From: Kieran Suckling [ksuckling@sw-center.org]
Sent:
Friday, November 19, 1999 9:53 PM
To: Recipient list
suppressed
Subject: BIODIVERSITY ALERT
#214
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CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
<www.sw-center.org>
11-19-99
#214
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§
VICTORY FOR FOSSIL CREEK! HYDRO-POWER PLANTS TO
BE
DECOMMISSIONED, FULL WATER FLOWS RETURNED
§ SUIT SEEKS INFORMATION ON
DEATH OF ENDANGERED
WOLVES
§ NEW YORKER PROFILES CENTER
FOR BIOLOGICAL
DIVERSITY: "THE MOST IMPORTANT RADICAL
ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP IN THE COUNTRY"
VICTORY FOR
FOSSIL CREEK! HYDRO-POWER PLANTS TO BE
DECOMMISSIONED, FULL WATER FLOWS
RETURNED TO RIVER
After intense public pressure, protracted negotiations, and
thousands of
letters, phone calls, emails, and newspaper stories, Arizona
Public
Service has agreed to decommission both hydro-power plants on
central
Arizona's Fossil Creek and to return full water flows to the river by
2004.
The riverbed is to be completely restored by 20009.
For over 90
years, the entire 14 mile base flow of Fossil Creek has been
diverted to the
power company's Childs-Irving hydroelectric power plants,
depriving all
Arizonans of their most spectacular spring fed river, and the
Yavapai Apache
of their ancestral waterway. Return of full flows is desperately
needed to
recover the imperiled Razorback sucker, Colorado squawfish,
Gila topminnow,
Loach minnow, Spikedace and Bald eagle. Sycamores,
cottonwoods, ash and
alders will soon regenerate along the river banks
providing habitat for the
endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher.
Arizona Public Service signed
a historic decommissioning agreement
with the Center for Biological
Diversity, Northern Arizona Audubon, Sierra
Club, American Rivers, and the
Nature Conservancy on 11-17-99. The
following day, the Center organized a
celebration at the company's
downtown Phoenix office. Sixty people came out
to thank APS and
inaugurate a new era of dam decommissioning and removal in
the
Southwest. The Center also support efforts by the Sierra Club and
the
Glen Cayon Institute to decomission and remove Glen Canyon Dam
on the
Colorado River
_____________________
SUIT
SEEKS INFORMATION ON WOLF DEATHS, POSSIBLE
RELEASE OF WOLVES INTO GILA
WILDERNESS
On 11-11-99, the Center for Biological Diversity filed suit
against the
U.S.Fish & Wildlife Service because the agency refused to
provide
information under the Freedom of Information Act regarding the
disastrous recapture of seven members of the Pipestem wolf pack. The
wolves were rounded up after members of the pack attacked livestock on
public lands, apparently because the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
believes
that the livestock industry has a greater right to public lands
than native
species. Three of the captured wolves died of parvo while in
captivity,
likely as a result of stress. Two additional pups died of parvo
shortly
thereafter, likely as a result of contact with infected Pipestem
wolves.
The Pipestem pups are the only wild-born wolves to be
successfully
whelped in the Southwest in over 70 years. Instead of learning
survival
skills in forest, however, the two surviving pups are being fed by
humans
while anguishing in pens during much of their first year of life. One
uncaptured wild-born pup remains in the wild. The Fish & Wildlife
Service
has threatened to also recapture it and its mother.
The suit
seeks information regarding political pressure to round the wolves
up and
possible plans to reintroduce them into New Mexico's Gila
Wilderness. It is
being argued by Cliff Levenson (Phoenix).
___________________
NEW YORKER PROFILES CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY:
"THE MOST IMPORTANT RADICAL ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP IN THE
COUNTRY"
This
week's edition (11-22-99) of the New Yorker contains a multi-page
profile of
the Center for Biological Diversity which it calls "the most
important
radical environmental group in the country and a major force in
the life of
Arizona and New Mexico."
According the article:
"What's
unusual about the center is not so much its agenda, which is
shared by the rest of the so-called deep-ecology wing of the
environmental movement as its effectiveness...The Southwest and the
agency's which control so much of it, have moved in the
center's direction.
People who want to use the land to make
money have less influence;
people who want to preserve it as an
aesthetic treasure have more
influence. Precisely by being so
self-righteous and impossible, the
center has been an important
part of that change...They're outlaws.
Outlaws cause trouble,
alter the established order, and make authority
figures
angry."
_______________
Please consider
making a donation to support our efforts to protect
endangered species and
wild places. Join us at:
http://www.sw-center.org/swcbd/membership/member.html
_____________________________________________________________
Kierán
Suckling
ksuckling@sw-center.org
Executive
Director
520.623.5252 phone
Center for Biological Diversity
520.623.9797 fax
<http://www.sw-center.org>
pob 710, tucson, az 85702-0710