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\ SOUTHWEST BIODIVERSITY ALERT
#148
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\
8-20-98
/
\
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\ SOUTHWEST CENTER FOR
BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
/
\ http://www.sw-center.org
/
\________________________________________/
1. STUDY RANKS GRAZING AS
MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR TO THE IMPERILMENT OF MANY SPECIES
2. SHOULD THE US
FOREST SERVICE CONTINUE TO SELL TIMBER FROM OUR NATIONAL
FORESTS?
3. THE CHILLING OF GOVERNMENT COMMUNICATION WITH THE
PUBLIC
4. HUMAN ACTIVITIES ARE LINKED TO WEATHER
PATTERNS
*****
***** ***** *****
STUDY
RANKS GRAZING AS MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR TO THE IMPERILMENT OF MANY SPECIES
A
recent study attempts to show the reasons for the current plight of so
many
species. It looked at 1880 species and presented a summary of the
percentages
of species that are imperiled by habitat loss, alien species,
pollution,
overexploitation, and disease. Not surprisingly, habitat
destruction and
degradation emerged as the most pervasive threat to
biodiversity,
contributing to the endangerment of 85% of the species
analyzed. Competition
with or predation by alien species is the
second-ranked threat in the overall
analysis, affecting 49% of imperiled
species.
Looking at US listed
species only they ranked the primary causes of habitat
destruction. Among
extractive land uses, logging, mining, and grazing have
contributed to the
demise of 12%, 11%, and 22 %, respectively, of the
endangered species
analyzed. Livestock grazing is particularly harmful to
plants, affecting 33 %
of endangered plant species compared to 14% of
endangered animals; the
difference is highly significant (chi square =
51.95, d.f. = 1,
P0.001).
The study can be found in BioScience, Saturday, August 1, 1998,
Vol. 48,
No. 8, titled Quantifying threats to imperiled species in the
United
States: Assessing the relative importance of habitat destruction,
alien
species, pollution, overexploitation, and
disease.
___________
SHOULD THE US FOREST SERVICE CONTINUE TO SELL
TIMBER FROM OUR NATIONAL
FORESTS?
National Survey conducted by Market
Strategies, Inc.* and Lake, Sosin,
Snell, Perry and Associates. Inc. N=800
Registered Voters June 22-25, 1998
Q. There has been a national debate
about whether the U.S. Forest Service
should continue to sell timber from our
national forests. Do you favor or
oppose continuing to allow timber
companies to log in our national forests?
(IF Favor/Oppose ASK:) And do
you STRONGLY (favor/oppose) this or just
SOMEWHAT (favor/oppose)
this?
Strongly favor 7%
Somewhat
favor 17
Neither
[VOL] 2
Somewhat oppose
19
Strongly oppose 50
Don't
know
5
Refused
*
Collapsed:
Total GOP
IND
DEM
Favor
24% 33%
25%
16%
Oppose
69
59 70
79
Neither/DK/Ref
7
8
5 5
Note: Even voters in the
West, by a two-to-one margin (62%-31%), oppose
continuing to allow timber
companies to log in national forests. Opposition
is 70% or more in other
regions of the country.
* Market Strategies, Inc. has conducted polls for
Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole,
George Bush, and Gerald
Ford.
__________
THE CHILLING OF GOVERNMENT COMMUNICATION WITH THE
PUBLIC
The witch hunt led by Don Young (R. AK) has cultivated numerous
scathing
commentaries by local and national press. He are two such editorials
from
the Washington Post, and Lewiston Tribune (ID).
Washington
Post
Next, Trees That List Left
By Al Kamen
Friday, August 14,
1998; Page A23
House Resources Committee Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska)
was concerned about
a U.S. Forest Service decision in April to settle an
enviro lawsuit over
grazing on Forest Service lands in Arizona and New
Mexico.
The enviros had sued, saying that cows being allowed to graze
were messing
up the stream beds, endangering flora and fauna in an
ecologically fragile
area.
The Forest Service agreed to fence off the
sensitive areas. But Young was
hearing that the agreement was biased against
ranchers. He wrote Southwest
regional forest chief Eleanor S. Towns last
month with 19 questions, mostly
concerning such details as who's going to pay
for construction and
maintenance of the fences.
But Question 13 has
caused a ruckus: "Is the Forest Service aware of
whether any of their
employees are members of any organizations that are
involved in these cases
or contribute money to any of these organizations
involved in these cases,
including but not limited to Forest Guardians,
Southwest Center for
Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, the Wilderness
Society or any local
affiliated organization?"
McCarthyism, shouted the enviros, saying the
move was a witch hunt.
