------ SOUTHWEST
BIODIVERSITY ALERT #124 ---------
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3-31-98
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\ SOUTHWEST CENTER FOR
BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
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1.
WOLVES REINTRODUCED TO GILA HEADWATERS ECOSYSTEM-
RANCHERS FILE
SUIT TO REMOVE THEM
2. WATER HOGS REFUSE ENVIRO REQUEST TO SAVE COLORADO
RIVER DELTA
3. ENVIROS PUSH FOR STATEWIDE GROWTH BOUNDARY BALLOT MEASURE
IN AZ
4. MORE FOREST SERVICE WHISTLEBLOWERS SPEAK OUT ON
OVERGRAZING,
LOGGING, ABUSE OF BIOLOGISTS IN
SOUTHWEST
*****
***** ***** *****
WOLVES
REINTRODUCED TO GILA HEADWATERS ECOSYSTEM-
RANCHERS FILE SUIT TO REMOVE
THEM
On 3-29-98, three families of wolves were released into the
Blue
Primitive Area on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, in the
Gila
Headwaters Ecosystem. The 11 wolves mark the return of the
Mexican
gray wolf to the wild after being nearly exterminated by ranchers
and
government predator control agencies.
Ranchers filed suit several
days before the release, seeking to
send the wolves back to the zoo. In an
attempt to mimick the recent
Yellowstone suit which resulted in an order to
remove introduced wolves,
the ranchers claimed that wild wolves already roam
southern Arizona which
is completely untrue. They also argue that the wolves
are actually wolf/
coyote hybrids.
________________________
WATER HOGS REFUSE ENVIRO REQUEST TO SAVE
COLORADO RIVER DELTA
On 3-11-98, California's Colorado River Board rejected
an appeal by 14
conservation groups and scientists to consider protecting the
estuaries
and delta of the Colorado River as it flows into the Sea of Cortez.
CA,
AZ, NV, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service
are developing a multi-species conservation plan for the Lower
Colorado
River, but have refused to consider the impact of dams, diversions,
and
pollution south of the border in Mexico, including the Colorado
River
Delta.
The request by Defenders of Wildlife, the Southwest
Center and others
was rejected by the mega-water interests dominating the
conservation plan
because they fear recognition of the delta will lead to
requirements for
minimum in stream flows and environmental spike flows from
Hoover Dam to
maintain and restore the delta
ecosystem.
__________________________
ENVIROS
PUSH FOR STATEWIDE GROWTH BOUNDARY BALLOT MEASURE IN AZ
The Center for Law in
the Public Interest and the Sierra Club have
announced a ballot measure to
institute Oregon style growth boundaries
zones around sprawling Arizona towns
and cities. The Act would require
cities and counties to adopt urban growth
management plans to limit urban
sprawl and protect natural areas. Plans
would establish urban growth
boundaries, limit development and new city
services outside of the
boundaries, require developers to pay for roads,
schools and other public
facilities to serve their new developments, and
provide for
protection of air and water quality. Plans and amendments
would
require voter approval, and citizens could also adopt plans
and
amendments by initiative.
__________________________
MORE FOREST SERVICE WHISTLEBLOWERS SPEAK OUT
ON OVERGRAZING, LOGGING,
ABUSE OF BIOLOGISTS IN SOUTHWEST
The following is
condensed from an article in the latest edition of
High Country News. Check
out our whistleblowers page to see many of the
internal Forest Service memos
mentioned: http://www.sw-center.org
Staffers Say Their Agency Betrayed the
Land
By Tony Davis
In his 28 years of working for the U.S. Forest
Service, fish biologist
Jim Cooper never thought of himself as an idealist.
Even when he was
starting out, he says, he thought a rising human population
would
continually stress the national forests, yet he hoped the
agency's
management could slow the deterioration of forests, wildlife and
the
Southwest's precious streams.
By this January, when he quit his
job in the Southwest regional
forester's office in Albuquerque, he had lost
that hope.
"I don't think in the final analysis we slowed anything
down," Cooper
said recently. "I'm not a fatalist. I don't think we will
automatically
go downhill. But you can't graze cows and cut timber the way
we've done
it and protect the resource. It doesn't work."
Cooper is
part of a growing band of ex-Forest Service biologists and
managers who are
adding their voices to the barrage of criticism from
environmentalists over
the Southwest region's handling of timber and
grazing issues. Five agency
officials in the region have quit or taken
early retirement in the past few
years, in part out of frustration with
the agency's management.
In
a dizzying series of internal memos, letters and interviews, they
have
painted an image of an agency circling the wagons against
environmentalist
"enemies" such as the Southwest Center for Biological
Diversity. The agency,
the former employees say, would rather win
lawsuits than restore battered
ecosystems.
