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