Subject: FW: SW BIODIVERSITY ALERT #132

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      \       SOUTHWEST BIODIVERSITY ALERT #132          /
       \                    5-14-98                     /
        \                                              /
         \ SOUTHWEST CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY  /
          \__________________________________________/
         
1. SOUTHWEST CENTER TO SUE FOUR CALIFORNIA FORESTS OVER SYSTEMATIC
   IMPACTS TO ENDANGERED SPECIES

2. FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE REFUSES TO CONSIDER YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO
   FOR ENDANGERED SPECIES PROTECTION: ONE MORE E.S.A. SUIT TO FOLLOW

3. AZ DAILY STAR: COLORAD RIVER PLAN MUST INCLUDE RESTORATION OF
   COLORADO RIVER DELTA, WATER FLOWS TO MEXICO

4. ARMY CORPS TO APPROVE TOXIC WASTE PILE ENDANGERING TWO ENDANGERED
   SPECIES: WRITE TODAY, STOP THEM BEFORE THEY KILL AGAIN!

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SOUTHWEST CENTER TO SUE FOUR CALIFORNIA FORESTS OVER SYSTEMATIC
IMPACTS TO ENDANGERED SPECIES
The Southwest Center has formally notified the Los Padres, San
Bernardino, Angeles, and Cleveland National Forests that it will
file suit to force a review the systematic impacts of their
entire Forest Plans on 51 endangered species including the
red-legged frog, Southwest arroyo toad, steelhead trout, California
condor, San Bernardino bladderpod, Laguna Mountain skipper,
Southwestern willow flycatcher. Southern California's extremely
diverse national forest are under assuault from overgrazing,
road construction, development, exotic species introduction, dams,
and industrial-scale tourism.
     _______________________________

FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE REFUSES TO CONSIDER YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO
FOR ENDANGERED SPECIES PROTECTION: ONE MORE E.S.A. SUIT TO FOLLOW
The Southwest Center filed a formal notice on 5-14-98 that it will
sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for refusing to consider
protecting the yellow-billed cuckoo under the Endangered Species
Act. The Southwest Center and 21 western environmental groups
petitioned to list the cuckoo as endangered on 2-9-98. The agency,
however, has refused to process the petition, citing a Babbitt
policy prohibiting the acceptance of new ESA petitions because the
agency has "higher priorities."

Ironically, the ruling on the cuckoo was due on May 11th, the same
day Babbitt announced plans to delist 29 species. So while the
agency is too busy to protect declining species, it is spending its
time and money decreasing protection for other species.

The yellow-billed cuckoo is dependent upon riparain forests
throughout the West. Grazing, development and dam-building have
extirpated the species from most its range.
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AZ DAILY STAR: COLORAD RIVER PLAN MUST INCLUDE RESTORATION OF COLORADO
RIVER DELTA, WATER FLOWS TO MEXICO
The following editorial supporting efforts by the Southwest Center and
Defenders of Wildlife to ensure that management of dams and water
diversions on the lower Colorado River are changed to ensure a steady
supply of water to Mexico and the once magnificent Colorado River
Delta appeared in the Arizona Daily Star on 5-6-98. Lack of fresh
water flows have dessicated the delta and devastated edangered species
and shrimp fisheries in the Gulf of California.

Don't ignore Colorado delta

A river and its delta are inseparable; to heal one you must heal the other.

For that reason, environmentalists are right to urge that a multi-player
drive to repair the sad, subjugated Colorado River also address the state of
the river's dried-out Mexican delta.

Only through such a widening of regard can there be a true restoration of
this critical river.

At present, the so-called Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation
Program remains incomplete, if welcome.

Established last year, the program embodies a hopeful bid by more than two
dozen state, federal, Indian and utility interests to collaborate on a
50-year scheme for protecting the species and resources of the great river.

Since 1909 the Colorado has been turned by dams and diversions into the most
engineered river in the world. Now at last a sizable array of stakeholders
is working to save some 102 river-dependent rare birds, fish and mammals
from the extinction the engineering threatens.

All told the project represents the widest-ranging push going to respond to
the ecological crisis that has turned the once-wild Colorado into a string
of biologically-impoverished reservoirs.

Yet for all this the Lower Colorado conservation program falls short because
it stops short.

Consider that while the river that begins in northwestern Colorado continues
into Mexico - or at least used to - the multi-species conservation effort as
of now ends at the U.S./Mexico border.

This occurs because the species effort's steering committee is resisting
inclusion of the river's delta in the program's early study phase. In
effect, those plotting the river's future - no doubt fearing the
identification of new water needs - are refusing to deliberate on the
conversion, mostly by U.S. water diversions, of the delta's once-vast
complex of marshes into a wasteland of salt flats.

Which is to say: The Southwest's major effort to apply conservation
principles to managing the river seems intent on ignoring that the river
does not reach the sea, and only rarely receives in its delta the water
flows that once made it, as the conservation pioneer Aldo Leopold wrote in
1922, ``a milk-and-honey wilderness . . . a paradise of birds.''

Clearly, this myopia makes no sense. As a matter of fairness, such
exclusivity perpetuates the disregard for Mexico of 90 years of American
river management. As conservation, the steering committee's narrowness flies
in the face of the fundamental principle of ecology that calls for land
managers to look to the good of the whole system, not just its parts.

And so the river committee should accede to the suggestions of some of its
own members - including the well-regarded Defenders of Wildlife - to
consider in its thinking the 90 miles of the Colorado that lay dry and
troubled in Mexico.

Badly in need of water, and respect, those 90 miles remain crucial to the
success of any effort to re-create some of the integrity of the whole river.
There can, finally, be no true restoration of the Lower Colorado without
restoration of the river's delta, and its run to the sea.
     _________________________________

ARMY CORPS TO APPROVE TOXIC WASTE PILE ENDANGERING TWO ENDANGERED
SPECIES: WRITE TODAY, STOP THEM BEFORE THEY KILL AGAIN!
The Army Corps of Engineers is proposing to approve a plan by ASARCO,
Arizona's largest polluter, to construct a new tailings pile at its
Green Valley Mission Mines complex south of Tucson. The toxic dump
would eventually rise to 3,000 feet. Construction will require the
transplanting of over 300 endangered Pima pineapple cacti and destroy
suitable habitat for the endangered Cactus Ferruginous pygmy owl.

Despite the enormous effects that will result, the Corps has made a
"preliminary determination" that an EIS is not necessary. You have
until NEXT FRIDAY, May 22nd to tell the Corps that issuance of a
404 dredge and fill permit which harms two endangered species and
allows the construction of huge toxic waste pile requires a full
blown Environmental Impact Statement:

  U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
  ATTN:  Marjorie Blaine, Regulatory Branch
  5205 E. Comanche Street
  Tucson, AZ  85707 

_____________________________________________________________________________

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