worrisome and perhaps self-perpetuating trend: it may be an issue of genetic fitness and breeding declines due to the low number of wolves out there.

But the pup mortalities are not the only problemo:

Two wolves were confirmed to have been shot to death last year. Tuggle said he is not ruling out the possibility that the other six dead wolves were shot. Those deaths are under law enforcement investigation.

If you've for any info on the wolf deaths, there's a pretty penny reward in sharing that info with the appropriate officials. (See sidebar on our blog.) It is illegal to kill a federally-protected endangered species and these wolf-killers are criminals. Godspeed the federal investigation and prosecution of these SOBs.

Debrief on Macho B

2010-02-01T13:55:00.004-07:00

Our last couple of posts have been about the Inspector General report which found the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AGFD) and its subcontractor intentionally captured Macho B in violation of the Endangered Species Act. We're not surprised. Given AGFD's unfortunate ties to extractive interests (handing out 'habitat' money to ranchers, permitting ORVs, selling bighorn and killing predators to protect tag-worthy prey), the incompetence and perhaps malfeasance when it came to getting a collar on Macho B is par for the course.

But still.

Macho B was more than one of the last few jaguars to roam the borderlands. He was a integral part of keeping the land wild. He was big enough to munch on mountain lions and elusive enough that most people looking for him never caught a glimpse. He didn't cause any trouble; he kept to himself. Perhaps this was more mystery than managers could take- perhaps they needed to know where he went in order to maintain their dominance over all things. Perhaps they needed grant money and being able to track Macho B with a GPS collar made it easier to answer the questions funding would like to ask. Perhaps it was an ill-formed idea about stopping the border wall or, perhaps, it was a way of nodding acquiescence. The IG report didn't explain the whys, and all the blogosphere can do is speculate on the basis and rue the outcome.

But still.

Macho B had a name, a history, and a international fame. If we can't save Macho B from poor judgment and cover-your-ass obfuscation from the bureaucrats, how will we save anything?

This is why it is imperative that the USFWS bring charges against AGFD and its subcontractor- to send a message that, when it comes to recovering endangered species, there is a zero-tolerance policy on fucking up.

More coverage on Macho B's intentional capture

2010-01-22T07:37:00.004-07:00

The Arizona Daily Star has this expanded story this morning, which names a lot more names than yesterday's version: Jaguar's capture broke law, feds say; Snaring deliberate, and state lacked permits, US reports.

This really comes as no surprise to most of us, but it's still pretty awful. The Arizona Game and Fish Department immediately launched in trying to cover it's ass:

"The report contains allegations and opinions apparently untested by the IG," Game and Fish said. "Many of those assertions have been previously addressed by the department and present little or no new information."

Game and Fish also said that because the new report is a public version that excludes some information, "it still represents a redacted and therefore incomplete version." The state agency is conducting an internal investigation of the Macho B capture and death but has refused to discuss or release details because of the criminal investigation.

Right. Does anyone really believe that the U.S. Interior Department's Office of Inspector General did a worse job than Game and Fish trying to sort through the wreckage of the Macho B story? No way. AGFD can't be trusted to conduct an unbiased review.

During the March 5, 2009 Macho B News Conference in Tucson, AGF Commission Chairman Bob Hernbrode made statements well before any investigation began regarding Macho B’s death. A leader must never preemptively make biased statements—pro or con—attesting to the credibility, et cetera of agency staff or official contractors that might have erred or violated Federal/State law. Before the presentation of any evidence, Chairman Hernbrode biasedly stated that the actions of personal involved in Macho B’s handling were “needed and appropriate.”

Chairman Hernbrode made his comments on March 5, less than 3-full days after Macho B’s euthanization and over 3 weeks before an Arizona AG and Federal investigation began. In fact, the AGFD and AGF Commission later made this statement in their April 2, 2009 release, “The Department and Commission did not authorize or condone intentional initial capture of this jaguar.” Therefore, Chairman Hernbrode was premature and prejudiced with his March 5, 2009 statements that follow and he has demonstrated here and elsewhere that he is incapable of objectiveness when the AGFD is involved. (From the comments section of the original article in the AZ Star, with link to video file; thanks Ron Kearn!)

With a lead off like this, does it sound like AGFD was seeking anything other than to exonerate itself?

AGFD is SO BAD! We've pointed our fingers at Terry Johnson before, but the AZ Star story does too:

• The same official had warned state officials in advance of the possibility that a jaguar could be captured during the study. He sent an e-mail Feb. 26, 2008, to Arizona Game and Fish employees Todd Atwood and Terry Johnson, the report says. But his request for a meeting on the subject was rebuffed.

"The biologist said that he was intimidated by Johnson and his attitude that the AZGFD could do whatever it wanted in Arizona," the report says.

