Subject: SW BIODIVERSITY ALERT
#105
******* SOUTHWEST BIODIVERSITY
ALERT #105 ***********
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12/9/97
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* SOUTHWEST CENTER
FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
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1. FIVE COASTAL CALIFORNIA
SPECIES LISTED AS ENDANGERED-
ONLY 45 MORE TO GO
2.
CITIZEN ACTION PAYS OFF-
TUCSON CITY COUNCIL SLOWS CITY
INVOLVEMENT IN ARMY CORPS
PLAN TO DESTROY INNER CITY
ARROYO
3. ARIZONA DAILY STAR FEATURES STORY ON THE SOUTHWEST
CENTER
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FIVE
COASTAL CALIFORNIA SPECIES LISTED AS ENDANGERED-
ONLY 45 MORE TO GO
On
December 5, 1997, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the
Callippe
silverspot butterfly and Behren's silverspot butterfly as
endangered and the
Alameda whipsnake as threatened under the
Endangered Species Act. The
Callippe silverspot is found at only
two sites on grasslands in the San
Francisco Bay area. Behren's
silverspot is found on coastal terrace prairie
habitat at one site
in southern Mendocino County. Both are threatened by
development,
livestock grazing, collecting, and exotic plant invasions.
The
Alameda whipsnake occurs in northern coastal scrub and chaparral
in
Contra Costa and Alameda counties. It is threatened by fire
suppression,
livestock grazing, and development.
On November 20, 1997, the Fish and
Wildlife Service listed the
Suisun thistle (Cirsium hydrophilim var.
Hydorphilum) and Soft
bird's-beak (Cordylanthus mollis ssp. mollis) as
endangered. Both
inhabit tidal marsh habitat in San Francisco Bay. They
are
threatened by pollution, urbanization, excessive salinity,
erosion,
and mosquito abatement programs.
The five are among a group
of 95 species the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service has allowed to dwindle
toward extinction by
stalling on final listing decisions. On May 13, 1997,
the Southwest
Center for Biological Diversity informed the Fish and
Wildlife
Service that it would sue to force the prompt listing of the
95
unless immediate action was taken to protect them. Since
then,
the Service has scrambled to list 44 of the species as
endangered.
51 species still remain unprotected and will likely be the
subject
of an ESA suit by the end of the year.
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CITIZEN
ACTION PAYS OFF-
TUCSON CITY COUNCIL SLOWS CITY INVOLVEMENT IN ARMY CORPS
PLAN TO
DESTROY INNER CITY ARROYO
Following protests by the Southwest
Center and residents of
largely Hispanic, Barrio San Antonio, the Tucson City
Council
voted to temporarily withhold city funds for further work on
an
Army Corps of Engineers plan to convert a large portion of
Arroyo Chico
into a water detention basin network. The Corps
want to place the basins in
Barrio San Antonio, a poor neibhorhood,
to provide flood control for
wealthier downstream homeowners.
Though the detention basin would be dug
500 feet from a State
superfund site, the Army Corps of Engineers E.I.S.
failed
to consider the impacts of toxic pollution on Barrio residents
and
wildlife. The Southwest Center and Barrio San Antonio residents
Anna
Acuna and Margaretta Rosenberg Ortiz have informed the Corps
that they will
sue if necessary to stop the project. Maria Cadaxa,
vice president of the
Barrio Association read a statement concluding
"We believe the natural state
of the Arroyo Chico to be an
irreplaceable asset in the inner city ecology of
Tucson. Not only is
it home to a variety of desert flora and fauna, it is the
repository
of traditions and memories that stretch back generations. To
change
the Arroyo Chico threatens the body and spirit of our
barrio."
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ARIZONA
DAILY STAR FEATURES STORY ON THE SOUTHWEST CENTER
The following feature
by Keith Bagwell on the Southwest Center
appeared in the Arizona Daily Star
on Sunday, December 7, 1997
Pygmy Owl Champions Crusade for Humanity:
Environmental group
winning war in court
A small environmental group
that moved to town two years ago
has made a rare pygmy owl a threat to rapid
growth northwest
of Tucson.
This is the latest crusade waged by the
Southwest Center for
Biological Diversity, a group of energetic folks in
their 20s
or 30s on a fervent mission to save humanity from
extinction.
The group believes vanishing wild species are precursors to
a
decline of now-common plants and animals - including people.
The
center moved to Tucson from Silver City, N.M., in 1995.
Using science and the
courts, it forced the federal government
to list the cactus ferruginous pygmy
owl as endangered.
Photo: Members of the Southwest Center for
Biological
Diversity include from left: David Hogan, Kieran Suckling,
Shane
Jimerfield, Peter Galvin, Megan Southern, Mike Rice
and
Stephanie Buffum. The organization has filed 80 lawsuits
and
won 37 of 47 rulings. It has 31 cases pending, and two
cases
were dropped because of outside events.
