Subject: SW BIODIVERSITY ALERT
#111
******* SOUTHWEST BIODIVERSITY ALERT
#111 ***********
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1/19/98
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* SOUTHWEST CENTER
FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
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1. SUIT FILED TO LIST UTAH
CACTUS AS ENDANGERED SPECIES
2. SW FOREST ALLIANCE TELLS CLINTON TO PROTECT
ROADLESS AREAS
FROM LOGGING, GRAZING, MINING- NO EXCEPTIONS FOR
NORTHWEST
3. MEXICAN GRAY WOLVES DECLARED "EXPERIMENTAL, NON-ESSENTIAL"
4.
PRIVATIZE OR ENFORCE? SW CENTER AND RANDALL O'TOOLE DEBATE
SOURCE OF SPECIES ENDANGERMENT
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SUIT FILED TO LIST UTAH CACTUS AS
ENDANGERED SPECIES
The Southwest Center for Biological Diversity filed suit
on 1/13/97 in a
Denver federal court, against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service for
refusing to list the Winkler Cactus as an endangered species.
Found only
at six locations, totaling 200 acres, in Wayne and Emory counties,
Utah,
the cactus is threatened by livestock grazing, mining and
ORVs.
The Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to list the cactus in 1993,
but
predictably, let the species languish without a final decision despite
the
clear requirements of the E.S.A. The agency's own research shows the
cactus
has continued to decline in the last four years. Livestock grazing
grand-
fathered into Capitol Reef National Park is listed by the agency as
a
continuing threat.
The case is being argued by Geoff Hickcox of
Kenna & Hickcox (Durango).
_____________________
SW FOREST
ALLIANCE TELLS CLINTON TO PROTECT ROADLESS AREAS
FROM LOGGING, GRAZING,
MINING- NO EXCEPTIONS FOR NORTHWEST
The Southwest Forest Alliance, a
coalition of 56 forest activist groups in
Arizona and New Mexico, sent a
letter to Clinton and Gore on 1/12/97,
telling them to ban logging, mining,
road building, fire suppression, and
overgrazing from all roadless areas over
1,000 acres. The Alliance warned
that exempting forests in Alaska and the
Pacific Northwest from full
protection, would severely undercut any
policy.
______________________
MEXICAN GRAY WOLVES DECLARED
"EXPERIMENTAL, NON-ESSENTIAL"
On 1/12/98, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
issued a final rule
designating the Mexican gray wolves to be reintroduced
into the Gila
Headwaters Ecosystem of southeast AZ and southwest NM, as
"experimental,
non-essential." As such, the wolves will not be fully
protected under
the E.S.A. If they stray from designated areas for example,
they will be
trapped and returned, or killed. Federal agencies such as the
Forest
Service are required to treat experimental, non-essential
populations
as if they are only proposed as endangered species. The rule
becomes
effective 1/24/98.
______________________
PRIVATIZE OR
ENFORCE? SW CENTER AND RANDALL O'TOOLE DEBATE SOURCE OF
SPECIES
ENDANGERMENT
The Arizona Daily Star, the Livingston (Montana) Enterprise, the
Jackson
Hole Guide, the Idaho Post-Register, and the Colorado Springs
Gazette-
Telegraph printed dueling editorials by the Southwest Center
for
Biological Diversity and economist Randal O'Toole of the Thoreau
Institute.
Both agreed that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is failing
miserably to
save endangered species. O'Toole sees this a failure of the ESA
itself,
and calls for the privatization of animals to protect them. The
SW
Center argues that the Act is basically OK, but has been
systematically
abused by the Fish and Wildlife Service. The two editorials
are printed
below.
The Endangered Species Act
just needs a little enforcement
by Kieran
Suckling
At least five wild species will not ring in the new year. They
were
officially declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
in
September. One is the High Rock Spring chub, a beautiful little
fish
which lived in three springs on the California-Nevada border.
Its
extinction is a testament to the growing tendency of the U.S. Fish
and
Wildlife Service to put politics before the protection of
endangered
species."
The Service knew for years that the High Rock
Spring chub was going extinct.
By 1980, water pumping had wiped out two of
the three populations. But
afraid of angering the rich and powerful, the
agency ignored its mandate
under the Endangered Species Act, refusing to list
the chub as an
endangered species. In 1982, it let a businessman raise
exotic, predatory
fish in the remaining spring, an activity that would have
been illegal had
the chub been listed. The predators ate all the chubs. Now
the species is
gone, forever.
The Fish and Wildlife Service is failing
miserably to protect native plants
and wildlife. Anti-environmental
congressmen, backed by industry dollars,
have seized upon this failure to
claim that something is wrong with the ESA.
When not whipping up hysteria to
gut the law altogether, they propose
industry
friendly rewrites such as
the Kempthorne-Chafee bill currently before
Congress.
Even people who
should know better, such as Randal O'Toole, an economist with
the Thoreau
Institute, believe that because the Fish and Wildlife Service
regularly
violates the ESA (by poisoning prairie dogs, for example) the law
itself must
be broken. Doesn't it make more sense to conclude that the Fish
and Wildlife
Service is broken?
The biggest problem with the ESA is that it has never
been implemented. The
Fish and Wildlife Service did not originate as a
protector of endangered
species, and has never risen to the task. Under
Clinton, it has lost its
bearing altogether, prompting good biologists to
leave in droves. This
November, Ronald Nowak, a zoologist at the agency's
national headquarters,
quit in disgust. His resignation letter stated:
"...this agency is no longer
adequately supporting...the classification [i.e.
listing] and protection of
wildlife...and indeed, is often working against
this function." Nowak decried
the agency's "seemingly unrestrained use of
public funds to carry on
litigation
and other actions to thwart or delay"
listing and protection of species.