And, apparently, beyond. Rumor has it that Johnson went far out of his way to rile up ranchers on the U.S.-Mexico border to oppose wolf releases in Mexico (which, by the way, is an sovereign nation). You can't have someone in charge of endangered species recovery who so obviously leans the other way. Here's hoping that we see a major overhaul of the AGFD before the IG report gets dusty. Macho B's death should not be in vain.

Capture of Macho B Intentional!

2010-01-21T16:29:00.009-07:00

From the Arizona Daily Star: Capture of jaguar Macho B was intentional, federal investigators conclude .

That conclusion is important because the game and fish department originally called the capture unintentional and because such "taking" of an endangered species may be a crime under the endangered species act.

The report also concludes that Arizona Game and Fish was aware that Macho B was near a site where department employees were trapping animals in December 2008 and January 2009 and failed to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service about the jaguar’s presence, as required by federal law.

Finally, the report concludes that a Fish and Wildlife Service supervisor wrongly approved a cosmetic necropsy for the jaguar, instead of a complete necropsy “because he did not know the difference between the two procedures.” That decision meant there ended up being doubt about the cause of the jaguar’s death, the report says.

We do hope there are some serious repercussions for these screw-ups.

UPDATE: Read the full U.S. Inspector General report here. Highlights include:

Our review of the FWS agents’ documentation showed evidence linking an AZGFD subcontractor and possibly an AZGFD employee to criminal wrongdoing in the capture of Macho B. There was no evidence to suggest criminal involvement by any FWS or other Department of the Interior employees.
....
After Spangle made the decision to euthanize Macho B, he said that he spoke with Tuggle about the animal’s necropsy. Spangle said that during discussions about what to do with Macho B’s hide, the AZGFD wanted to preserve it for scientific and educational purposes. The AZGFD’s intention was for a full necropsy to be performed on Macho B. Spangle said that at the time he had never heard the term “necropsy.” When Phoenix Zoo officials asked him about the extent of the necropsy, he conveyed the AZGFD’s request to preserve the hide. Spangle said he approved a “full cosmetic necropsy” with the false understanding that it was the same as full necropsy, but would also include adequate measures to preserve the animal’s hide. Spangle said, “And in my naïveté, I didn’t have any clue that that would compromise the soft tissues.” Spangle explained, “I just thought they would carefully remove the — I imagine if you’re doing a necropsy, you’re digging in there and going for it and throwing the animal away. And to conserve the skin, they would do a more careful job, midlines cut probably and skin[ning] it carefully. I didn’t know until later that it prevented them from testing the brain and spinal tissue ….”

Go Big!

2010-01-19T07:46:00.002-07:00

This morning, in our coffee hour review of the environmental news, we caught this sighing headline, "Conservation Group Files Another Suit against Utah's BLM."It's about Western Watersheds Project's recent suit over six BLM management plans in the beehive state.

Now, normally that isn't the kind of news that raises our eyebrows much (fists yes, eyebrows no) because isn't that what conservation groups do? But here's the thing: Listen to what Jon Marvel has to say about it:

"To bring litigation over a very large area of the West, as we've done, is an expression of the failure of our government, and we as people, to adjust ourselves to the capacity of the land to support life," Jon Marvel with the Western Watersheds Project said. "That's what it's about. It needs to be big, because it's about life."

Wow. We're inspired.

And he's right. In order to save anything more than postage stamps of habitat and token numbers of imperiled species, we need to reframe the public perception of what the west can be. It can be more than a playground for people- it can be an ecologically-functional playground, replete with wildlife and plants, rich in water and topsoil, dense with old trees and bunchgrasses.... We need to convert the land management agencies to a conservation ethic a la Leopold....perhaps we're still dreaming.

More coffee.

Killing wolves and the masculine identity

2010-01-13T12:42:00.002-07:00

A few weeks back, we 'tweeted' a link to a list of people in Idaho who have killed wolves this year. We were just sent a similar list of Montana's wolf killers.

What strikes us is that nearly all of the names are male. There are a few exceptions, and a few that are ambiguous. But by and large, the wolf killers are men.

Perhaps this doesn't surprise you. It doesn't really surprise us either. But in that reaction is an assumption that bears deconstructing: Men kill.

Seems like saving wolves and other species might take more than political will, legal muscle, and building reverence for nature. It might take reconstructing core notions of masculinity as well. We should turn our collective revulsion at sport-killing into a collective rejection of outdated notions of 'manliness.'

Undoing the damage of distorted gender roles is at least as important as saving wolves. In fact, it might just be part of it.

Wisdom from Aldo Leopold: Safe FROM Cows

2010-01-13T07:56:00.004-07:00

At some point soon we'll get around to a post about the jaguar (YAY!), but we had cause to come across this oldie but goodie from Aldo Leopold today. Really, every reread of Leopold confirms his genius.