Surveys since
1993 have found as many as a dozen of the
once-abundant little owls in
Southern Arizona. Last year, there
were 10 - all spotted in northwest Tucson;
eight of them were
seen in a 16-square-mile area of intense development west
and
south of Oro Valley.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the
owls' historic
habitat is 650 miles of Southwestern streams - 290 of
those
miles lie in Arizona, including the Santa Cruz and Rillito
rivers,
Tanque Verde Creek and Caņada del Oro Wash.
A Southwest Center
lawsuit seeks to force Fish and Wildlife to
map the miles of streams and the
northwest area as ``critical
habitat'' for the pygmy owl. That would further
hamper construction
projects within the area.
The Southwest Center and
its predecessors, with petitions and
lawsuits, have won Fish and Wildlife
listing of several other rare
animals and plants as threatened or endangered,
and subject to
protections.
--Flycatcher's role--
One, the
Southwestern willow flycatcher, keeps the Salt River
Project from completely
filling Roosevelt Lake and could alter
operation of Mead's Hoover Dam on the
Colorado River. Key
flycatcher nesting areas are on the two
lakes.
There is more: A Southwest Center lawsuit halted all logging
in
Arizona and New Mexico national forests from August 1995 to
December
1996. Another blocks for now timber cuts and voids all
livestock grazing
leases in the 11 forests in the two states.
Environmentalists are
inspired to the point that national groups
now are helping the Southwest
Center with pending lawsuits.
Those who profit from using federal lands
and federal construction
permits are irate over the group's ability to force
them to change
the way they do business, or at least to contemplate
it.
``It's a big game for those folks,'' said Lewis Tenney, an
owner
of Precision Pine and Timber Co. in Heber. ``They get up in
the
morning and try to figure out how to make people's lives up
here
miserable.''
--Run by physician--
The Southwest Center,
whose roots go back to 1989, is run by
Phoenix emergency-room physician Robin
Silver, 45, and 13
full-time staff members.
The center has 4,000
members - half of them Tucsonans - and
individual donors who together
supplied it with nearly 45
percent of the $384,000 it used to operate in
1996.
The center also operates on grants from media mogul Ted
Turner's
Turner Foundation and several other foundations, as well
as
contract work for the Navajo Nation and environmental groups.
In
addition to Silver, Southwest Center's founders are Peter
Galvin and Kieran
Suckling, both 33. Galvin is from Framingham,
Mass., and Suckling has lived
all over the world, moving with
his family while his father built electric
power plants.
Suckling is director of the organization and Galvin is
its
conservation biologist. Silver, working without pay, is
conservation
chairman and manages the group's two-person
Phoenix office in his living
room.
--Little pay--
Little of the budget goes for payroll - the
highest-paid
employee makes $1,000 a month, say Suckling and
Galvin.
Several staff members live in the group's offices near Tucson
High
Magnet School.
``We're committed to doing everything we can to protect
public
lands,'' said Silver, a University of Arizona medical
school
graduate who long has fought the UA's construction of telescopes
on
the Pinaleņo Mountains' Mount Graham, near Safford.
``And it's going to
get tougher as society is forced to confront
the consequences of its
over-consumption,'' he said.
Galvin said the increase in species moving
toward or facing
extinction is a warning that humans must change or face
their
own eventual demise.
Solutions are not complex, he said. ``If
there were firm plans
to protect their habitat, we wouldn't have these
canaries in
the coal mine,''Galvin said.
--Land uses
change--
Suckling said governments, from cities to the federal
level,
change their land use readily for powerful economic
interests.
``The governments really have no idea what they are doing or
why
- in short they have no vision,'' he said. ``Through litigation
and
petitioning, we're trying to force them to come to grips with
their lack of
vision.''
Things won't change, Suckling said, ``without social stress.
We're
trying to supply that stress.''
The Southwest Center and its
predecessor, the Greater Gila
Biodiversity Project, have filed 35 petitions
since 1989 with Fish
and Wildlife, asking it to list species as threatened or
endangered,
or to map more protective critical habitat for already-listed
species.
Fish and Wildlife approved 18 petitions and is reviewing 15
others.
--Successful suits--
The organization has filed 80
lawsuits and won 37 of 47 rulings.
It has 31 cases pending, and two cases
were dropped because of
outside events.
Silver, on behalf of the
Maricopa Audubon Society in 1989, asked
Fish and Wildlife to list the Mexican
spotted owl as threatened.
Galvin, then a Prescott College student, got a
summer job that
year with the U.S. Forest Service, seeking Mexican spotted
owls
in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in eastern
Arizona.
Suckling joined Galvin's survey crew. ``Kieran was
very
aggressive, and we found a number of owls,'' Galvin said.
``We
thought the Forest Service would protect them,'' he said.
``But we watched as
they ignored their own regulations and logged
right up next to owl
nests.''