Not at all, Young said in a letter to a newspaper
out there. He just wanted
to know if Towns was "aware" of any employees out
there with enviro
connections. "This only requires a yes or no answer," he
wrote. "Again, no
names were requested and none are expected."
Just
seeing if she's a good supervisor. Alas, she may not become "aware."
Tom
Amontree, spokesman for the Agriculture Department, which oversees the
Forest
Service, said in response to a question about this: "The First
Amendment
prohibits us from hauling in our employees and interrogating them
about their
personal interests. That being said, the Forest Service is a
professional
agency that carries out forest policy in a professional manner
without regard
to individual beliefs."
The same must hold true for all those former
timber industry employees who
are now staffing key congressional
committees.
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post
Company
Editorial, Lewiston Tribune (ID)
8/10/98
Don Young
hunts witches in American Southwest
Jim Fisher
Are you now or have
you ever been a member of the Sierra Club?" That is
apparently exactly what
Alaska Republican Don Young, chairman of the House
Resources Committee, wants
to know from every employee of the U.S. Forest
Service in Arizona and New
Mexico. Young has sent a letter to Eleanor
Towns, the Forest Service's
southwest regional forester in Albuquerque,
demanding to know which employees
are members of or have any contact with
environmental groups. And he has
given Towns a deadline of Aug. 15 to
provide the information.
What
then, a list of magazines to which each employee subscribes?
What set
Young off on this witch hunt is the settlement of a lawsuit over
grazing
regulations in the 11 national forests in the two states. In
settling the
suit brought by environmental groups, the Forest Service has
agreed to
prevent cattle from tramping and pooping in 330 miles of streams
on 80
grazing allotments. That imposition on what many ranchers consider
their
God-given
rights led ranchers to picket in New Mexico last month, and Young
to make
this ridiculous demand.
Young spokesman Steve Hansen says the
reason behind the letter is a
suspicion that some Forest Service workers
might have illegally slipped
documents to environmentalists to help their
suit. It's hard to imagine
which government documents would not be available
to any member of the
public that pays for their production. But if it is
possible that the
Forest Service is charged with
protecting state secrets,
you don't investigate possible lawless conduct by
one by invading the privacy
of every employee.
Presumably Forester Towns and other people in major
decision-making roles
in her organization avoid the kind of affiliations that
might call their
impartiality into question. But the government can no more
regulate the
private organizational activities of all its employees than it
can require
them to belong to one political party. And it is mystifying how
someone so
unaware of
Americans' basic constitutional rights could be
entrusted with a
chairmanship as important as Young's.
But then, this
isn't the first screwy thing we have heard from Young.
Earlier this year, he
used an opportunity to speak to Idaho legislators to
badmouth compromise
legislation written by Sens. Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho
and John Chafee of
Rhode Island reforming the federal Endangered Species
Act. And during his
address, he warned of the real intentions of
environmentalists,
which he
is apparently able to divine on his own.
"They want you off the land," he
said. "They want to put you in the cities.
What they really want is
collective people in large areas so they can
control them."
Coming
from a guy who now wants to know what government workers are doing
in their
private lives, that's a good one. When it comes to attempts to
control
people, environmentalists could apparently learn a lot from Don
Young.
___________
HUMAN ACTIVITIES ARE LINKED TO WEATHER
PATTERNS
Examining some basic data sets in a way that has never been
tried before,
ASU climatologists Randall Cerveny and Robert Balling, Jr. have
found proof
for what many weekend boaters have secretly suspected: rain is
most likely
to occur along the Atlantic coast on the weekend and the weather
is most
likely to be better on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. The most
obvious
culprit is the "natural" cloud-seeding effect created by the massive
drift
of East Coast pollution, which also follows a well defined weekly
cycle.
The human constructed 7 day week is not a natural cycle, thus they
conclude
the weather patterns are being influenced by human factors. The
human
factor creating this influence is thought to be Pollution, advected
from
the NE metropolitan area of North America. Data from Canadian
monitoring
stations show that pollution over the coastal NW Atlantic also
have a
weekly cycle -- higher values of carbon monoxide and ozone in the
late
week, lower values of pollution in the early week.
Cerveny and
Balling's study can by found in the August 6 issue of Nature. A
simplified
version can also be found on the World Wide Web at
http://www.asu.edu/clas/geography/nature
____________________________________________________________________________
Shane
Jimerfield
Tel: 520.623.5252,
ext. 302
Assistant Director
Fax:
520.623.9797
Southwest Center for Biological Diversity
email: sjimerfield@sw-center.org
PO Box 710, Tucson AZ
85702-0710
http://www.sw-center.org