------ SOUTHWEST
BIODIVERSITY ALERT #121 ---------
\
3/11/98
/
\
/
\ SOUTHWEST CENTER FOR
BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
/
------------------------------------------
1.
TWO TOP FOREST SERVICE BIOLOGISTS BLAST SOUTHWEST LOGGING, GRAZING
2.
SUIT EYED TO PROTECT SILVERSPOT BUTTERFLY HABITAT IN BAY AREA
NATION'S FIRST HCP THREATENS NEW SPECIES
3. SKEEN (R-NM) BULLIES U.S.
FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE OVER GILA GRIZZLIES
4. PYGMY OWL SHAKES UP
TUCSON: "SONORAN DESERT PROTECTION ACT" UNVEILED,
COUNTY
SUPERVISORS TURN GREEN, DAILY STAR CALL FOR REGIONAL
PLANNING
*****
***** ***** *****
TWO TOP
FOREST SERVICE BIOLOGISTS BLAST SOUTHWEST LOGGING, GRAZING
The former
Southwest Regional Fisheries Coordinator has joined the former
head of
Threatened, Endangered and Sensitive Species for the Forest Service
in the
Southwest, in condemning overgrazing, logging, and destruction of
river
habitats.
The following article by Ian Hoffman appeared in the
Albuquerque Journal on
March 5, 1998. It was syndicated around the Southwest,
appearing in the
Arizona Republic under the title "Forest Service draws fire
of 2 biologists:
Wildlife loses out to logging, grazing, ex-officials
say."
Frustrated Biologists Blast Forest Service
Top-ranked
biologists Leon Fager and Jim Cooper bowed out of the U.S.
Forest Service's
Southwest office after years of frustration. But they aren't
going
quietly.
The former chiefs of the region's endangered species
and fisheries
programs
are openly condemning a senior management culture
they say is enslaved to
logging and grazing at alarming cost to fish,
wildlife and their habitats.
The two biologists said they grew
tired of having staff and money pulled
away from preserving wildlife to
instead defend logging and grazing against
citizen lawsuits.
"Livestock grazing on Southwestern National Forests is the major reason
that
ecosystems are deteriorating, species are near extinction and watersheds
have
lost much of their ability to yield high quality and quantities of
water,"
Fager, a 31-year service veteran, wrote in a Feb. 23 letter to Forest
Service
chief Mike Dombeck.
Fager urged Dombeck to fire Southwest line
managers who show
"unwillingness
to manage resources for the public good
instead of the financial benefit of
the livestock industry."
He also called on Dombeck to send an independent team of scientists
and
economists to the Southwest to study grazing, its financial costs and
its
harm
to the environment.
"The region is now 'circling
the wagons' and spending millions of taxpayer
dollars to defend a livestock
grazing program that has outlived its value and
needs to be phased out as an
inappropriate use of national forests in the
21st
century," Fager
wrote.
Cooper took early retirement in January as the region's
fisheries chief.
After 28 years of government work, he felt increasingly
isolated inside his
own agency and frustrated at its habit of reacting to,
rather than
preventing,
crises over wildlife and habitat.
"We
took all of our people out of the field and put tremendous emphasis
on
proving the Mexican spotted owl did not need to be listed (as an
endangered
species.) And the reason we did that was because it was a threat
to the
timber
program," Cooper said. "Congress is shrinking the dollars
down, and we are
putting all our effort into saving the timber industry and
the range
(grazing)
program We're entrenched in a reactive
mode."
Acting Southwest Regional Forester Gilbert Vigil defended
the region as a
good steward of natural resources.
"Considering our ecosystems -- which includes our communities -- we
don't
just move in there and make drastic changes overnight," he said. "I
think
we're making progress."
Cooper was quietly sidelined,
he said, when he defended a team of
fisheries
biologists who last year
issued a sharply worded indictment of grazing and
its
damage to riverside
forests and grasses.
Called riparian habitat, these corridors of
water and greenery are
shrinking in the Southwest. They make up less than 1
percent of the Forest
Service's 21 million acres in New Mexico and Arizona.
Eighty-four percent
fail
to meet the Forest Service grade for ecosystem
health.
Roughly 70 percent of the Southwest's rare plants and
animals live in
riparian areas or rely on them for food, shelter or breeding
ground. And
plainly they're essential for fish. "There's a lot of
rhetoric being tossed
around about recreation and riparian areas being so
valued. I hear a lot of
talk but I don't see the walk," Cooper said. "While
we're talking out of one
side of our mouths, internally we're slam-dunking
any biologist who speaks up
and says, 'Hey, there's something wrong.' And
that's basically why I left. I
spoke up a few times too
often."
For years, the service's Southwest Region has suffered
attack from the
outside world -- citizen lawsuits, protests and critical
press.
Just last year, insiders joined the pack. Fager and
Cooper are the highest
ranking dissidents yet, making their comments arguably
the most damaging.
They come at a critical time for the
Southwest Region. As the nation's new
battleground for endangered species, it
is fighting more environmental and
public-records lawsuits than any other
part of the country.
And most of its senior managers just bailed
out, including the region's
timber and grazing chiefs. Former Regional
Forester Charles Cartwright
resigned earlier under the cloud of sexual
harassment charges. In short, the
region's Old Guard is
thinning.
"Here's a chance to replace those folks with people
who are sensitive to
the demands of the public, and that's not for cows,"
Fager said in a phone
interview.
Dombeck has named Forest
Service lands director and lawyer Eleanor S.
"Ellie" Towns to replace
Cartwright. Towns is due in Albuquerque to take over
the region in
April.
