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\ SOUTHWEST BIODIVERSITY ALERT
#128
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4-27-98
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\ SOUTHWEST CENTER FOR
BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
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1.
JUDGE REJECTS CATTLE INDUSTRY EFFORT TO SCUTTLE GRAZING
SETTLEMENT-
250 MILES OF STREAMS SAFE...FOR NOW
2.
EDITORIAL: LANDMARK GRAZING SETTLEMENT NECESSARY TO PROTECT
LIFEBLOOD
OF SOUTHWESTERN FORESTS
3. URBAN SPRAWL COSTS
PIMA COUNTY $1.1 BILLION, TUCSON $2 BILLION
4. PYGMY OWL MAKES ROCK AND
ROLL HISTORY, TRIAL SET FOR 4-29-98
***** *****
***** *****
JUDGE REJECTS CATTLE INDUSTRY EFFORT
TO SCUTTLE GRAZING SETTLEMENT-
250 MILES OF STREAMS SAFE...FOR NOW
On
4-18-98, a federal judge refused to grant the livestock industry a
temporary
restraining order stopping a settlement agreement by the
Southwest Center,
Forest Guardians, and the U.S. Forest Service. The
agreement temporarily bans
cattle from about 250 miles of rivers on
57 grazing allotments. Because of
political momentum and Endangered
Species Act pressures, cattle will likely
be kept off the rivers
permanently.
The judge's denial affirms the
U.S. Magistrates opinion which states:
"As a starting point, the
importance of riverbed areas to wildlife in
the desert Southwest
cannot be overstated. Riparian areas serve as
critical habitat for
numerous threatened and endangered species...The
ESA flatly requires
that the USFS ensure that its programs and permits
do not jeopardize
the survival or critical habitat of any listed species
...(The Forest
Service) argues that granting the TRO would enjoin the
USFS from
performing actions which it feels are required under the ESA
...The
Court acknowledges that some permitees will suffer significant
economic hardships, but those hardships do not outweigh the sweeping,
definitive scope of the ESA. Additionally, if the USFS does not follow
through on its plans to exclude grazing on a shortened time line in
order
to protect listed species, and a violation of the ESA results,
the harm
could truly be irremediable."
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EDITORIAL: LANDMARK GRAZING SETTLEMENT
NECESSARY TO PROTECT LIFEBLOOD OF
SOUTHWESTERN FORESTS
The normally
conservative editorial board of the Albuquerque Journal wrote
an editorial on
2-22-98 praising a recent court settlement temporarily
banning cattle from
about 250 miles of streams on 57 grazing allotments
in the Gila Headwaters
Ecosystem. Calling the settlement a "landmark
agreement" to save "the very
lifeblood of New Mexico's southwestern
desert forests," the Journal editors
urged the ranching industry to accept
the "bitter pill." The full editorial
is printed below:
Forest Agency Must Ride Herd on
Grazing
It is a bitter pill
for ranchers to swallow, and some may quit the
business rather than take
it.
But it's a bitter prescription
that must be taken in order to
revitalize and restore streamside areas, whose
health directly affects
rivers and streams - the very lifeblood of New
Mexico's southwestern desert
forests. The remedy is a landmark
agreement that, for the first time in
more than a century, will keep cattle
out of stream beds in the Gila and
Apache-Sitgreaves national forests of New
Mexico and southeastern Arizona.
Without it, the prognosis for rivers, fish
and wildlife is not very good.
The
agreement was signed by the U.S. Forest Service, settling
combined lawsuits
filed last year by two environmental groups, the Santa
Fe-based Forest
Guardians and Tucson-based Southwest Center for Biological
Diversity.
Despite objections by ranchers,a federal judge has refused to
block the
agreement.
The stated purpose of
the lawsuits and the agreement is to get
cattle off 57 grazing allotments
until the Forest service conducts studies
to see whether grazing is harming
endangered fish, birds, animals and rare
plants. But the fact that
species are becoming endangered is a gauge of
the extent of the damage to
riparian areas themselves.
The
Forest Service has estimated that just 16 percent of its
Southwestern
riparian areas are up to its own standards; 27 percent fail to
meet them and
are not improving. The rest fail to meet them, but
are
improving.