[...] Montague Stevens saw only the surface of the land he hunted over. His active days afield coincided with the advent of erosion in the cow country, but he did not see it. The better to keep up with his hounds, he practiced riding his horse across the cavernous arroyos which were then invading the fertile valleys, but he did not recognize the invasion as something new in history, nor did he perceive its cause: the terrific overgrazing practiced by the early cowmen. Small wonder, then, that less intelligent men still fail to perceive that something more important than bears is departing from the western range. New Mexico's grizzlies succumbed visibly to trap, gun, and poisoned bait, but New Mexico's fertile valleys slipped down the Rio Grande in the night. Neither will return.

The University of New Mexico has done well to preserve this saga of how the state was made safe for cows. How the state is to be made safe from cows is a saga yet to be written.

Leopold, Aldo: Review of "Meet Mr. Grizzly", Journal of Forestry, March 1944. Reproduced in Aldo Leopold's Southwest, edited by David E. Brown & Neil B. Carmony, University of New Mexico Press, 1990, pg. 220. (Source)

Indeed, the paradigm that Leopold grocked so well has yet to be manifest on the western lands. Few places are safe from cows, wolves are still seen as the enemy, and wingnuts compete to cut off coyote ears for points. When will we learn what Leopold tried to teach us?

The Devil Will Not Die: Richard Pombo's attempted redux

2010-01-06T11:24:00.003-07:00

Ya'll remember Richard Pombo, don't you? He was the Congressman hell-bent on disassembling the Endangered Species Act in 2005. Fortunately, he was defeated and driven from Congress in 2006.

And then he became a lobbyist, which was basically all he was as a legislator.

Now, it appears he's ready to wreck wildlife recovery once again.

Former seven-time Rep. Richard Pombo, the Tracy GOP rancher who tried to dismantle the Endangered Species Act and pushed for more oil drilling in Alaska, wants to return to Congress - and national environmental groups said Tuesday they plan to return to the Central Valley to thwart him.

When he lost the last election, it had everything to do with the mass mobilization from enviros to support his opponent. Hopefully, this time, his own record will damn him:

And here’s the Sierra Club’s list of “Pombo’s Greatest Misses”:

* Proposed selling off our national parks, including the only national park in his former district
* Took more than $337,000 in campaign cash from Big Oil
* Tried to gut the Endangered Species Act
* Went on a taxpayer-funded cross-country family vacation
* Backed the George W. Bush administration’s misguided and disastrous effort to decimate our national forests, the so-called Healthy Forest Initiative
* Backed the George W. Bush administration’s efforts to gut the Clean Air Act
* Tried, repeatedly, to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling
* One of the most vocal proponents of disastrous Bush-Cheney energy policy, written by, and for, Big Oil, Dirty Coal, and the nuclear industry
* Named one of the “most corrupt members of Congress” by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, based on his ties to disgraced and convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and numerous other alleged violations of Congressional ethics rules and federal laws.

We shall see. If not, try this. Can't hurt, might help.(**UPDATE- ya'll know we're kidding, right?**)

Happy Anniversary ESA!

2009-12-28T10:51:00.002-07:00

Today is the 36th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, a benchmark piece of legislation that has protected dozens of species from extinction. Signed, improbably, by Richard Nixon, it has added layers of legal protection to about 1900 species.

The WildEarth Guardians have launched a new campaign:

[E]nvironmentalists have pledged to file petitions and lawsuits over the next 36 days to persuade the Obama administration to make protection of endangered plants and animals a priority.

Unfortunately, it looks like an overhaul of the ESA may be a priority for the Obama Administration:

The Fish and Wildlife Service is considering wide-ranging revisions to the 1973 Endangered Species Act, the agency director said in an interview last week.

"There is no question there are places we can make improvements in the way we do business," the service director, Sam Hamilton, said. "We are taking a hard look ... to see regulatory-wise, administrative-wise, are there ways to improve?"

This is worrisome because Sam Hamilton has an ugly track record.

"No matter which way you turn, somebody is not going to be happy," Hamilton said. "Our focus is on trying to recover endangered species; our goal is to try to get them off the list. So as long as we keep our eye on that goal and work on definitions and work on policy to further that goal, we'll be in good shape."

Unfortunately, there is more than one way to get species off the list. Extinction is a sure-fire technique; premature removals works, and never listing a species is another. It seems that the Obama Administration is willing to try them all.

BLM to Field Offices: Pretend to Care

2009-12-16T20:50:00.003-07:00

The AP has filed this story, "BLM to field offices: Mark fences for sage grouse." Basically, the agency is going to mark new fences and guy wires to protect sage grouse, sharp-tailed grouse and lesser prairie chickens, because the fences are currently death traps for the ground-dwelling birds.

