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\ SOUTHWEST BIODIVERSITY ALERT
#137
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\
6-18-98
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\ SOUTHWEST CENTER FOR
BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
/
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1.
FOREST SERVICE AGREES TO KEEP CATTLE OFF ANOTHER 100 MILES OF
STREAMS- SOUTHWEST CENTER TO DROP INJUNCTION REQUEST.
2. SUIT FILED
AGAINST FOUR SO. CAL. NATIONAL FORESTS- ENTIRE FOREST
PLANS MUST
BE CHANGED TO PROTECT ENDANGERED SPECIES.
3. MEDIA: GLOVES ARE OFF IN
CATTLE WARS, LEOPOLD'S WARNING AGAINST
OVERGRAZING FINALLY BEING
HEARD.
****
***** ***** *****
FOREST
SERVICE AGREES TO KEEP CATTLE OFF ANOTHER 100 MILES OF
STREAMS- SOUTHWEST
CENTER TO DROP INJUNCTION REQUEST.
In a contract signed 6-18-98, the
Southwest Center agreed drop its
request for preliminary injunction against
29 grazing allotments in
return for the Forest Service agreeing to keep
cattle off about 100
miles of streams until it concludes a study of the
impacts of cattle
grazing on a suite of endangered fish, birds, mammals,
reptiles,
and plants.
Cattle are already off some allotments, others
will need to be fenced
or rested. In October, 1997, the Southwest Center
filed suit against
92 grazing allotments in the Gila River Basin. In April,
1998, the
Forest Service agreed to temporarily keep cattle off 230 miles
of
river on 54 allotments in this and a similar suit by Forest
Guardians.
Combined with today's agreemt, some 330 miles of river are
protected
from cattle. While the agreements are only set to last through
the
Endangered Species Act consultation, it is likely that
the
consultation will require the permanent cessation of grazing on
these
rivers.
The Southwest Center is represented by Jay Touchton of
Earthlaw.
____________________________
SUIT
FILED AGAINST FOUR SO. CAL. NATIONAL FORESTS- ENTIRE FOREST
PLANS MUST BE
CHANGED TO PROTECT ENDANGERED SPECIES.
On 6-18-8, the Southwest Center filed
suit against the San Bernardino,
Cleveland, Angeles, and Los Padres National
Forest for harming 39
endangered species including the Peninsular big horn
sheep, red legged
frog, California condor, San Diego thornmint, blunt-nosed
leopard
lizard, Pacific pocket mouse, and California gnatcatcher. Despite
the
incredible number and diversity of enangered species in
southern
California forests, the U.S. Forest Service has not consulted
with
the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and has not developed
comprehensive
species management plans.
The Center is represented by
Jay Touchton of Earthlaw and
Brendan Cummings
(Berkely).
_______________________________
MEDIA: GLOVES ARE OFF IN CATTLE WARS,
LEOPOLD'S WARNING AGAINST
OVERGRAZING FINALLY BEING HEARD
The following
exerpt is from a 6-13-98 front page story in the
Arizona Republic entitled
"Cattle War on the Range" by Steve
Yozwiak
"Punching
cattle is taking on a whole new meaning. The
gloves are off and, absent even
the pretense of compromise,
environmentalists are calling for the removal of
all cattle from
all rivers and streams in the Southwest...
Not satisfied by recent moves by federal agencies to fence off
cattle from
hundreds of miles of Arizona waterways, two
Tucson-based environmental groups
say that cattle must be
eliminated from thousands of miles of additional
river and
streams to allow ecosystems to return to their
natural
conditions.
Environmentalists contend that continued
cattle grazing in
the arid Southwest is unsustainable and, if allowed to
continue
could cause the decline and eventual extinction of up to
100
kinds of plants and animals.
