Subject: FW: SW BIODIVERSITY ALERT #154

      ____________________________________________________
      \       SOUTHWEST BIODIVERSITY ALERT #154          /
       \                    10-1-98                     /
        \                                              /
         \ SOUTHWEST CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY  /
          \        http://www.sw-center.org          /
           \________________________________________/

1.  JACKSON BROWN BENEFIT FOR SOUTHWEST CENTER!
    TICKETS AVAILABLE FOR OCTOBER CONCERT

2.  SUIT FILED TO PROTECT RARE CALIFORNIA PLANT

3.  KANGAROO RAT LISTED UNDER E.S.A., RARE GRASS SPECIES NOT

4.  MEDIA: SW CENTER ONE OF MOST SUCCESSFUL GROUPS IN COUNTRY

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1. JACKSON BROWN BENEFIT FOR SOUTHWEST CENTER-
   TICKETS AVAILABLE FOR OCTOBER CONCERT

2. SUIT FILED TO PROTECT RARE CALIFORNIA PLANT

3. KANGAROO RAT LISTED UNDER E.S.A., RARE GRASS SPECIES NOT

4. ASSOCIATED PRESS: SOUTHWEST CENTER.....

   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***

JACKSON BROWNE BENEFIT FOR SOUTHWEST CENTER!
TICKETS AVAILABLE FOR OCTOBER CONCERT
In a special benefit for the Southwest Center, Jackson Browne
will appear at Tucson's Music Hall (Tucson Convention Center)
on Tuesday, October 27, 1998 at 7:00pm.

Reserved seating is available through  Dillard's Box Office:
800-638-4253 and the Tucson Convention Center: 520-791-4266.
Special "Green Circle" tickets, which include a post concert
reception hosted by the Southwest Center are available by calling
520-623-5252 x305.

100% of all ticket sales will go towards the protection endangered
species in the American Southwest and northern Mexico.
     ______________________

SUIT FILED TO PROTECT RARE CALIFORNIA PLANT
On 10-1-98, the Southwest Center and the California Native Plant
Society filed suit to list the San Diego ambrosia (Ambrosia
pumila) as an endangered species. The two groups filed a petition
to protect the species under the Endangered Species Act on 1-9- 97,
but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has refused to process
the petition because of political pressure.

The ambrosia is endemic to San Diego and Riverside Counties. It
is threatened by habitat loss including urban sprawl. The case is
being argued by Craig Sherman.
     _______________________

KANGAROO RAT LISTED UNDER E.S.A., RARE GRASS SPECIES NOT
On 9-24-98, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a final rule
listing the San Bernardino kangaroo rat as an endangered species.
It was temporarily listed as endangered on an emergency basis on
1-27-98. The SBK rat has been wiped out of 95% of its historic
range due to dam construction, flood control, mining and
agribusiness. It's habitat, alluvial fan scrub, requires natural
flooding regimes to regenerate. The Southwest Center has filed a
notice of intent to sue the Army Corps of Engineers over the
impacts of the nearly completed Seven Oaks Dam which will
wipe out a large segment of the species' remaining habitat. The
agency has thus far refused to analyze the total impacts of the dam
on the kangaroo rat, instead looking at only small portions of the
overall project. All known SBK rat populations are currently
threatened with destruction.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, on 9-25-98, withdrew its
proposal to list Parish's alkali grass (Puccinellia parishii) as
an endangered species. The rare plant occurs in 30 widely separated
Upopulations in CO, NM, AZ, and CO. It appears to be more
common than previously thought.
     _________________________

MEDIA: SW CENTER ONE OF MOST SUCCESSFUL GROUPS IN COUNTRY
The following Associated Press story by Art Rothstein went out
over the wire on 9-8-98.

     Arizona Environmental Group a Trend-Setter in Court Battles

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - It's Wednesday morning and time for the weekly
staff meeting at the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity.

If it weren't for the workboots and Birkenstocks on the
participants and the setting - a living room in a converted house -
you could mistake this for a war room. Three dogs look on as staff
members plot the week's strategy in a lively give-and-take, sitting
on worn sofas and chairs amid cluttered desks.