Their revelations show that the debates that rage
throughout the Forest
Service are distilled in the arid Southwest. Here,
cattle have more
obvious impacts on fragile desert soils, grasses and
streamside
vegetation. Logging has also taken a heavy toll on the
Southwest's
upland forests.
It's no surprise, they say, that the
Southwest is a hotbed for
environmental lawsuits. Couple the climate with an
agency under
pressure from both pro-industrial senators like Pete Domenici
and
law-savvy environmentalists, and you have a recipe for
contention.
Fire From the Inside
Complaints that the Forest
Service has put timber and grazing before
wildlife have been bouncing around
the agency for years. An example
is a report put together in 1993 for
Jim Lloyd, the Southwest region's
director of wildlife, fish and rare plants.
Intended to give agency
staffers, state game and fish departments and
environmentalists an
anonymous place to voice their concerns, the report
contained numerous
complaints.
"In most meetings, wildlife is a
stepchild to the other resource areas,"
wrote one critic. "Only thing that
wildlife is getting done is timber
sales and timber support," wrote another.
"What wildlife program?" asked
a third. "Biologists are so busy chasing
timber sales and cattle allotments."
At the heart of the problem,
critics said, was an old-guard bureaucracy
that had dug in its boot heels and
refused to change with the times. In
1996, Jim Cooper joined five other
agency biologists and wrote Lloyd a
letter complaining about what they saw as
a militaristic, top-down
management style. "If we even so much as suggest
that we have different
views, we are shunned," they wrote. "Management seems
to hold the opinion
that the authority is not to be questioned about
decisions. Everyone on
this staff is burned out."
The turmoil
surfaced publicly last year, when a team of Forest Service
fish biologists,
led by veteran Jerry Stefferud of Phoenix, wrote a
report saying the agency
was letting pro-ranching sentiments interfere
with stream recovery. "We will
do anything to restore riparian ecosystem
health as long as it does not
affect (the rancher)," the fish team wrote.
In a separate paper, Stefferud
acknowledged managers had come up with
alternatives for keeping streams
healthy, but they seldom worked, because
"cattle grazing is a core value of
the agency and riparian health and
endangered species management is
not."
Then Regional Forester Charles "Chip" Cartwright wrote U.S. Fish
and
Wildlife Service regional director Nancy Kaufman in Albuquerque
disowning
the report's criticisms: "As much as we respect the opinions of
our
employees, the team leader's comments do in no way reflect the
opinion
of the Forest Service."
According to Cooper and others,
Stefferud's criticism earned him a
"window job," in which his travel and
research are limited. "He is on the
outside now," Cooper said.
Lloyd, Stefferud's director, explained the treatment: "He was very
critical
of management and that broke down communication and his ability
to convey
technical information."
Critics Speak Out
The apparent
consequences of speaking out within the agency make the
recent resignations
all the more significant.
Leon Fager, the agency's former regional
chief for endangered species,
is a 31-year service employee who retired last
December. He wrote Forest
Service Chief Mike Dombeck in February asking him
to fire Jim Lloyd and
one other top agency official "who demonstrate lack of
leadership and
unwillingness to manage resources for the public good instead
of for
the financial benefit of the livestock industry."
Fager also
asked Dombeck to set up a panel of independent scientists
to assess the
health of streams and wildlife in the Southwest and
recommend new restoration
policies.
Doug Barber, a former deputy supervisor of Arizona's Apache
Sitgreaves
National Forest and an even harsher critic, wrote Sen. Pete
Domenici a
letter contending that the federal grazing-permit system was "a
comatose
patient on life support, and it's time to turn the machine
off."
As an example, he cited a recent case in which the Arizona Game
and Fish
Department paid $100,000 to fence cattle from eastern Arizona
streams to
protect the threatened Apache trout. The 372 head of cattle, which
run
for 5 months a year, will generate $2,500 a year in grazing
fees.
"Did we solve the problem?" asked Barber. "Yes, but was it in
the most
effective way? Did we build the fences to protect the streams or
to
protect the cows?"
...
Still, critics like Sandy
Knight, who left her job as a biologist in
January after almost 20 years with
the agency, say it will take more
than studies and cooperation to solve the
agency's problems.
"I think the Forest Service has a crisis of
identity," Knight said.
"It has been an instrument of productivity so long,
and Congress has
wanted it to be."
While some staffers are trying
to push the agency toward responsible,
science-based management, she says,
the incentive system pulls them
in the other direction. "When people get
performance appraisals,
they are still asked how many lawsuits do they win,
how many timber
sales do they get out and how many AUMs (animal unit-months
of
livestock grazing) do they get out," she
says.
_____________________________________________________________________________
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