Important to
wildlife, cattle, and most critical, clean water
supplies, riparian areas are
in poor shape because of grazing, water
diversion, the invasion of weed
species like salt cedar and urban
development. Cattle hurt stream banks
by eating young trees, fouling
water, overgrazing, and otherwise causing
erosion.
On forest grazing
allotments, stream beds are often dried out,
hoof-marked, eroded mud
flats. But a number of streamside ecology projects
started by the
Bureau of Land management in 1991, have demonstrated how
dramatically rivers
can rebound. Once sinking in mud, the Rio Senorito, a
tributary of the Rio
Puerco once considered one of the most degraded
riparian areas in the state,
flows clear over grass after cattle removal.
Grassy banks are more hospitable
to a wider variety of plants, bugs, birds,
fish and wildlife. Because streams
move more slowly along grassy banks, the
water table rises, additional plants
grow and sediment settles. This not
only improves wildlife conditions,
but recharges aquifers.
The cost
to affected ranchers of removing cattle from streamside
areas cannot be
underestimated. They will be forced to fence to keep
cattle out of the
streams - a major financial and physical undertaking- and
must set up
alternative water sources, like stock tanks and water
pipelines. Those in
wilderness areas have it even tougher; they must use
earthen stock tanks but
can't use any mechanized tools to create them. Many
ranchers in or out of
wilderness areas will cut their herds substantially
or
altogether.
Caren Cowan, director
of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association,
said the agreement marks a
shift in attitude on the part of the Forest
Service, upon whom ranchers
depend for grazing leases. However, agency
figures show that the number
of cattle permitted on the state's national
forests has been dropping for
decades - from about 180,000 in 1919 to about
104,500 in 19987 to about
92,000 in 1997.
New Mexico
ranchers have long been proud of the fact that family
cattle ranching has
been a highly sustainable and renewable resource-based
industry for more than
500 years.
But the sustainability
of ranching is dependent on the
sustainability of the land and its
life-giving streams and rivers.
ecologically sensitive management of
livestock grazing on public lands is
necessary to make sure forest lands and
rivers are healthy enough to be
used and enjoyed in the future by all members
of the public, including
ranchers.
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URBAN SPRAWL COSTS PIMA COUNTY $1.1
BILLION, TUCSON $2 BILLION
According to County Administrator, Chuck
Huckelberry, Pima County is
losing seven acres a day, and seven square miles
of desert a year to
urban sprawl. The county will have to shell out $1.1
billion in the next
ten years to provide infrastructure for new developments.
The City of
Tucson will have to spend $2 billion on transportation projects
and
repairs to simply maintain the existing population. The Center for Law
in
the Public Interest and the Sierra Club are pushing a ballot measure
to
establish limits to urban sprawl and to make developers, rather
than
tax payers, shoulder the cost of sprawl related
infrastructure.
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PYGMY OWL MAKES ROCK AND ROLL
HISTORY, TRIAL SET FOR 4-29-98
The endangered Cactus ferruginous pygmy owl,
bane of Tucson basin
developers, has made it onto a CD. The Town of
Tortolita, which
favors strictly controling growth to save the Sonoran
Desert, has adopted
the pygmy owl as its town mascot. To raise money, the
town is selling a
CD entitled "We Are the Town of Torotolita" with the
lyrics:
"We are the town of Tortolita
We won's
surrender one more acre of land
We've got the right...and we're
going to fight
Don't cross our line in the sand
Hear...the song of the mourning dove
Hear the coyote
howl
We're making the case...for some wide open
space
We'll share a home with the pymy owl."
On 4-29-98,
Defenders of Wildlife and the Southwest Center will present
its case against
the Amphi School District which plans to build a high
school in an occupied
pygmy owl territory over the objections of the
town of Tortolita and the U.S.
Fish & Wildlife Service. We won a
temporary restraining order last month
barring further construction
until the case is heard. The case is being
argued by John Fritschie of
Defenders of Wildlife and Eric Glitzenstein of
Meyers &
Glitzenstein.
_____________________________________________________________________________
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