It is Fager's hope that she or Dombeck will replace his
and Cooper's
former
immediate boss, Jim Lloyd, the Southwest Region's
Director of Wildlife, Fish
and Rare Plants.
"He does not
support the sensitive species program, hinders those working
for him and
seems to always support continued livestock grazing regardless of
its faults.
He sees himself as a 'team player' and a defender of the status
quo," Fager
wrote Dombeck.
The letter stunned Lloyd when a reporter faxed
him a copy on Wednesday. He
worked with Fager six years and with Cooper 20
years.
"If I'm being criticized as a team player with management
because I'm
communicating, well, then OK," Lloyd said. "What I've been trying
to do is
work with management to make change happen, rather than just being
on the
outside."
Lloyd called Fager and Cooper "valued
employees" and agreed that "timber
and range have taken a higher seat at the
table" than protection of natural
resources during his
tenure.
"We've been in litigation, we've been trying to change,"
he said. "But the
funding has decreased. We're grossly understaffed. It's
been a tremendous
workload, and things don't happen
overnight.
It's unclear what Dombeck or Towns will make of the
latest criticisms.
"I don't know what Mike will do. I think he'll
probably want to know more
about it and I think he'll come to us," said
Vigil, the acting forester.
___________________________
SUIT EYED TO PROTECT SILVERSPOT BUTTERFLY
HABITAT IN BAY AREA
NATION'S FIRST HCP THREATENS NEW SPECIES
On
3-5-98, San Bruno Mountain Watch and the Southwest Center filed
official
notice that they will sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for
failing to
designate critical habitat for the endangered Callipe Silverspot
Butterfly.
The butterfly was listed as endangered on 12-5-97 in response to a
threatened
lawsuit by the Southwest Center. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, however,
refused to designate "critical habitat" claiming that doing
so would alert
collectors of its presence. This is nonsense since the
critical habitat
designation would be less detailed than several already
available butterfly
habitat maps.
The real threat to the Callippe is
habitat destruction allowed under the
San Bruno Mountain habitat conservation
plan- the nation's first HCP. If the
Service designates critical habitat, it
will be forced to alter the terms of
the HCP, thus demonstrating that its new
No Surprises policy is a sham. The
new policy mandates that HCPs continue
unchanged, regardless of their effects
on endangered species.
The case
is being argued by Brian Gaffney and Celeste
Langille.
_______________________
SKEEN
(R-NM) BULLIES U.S. FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE OVER GILA GRIZZLIES
At a
3-11-98 House Appropriations Subcommittee meeting, Congressman Joe
Skeen
(R-NM) leveled not so veiled threats against the U.S. Fish &
Wildlife
Service's
budget, extracting a statement from the national
director that the agency has
no plans to reintroduce grizzly bears to the
Gila Headwaters Ecosystem. The
Southwest Center previously informed the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service
that an
adequate grizzly bear recover plan must
include reintroducing the species
to the
Southwest. A Forest Service
sponsored study in the 1970's indicates that
enough
habitat exists in Gila
Wilderness to serve as the core of
reintroduction
program.
__________________________
PYGMY OWL SHAKES UP TUCSON: "SONORAN DESERT
PROTECTION ACT" UNVEILED,
COUNTY SUPERVISORS TURN GREEN, DAILY STAR CALLS FOR
REGIONAL PLANNING
The endangered Cactus Ferruginous Pygmy Owl has sparked
a host of
lawsuits in the Tucson Basin and threats of many more, bringing
decades-
long development battles to a head with amazing speed and
promise.
Suddenly, county supervisors are calling for growth
controls,
infill tax incentives, ordinances to protect washes and native
vegetation,
protection of open space and important wildlife habitat, and
buffers
around public lands. Tucson enviros have formed a coalition to
develop
and pass the Sonoran Desert Protection Act which will preserve
an
interconnected system wildlife habitats throughout the basin. The
Arizona
Daily Star has published an amazing series of editorials encouraging
big
vision which will require fundamental changes in the
traditionally
developer controlled power structure.
In a 2-24-98
editorial- "Managing sprawl: Think big"- the Daily Star
applauded growth
reform ordinances, but encouraged the county board of
supervisors
to:
"think bigger. In lieu of scattershot initiatives it should
focus on
a more comprehensive approach to planning future development
and
conservation...What is needed also is a more systematic,
science-based
design for reconciling the county's growth explosion to
its precious
landscape. The board should keep its eye on the big
picture by
entertaining a thoughtful growth management concept that
will be put
forward at today's session by a consortium of local
environmental groups
....At the crux of this design (the Sonoran
Desert Protection Act) would
be the delineation of ``core'' protection
areas and ``linkage corridors''
for sensitive wildlife and vegetation.
These reserves and corridors would
eventually be protected using a
variety of techniques, ranging from
outright purchase to new zoning
(to provide larger lot sizes)to the use of
conservation easements. At
the same time other areas would remain open to
building. The result
would likely be a more predictable and farther-
reaching system for
balancing economic enterprise and ecological and
social
health."
In a 2-26-98 editorial- "Suddenly: Action on sprawl"- the Daily
Star asked:
"Is this it? Is Tucson finally going to receive the
more balanced, more
ecologically sustainable management of urban
sprawl it has needed for
years?"
The paper praised
a
"passel of new initiatives calls for ``comprehensive''
protection for
sensitive wildlife and desert areas. This alone, if
correctly implemented,
could define a whole new era in Tucson by
empowering the county to take a
truly systematic approach to
protecting critical ``core'' resource areas
while opening other areas
to appropriate development."
while dissing developers for trying to put
the breaks on the growing momentum
to reign in uncontrolled growth and
protect the Sonoran
Desert.
_____________________________________________________________________________
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