The Southwestern willow flycatcher is
another sad example. Although the Fish
and Wildlife Service has known since
1987 that the flycatcher is going
extinct, it took three lawsuits by the
Southwest Center for Biological
Diversity to make the agency list the bird as
endangered and identify its
critical habitat. Because extinction appeared
immanent, Service biologists
called for limits on public lands livestock
grazing and fundamental changes
in the management of publicly owned dams.
Instead, the agency authorized the
destruction of 30 percent of the entire
subspecies in the last two years,
never demanding, as required by the ESA,
that public agencies put wildlife
and ecosystems above the profits of private
corporations.
In a memo obtained through a lawsuit the agency's head
flycatcher biologist
warned: "the Southwestern willow flycatcher is being
piecemealed to
extinction; the Service is turning a blind eye...." When he
insisted that
changes in the management of Hoover Dam were necessary to avoid
extinction,
the review process was moved to the regional headquarters where
bureaucrats
authorized the destruction of the Hoover Dam population in the
summer of
1997.
The biologist quit the agency soon after.
When
another Fish and Wildlife Service biologist insisted that Lake Isabella
Dam
in California be reformed to prevent the extinction of the
flycatcher,
the
political drama played out again. The review process was
suddenly moved from
Sacramento to Washington, D.C. Rep. Calvin Dooley, R-
Calif., browbeat White
House and Interior officials, threatening to cause an
endangered species
train wreck during Clinton's re-election bid. The Fish and
Wildlife Service
buckled, approving the dam in 1997 with no management
changes, no references
to extinction, and no concrete mitigation
plans.
To understand why species continue to go extinct, you don't need
complex
theories of British common law. You need only look to the
$216,000
contributed
to Calvin Dooley's re-election campaign by
agribusiness. It's called
politics,
and it has ruled resources extraction
since Europeans set foot on this
continent.
Before we go monkeying
around with the Endangered Species Act, privatizing
animals, or exempting
corporations from the law, we should at least try to
implement the it. If we
keep the politicians and the big money corporations
out of it, it may just
work.
Privatize Creatures to Rescue
Them
By Randal O'Toole
Environmentalists
don't want to admit it, but the Endangered Species Act is
a failure. Passed
with the noble goal of recovering diminishing populations
of wildlife, the
means it uses remain cumbersome and ineffective.
At most, the law can
take credit for saving only two or three species, while
it has witnessed the
extinction of many more.
The prairie dog and black-footed ferret
illustrate the failings of the act.
The federal government declared war on
prairie dogs, a minor nuisance to
ranchers, in 1916. Eventually, federal
poison campaigns helped to wipe
prairie dogs from 98 percent of their
range.
Fortunately, prairie dogs are prolific. But by the mid-1970s, one
species,
the Utah prairie dog, was so reduced in numbers that the U.S. Fish
and
Wildlife Service listed it as endangered. The main threat to the
Utah
prairie dog was - guess who? - the Fish and Wildlife Service, which at
that
time was the federal agency in charge of wildlife pest control.
It
immediately stopped poisoning the Utah prairie dog and within a few
years
the happy rodents recovered.
Not so happy is the black-footed
ferret, a weasel-like predator that eats
prairie dogs and lives in prairie
dog burrows.
For many years, both before and after the act was passed,
the Fish and
Wildlife Service fretted about the ferret. But the agency never
seriously
considered ending its campaign to poison prairie dogs, which after
all was
the reason the ferret was endangered.
Finally, in 1984, the
last ten living ferrets were captured and the species
has since been bred in
laboratories and zoos. Even today, federal agencies
continue to poison
prairie dogs (except in Utah) and the ferret continues
to
struggle.
Now, environmentalists like to describe the Endangered
Species Act as ``the
strongest environmental law ever passed.'' But if it
isn't strong enough to
stop federal agencies from killing the prey on federal
land, what good is it?
Although most of the debate over the law in recent
times has been over
private property rights, most listed species are largely
threatened by
federal subsidies or programs. Meanwhile, the unfortunate
debate over
property rights has given private property the spoiler image. In
fact, it
may be species' salvation.
Consider that the real cause of
wildlife endangerment today is the fact we
treat wildlife as a commons. No
one, that is, has any incentive to protect
commonly owned fish and
wildlife.
It is time, therefore, to consider the possibility of private
ownership of
wildlife. Such ownership will not solve all endangered species
problems, but
it could help.
In some cases, people would be allowed to
own individual animals. Just as
dog breeders compete in sheep herding and
other exercises, black-footed
ferret owners might compete on their ability to
raise ferrets that can
survive in the wild.
In other cases, ownership
might extend to entire populations or even a whole
species. There are nearly
300 distinct stocks of Northwest salmon. Let's try
giving a few to Indian
tribes, sports or commercial fishers, or other
entities to see how well they
do in recovering them.
Ownership of wildlife should not seem a radical
idea. People own trees,
flowers, water, soil, rocks, land. Under British
common law, landowners can
own the fish and wildlife on their land.
In
view of that, the best thing Congress can do to save species is to let
the
Fish and Wildlife Service experiment with private ownership of fish
and
wildlife.
_____________________________________________________________________________
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