"We've been looking at this
grazing problem from every
possible angle to find a compromise solution, and
there isn't
one," said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the
Southwest
Center for Biological Diversity. "Everywhere you look, there
are
species dying in these polluted rivers," said Sucking, whose
Tucson group
seeks the restoration of the entire Gila River
basin of western New Mexico
and southeastern Arizona.
Already there are 51 kinds of Arizona
plants and animals on
the federal Endangered Species List, and dozens more
could
become candidates for protection if additional changes in
public
lands management are not made, Suckling said.
With new proposals
last week to protect frogs and fish,
ranchers say there is greater pressure
than ever to sell out their
family homesteads to developers, who chop them up
into rural
ranchettes.
"We have done such a good job of
taking care of the land that
a lot of other people want to go there and buy a
piece of it,"
said Bas Aja of the Arizona Cattlemen's
Association."
Wheeler contends that removing cattle from
riparian areas
could cause vegetation to choke itself, leaving the
riparian
areas vulnerable to erosion and flooding. However, too
many
cattle can overgraze riparian areas, leading to the same kinds
of
problems, he said.
A delicate compromise between too many
and too few cattle
needs to be established, Wheeler said. "That's
what
management is all about," he said.
In recent months,
both the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S.
Bureau of Land Management have
ordered cattle to be
removed from hundreds of miles of rivers and streams,
mostly
in east-central Arizona, because excessive grazing had
degraded
waterways. Fences are being erected to keep cattle
out.
Environmentalists say their proposal to remove cattle
from
all rivers would be a comprehensive response to the damage
done by
cattle grazing, a problem first identified more than 70
years ago by a U.S.
Forest Service ecologist.
Aldo Leopold, considered by many to be
the father of the
modern conservation ethic in the Southwest, wrote an essay
in
1923 that said the climate of Arizona and New Mexico was too
dry to run
cattle without substantially damaging the natural
landscape.
"The lesson is that, under our peculiar Southwestern
conditions, any grazing
at all, no matter how moderate, is liable
to overgraze and ruin the
watercourse," wrote Leopold, whose
1949 A Sand County Almanac is considered a
seminal piece of
American biological study.
"What's happening
today is people are finally listening to the
70-year-old advice of Aldo
Leopold," Suckling said.
Last week, the Southwest Center and
another Tucson group,
Sky Island Watch, petitioned the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife
Service to put two new animals on the federal list of
endangered
species.
One is the Chiricahua leopard frog, which has vanished
from
the Santa Cruz and San Pedro rivers in southern Arizona, and
now is
found in isolated pools of the Chiricahua Mountains and
along the Mogollon
Rim and White Mountains...
The other is the Gila chub, a 10-inch
fish found in deep,
slow-moving pools of water. It is one of 25 kinds of
native
Arizona fish that are in decline. The chub is one of only
four
native Arizona fish not already protected under the
Endangered
Species Act. It already is extinct in New Mexico, and no
longer
is found in the north Valley's Cave Creek, nor in Fish Creek
east
of Phoenix in the Superstition Mountains...
As more species are
listed, more restrictions are put on
ranchers...But rather than act in
piecemeal fashion,
environmentalists contend that state and federal
agencies
should work to devise a comprehensive protection plan for
Arizona
wildlife, and that means removing the cattle from
rivers.
"I
think that's the only way we're going to stop having to list
more and more
species, and the only way we are going to get
true recovery (of wildlife
populations)," said Noah Greenwald,
rivers specialist for the Southwest
Center.
Environmental groups in recent years have used lawsuits
in
the federal courts to force the Fish and Wildlife Service to
grant
protections to the Mexican spotted owl, the Southwestern
willow
flycatcher, the jaguar, and other rare plants and animals.
Aja,
director of feeding affairs for the 2,000-member
Cattlemen's Association,
said at the rate things are going,
federal authorities could soon be listing
tumble bugs, insects
that live in cow dung. He says this only half jokingly,
noting
that the number of cattle on public lands is in decline because
of
increased regulation pushed by environmental
groups."
_____________________________________________________________________________
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