The two worked on an owl survey crew in the Gila
National
Forest in western New Mexico in 1990 and say they saw more
abuses
of the Endangered Species Act. But they were unable to get
national
environmental groups involved.
--Take on Forest
Service--
``We decided we needed to form our own group,
become
science-based, and take on the Forest Service to win,''
Suckling
said. ``We took a bio-regional approach and formed Greater
Gila
Biodiversity Project.''
The group's focus remains the watershed
ecosystem of the Gila
River. It begins in Gila National Forest and picks up
large
tributaries as it flows across Arizona to the Colorado River
at
Yuma.
The Santa Cruz and San Pedro rivers are two Southern
Arizona
tributaries to the Gila, and the Salt and Verde rivers flow
into
it from Northern Arizona.
Galvin met Silver in the fall of 1989.
When Galvin and Suckling
set up the Greater Gila Biodiversity Project in late
1990, `
`Robin said he'd pay the phone bill if we'd research the
Mexican
spotted owl,'' Galvin said.
At a ranch near Luna, N.M., the
pair spent two years researching
the owl and dozens of rare Gila ecosystem
species.
--Had to do it--
``We thought it was something we had to
do,'' Suckling said. ``We
saw a problem and went to work like we were trying
to save a
child from a burning house.''
Said Galvin, ``The clock is
always ticking for endangered species -
time is of the essence.''
The
more they learned, the more they wanted to do. In 1992 they
moved to Silver
City, seeking biologists and money.
But the New Mexico city lacked public
support and research
resources that the growing group needed to carry on its
work
successfully.
Galvin, Suckling, Silver and others who had joined
them changed
the name to Southwest Center and decided to move the
headquarters.
In late 1995 they chose Tucson and moved.
Lumber-company
owners, ranchers and developers are not fans of
the Southwest Center
crew.
--Millions lost--
``Hundreds of millions of dollars have
been lost, thanks to the
Southwest Center,'' said Tenney, of Precision Pine
and Timber Co.
Tenney said his industry ``is not cutting all the old
growth -
there's lots of it up here, all over the national
forests.''
Galvin disagrees. ``Loggers have cut more than 90 percent of
the
old-growth forests, and wildlife dependent on them can't afford
to
lose more,'' he said.
Old-growth forests are home to many animal species,
filter
stormwater, help purify the air and resist forest fire
damage,
Galvin said.
Other ecosystems of critical importance lie near
Arizona's rivers,
which the Southwest Center hopes become free of cattle
ranching.
--No cows on rivers--
``The biology is clear: We just
can't have cows along rivers in
the Southwest,'' Suckling said. ``This is a
fragile desert
without excess grass or water - and our rivers are trashed
by
cows.''
Suckling said the Southwest Center views ranching as
probably
not viable in the Southwest.
Photo: A scene in the
Gila Box Riparian National Conservation
Area; the Southwest Center for
Biological Diversity focuses on
the watershed ecosystem of the Gila
River, beginning
in theGila National Forest and including its
tributaries.
``Some number of cows could be kept in uplands without
major
damage, but is it economically feasible?'' he asked. ``We
subsidize
ranching now to the tune of millions of dollars a
year.''
``They say we can't have cattle and healthy river ecosystems
-
that's baloney,'' said C.B. ``Doc'' Lane, director of grower affairs
for
the Arizona Cattlemen's Association. ``We can manage cattle for
a healthy
river wildlife habitat.''
--Political ends--
The Southwest Center
is ``abusing the Endangered Species Act for
whatever political ends it has,''
Lane said. He added that
extinction of species is natural evolution and it's
pointless for
anyone to try to save them all.
Regional developers also
believe the Southwest Center is bent on
destroying their
businesses.
``It seems they are not only trying to stop growth, but to
reverse
growth,'' said Alan Lurie, executive vice president of the
Southern
Arizona Home Builders Association.
``It's a lifestyle
issue,'' he said. ``They want to go back to the
days when you don't hear a
voice, don't hear an automobile.''
The pygmy owl's listing as endangered
means those proposing
construction requiring federal permits - and most large
projects
need at least one - must follow Fish and Wildlife dictates on
how
to protect the bird.
That ``affects transmission lines, roadways,
swimming pools,
schools - all manner of things we do will be put to an
absolute
stop,'' Lurie said.
Suckling said the Southwest Center is
just trying to protect the
little owls. ``Circumstances led us to this
collision course''
with Tucson developers, he said.
``But now we see
700,000 people who, due to sprawl into the desert,
have air pollution,
traffic congestion and crime,'' Suckling said.
``We see 700,000 potential
revolutionaries.''
_____________________________________________________________________________
Kieran
Suckling
ksuckling@sw-center.org
Executive
Director
520.623.5252 phone
Southwest Center for Biological
Diversity 520.623.9797 fax
http://www.sw-center.org
pob 710, tucson, az 85702-710