Kieran Suckling, the group's leader, has petitions, lawsuits and
press conferences in mind. One is a potential $8 billion Los Angeles
wetlands development for which DreamWorks SKG, the movie studio
owned in part by filmmaker Steven Spielberg, has been touted as a
possible anchor.

The exchange moves on to grazing allotments in the Gila River
basin of Arizona and New Mexico, then to the plight of species
including the yellow-billed cuckoo, Chiricahua leopard frog, Rio
Grande trout and the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl.

Then it's on to a favorite subject: the U.S. Forest Service.

"I love the Forest Service for what it could be, but hate it for
what it is," Suckling says. "They're managing for cattle and elk but
nothing else. On wildlife, the attitude is, `We can't do that."'

It might look like the furthest thing from a slick operation, but
the Southwest Center has combined skillful research, savvy public
relations and adept legal maneuvering to become one of the most
successful environmental defense groups in the nation.

Since it was founded five years ago, the center has won 44
lawsuits and lost 11; 30 more are pending. All this without having
a lawyer on the staff.

"I think they are the most effective environmental group in the
country, bar none," says Mark Hughes, director of the University of
Denver's Earthlaw environmental law clinic, who has represented the
center in 40 court cases.

The Southwest Center has won endangered status for the jaguar
and the pygmy owl and achieved critical habitat designation for the
Loach minnow, spikedace and the Huachuca water umbel, protecting the
habitat for those species.

It shut down commercial logging in Arizona's and New Mexico's
national forests for more than a year over lack of critical habitat
designation for the threatened Mexican spotted owl. Earlier this
year, the U.S. Forest Service agreed to bar cattle from 330 miles
of streams on 80 grazing allotments on those 11 forests.

Peter Galvin, Suckling and Todd Schulke were working as spotted
owl surveyors for the U.S. Forest Service in Catron County, N.M., in
1989 when they decided to create their own research group - the
Greater Gila Biodiversity Project. Four years later, they launched
the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity, keeping a focus on
scientific research but also seeing the need to litigate to help
save endangered and threatened plants and animals.

"One of the things we were told early on when we worked for the
Forest Service was that government workers, and the Forest Service
especially, understand only two things: bad press and litigation,"
said Galvin, a biologist.

Today, the center has become so adept at attracting sound
scientific and free legal assistance - and refining the ability
to get the courts to make recalcitrant agencies enforce the
Endangered Species Act - that some foes acknowledge grudging
respect. Others simply seethe at mention of the center.

"You'd have to say they're very effective," says Alan Lurie,
executive vice president of the Southern Arizona Home Builders
Association. "They get a lot of things done. They win a high
percentage of their lawsuits."

The center's efforts on behalf of the 7-inch cactus ferruginous
pygmy owl have stalled construction of a Tucson-area high school
and  have threatened other development projects.

Lurie sees Southwest Center staff members as zealots focused on
halting all growth. He contends that some or all have "trained at
the altar of Earth First! with some of the most radical
environmentalists that this country has known."

But opponents shouldn't take the center lightly, he said.

A key issue for a lot of people, including critics of the
Southwest Center, is whether its mission is to put an end to
cattle grazing on public lands. In Arizona there is a lot at stake.

"They want to get rid of grazing. Period. That's it. End of
discussion. They have no interest in meeting with us at all," said
C.B. "Doc" Lane, director of natural resources for the Arizona
Cattlemen's Association.

Suckling, its executive director, said the center's goals remain to
help protect wildlife and restore damaged ecosystems. No hidden
agenda, no trying to shut down all logging or cattle-grazing, though
he firmly believes that removing cattle from riparian areas will be
the key to saving those increasingly rare zones that act as oases
for migratory wildlife.

Suckling, 33, a philosophy doctoral candidate, recalled that when
he was working as an owl surveyor, "I had the naive idea that when
we found the spotted owl it would be protected. But the logging just
kept going on. The owls which were supposed to be protected were
being killed by logging."

Galvin said: "We spent a lot of time together drinking coffee in
the early afternoon, chatting and realizing there was no Southwest
focus" by any environmental group, even as organizations in other
regions were making ecological headway.

The group moved to Silver City, N.M., changed its name, then
relocated to Tucson.

Today, much of the center's work involves reviewing scientific
literature on academic or governmental ecology research and doing
comprehensive status reports on species that are in danger.

_____________________________________________________________________________

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