Studies have shown that barbed-wire fences can be deadly when these bird species fly into the fences without seeing them, although the number of birds killed depends on a variety of factors. Mortality tends to be a problem in places where large numbers of birds congregate frequently near fences.

Sounds pretty good right?

Right. Except what about the fences that already exist? Going flag those too, right? Not so fast. The BLM is going to evaluate existing fences and think about whether or not to flag those.

God help us. When the BLM sets out to evaluate something, some uncomprehendingly long time later the answer will be that cows are going to save the fucking planet.

No mention of FENCE REMOVAL. Or STOPPING NEW CONSTRUCTION in sage-grouse habitat. Much better to litter the landscape with the white vinyl strips that will last, say, a year? Uh huh.

And anyway, the BLM is just doing this half-assed thing to try to avoid an ESA listing by pretending the species is already protected on public lands. Duh.

If it walks like a duck....

2009-12-02T20:40:00.005-07:00

Is it any wonder that Ken Salazar's Fish and Wildlife agency declined to list the prairie dog as an endangered species?

Regarded by most farmers and ranchers as a nuisance, the animals are considered a keystone species among biologists.

Exhibit A:

Doesn't quite look like a biologist, does he? Hmmm....

The NY Times today ran a bit about Salazar's "cautious" approach. Cautious, our ass. He's a industry hack.

Daniel R. Patterson, an Arizona state representative and a former employee in the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, said that he has been disappointed but not surprised by Mr. Salazar’s record so far. He said that as Colorado’s natural resources director, in the Senate and now at Interior, Mr. Salazar had been consistently friendly to energy, mining and agricultural interests, sometimes at the expense of the environment.

At the expense of wolves, prairie dogs, polar bears...

Take 'em to court, WildEarth Guardians.

Wildlife (Dis)Services slaughtering Idaho wolves (again)

2009-11-27T19:36:00.003-07:00

At the request of Ralph Maughan, we're posting this story about the antics of our government in their mission to wipe out native wildlife:

Right in the middle of the wolf hunt and in the zone where there is the highest quota, Wildlife Services took to the air this week in their gunships and blasted away the long-standing Basin Butte Pack at Stanley, Idaho. This is one of 26 wolf packs Wildlife Service has labeled as a “chronic depredating” pack, which seems to mean a pack that at one or more times killed some domestic livestock.

It doesn’t mean killed recently, however. All the livestock left the area for the winter in October.

This pack has lived around Stanley, mostly in Stanley Basin for about 5 years now. Even summer and part of the fall thousands of cattle and sheep are trucked into what many regard as Idaho most scenic valley. Every year or so the pack kills a calf or two. Amazingly it stays near the town of Stanley, even within city limits. If this was a pack that was going to be taken during the wolf hunt, this would seem to be it.
....

You might want to call Jim Lukens, the Salmon area regional supervisor and ask him. (208) 756-2271. Approval of Wildlife Services wolf kills has been parceled out to the regional supervisors, like Mark Gamlin (who seems to have few to no wolves in his district).

Sample script: "Hello, Mr. Lukens? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING? Why did you approve the slaughter of the Basin Butte pack for killing cows 7 months before the cows show up again?" OK, maybe you don't want to use the F-word. But we do. We really do.

Nauseating.

The Copenhagen Diagnosis: We're Screwed

2009-11-24T18:27:00.007-07:00

(www.PlaneStupid.com)

We've been pretty quiet this week here on our fragmented homeland. Sorry. It's just that, well.. we've been mulling things over. First, we went to see The Yes Men Fix the World and we even got some face-time with one of the stars. (Who knew DL was so well connected, eh?) It's inspiring, because it makes activism look like fun.

But being inspired hasn't been enough. We've also been thinking about Derrick Jensen and Guy McPherson, and wondering how to get unstuck from the deep and profound understanding that the world as we know it is collapsing.

And it is. It really truly, depressingly, devastatingly is. Scientists now are talking about how to adapt to the havoc 4 degrees C is going to wreak on human communities. That's not good, folks. And it's soon: 4 deg. by 2065 if Copenhagen talks fails.

Officials around the globe aim to avoid warming the Earth by more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit compared to preindustrial times. The idea is to avoid a “tipping point” that causes catastrophic and irreversible changes to weather patterns and landscapes.

Without a significant change in course, global warming could reach 12.6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, the scientists said Tuesday.

It’s not clear that the fast-growing world population can come close to cutting greenhouse gases as much as scientists suggest. In 2008, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels were about 40 percent higher than those in 1990, according to Tuesday’s report. It said that even if emissions do not exceed current levels, within 20 years the world could face a tipping point.

(Via.)

We'll go back to our quiet corner now.