POWER PLANT NEXT TO IRONWOOD FOREST NATIONAL MONUMENT REJECTED

FEDS REFUSE TO PROTECT HABITAT FOR WORLD'S MOST IMPERILED WHALE

MASSIVE UTAH TIMBER SALE CHALLENGED

GRAZING RESTRICTIONS GO INTO EFFECT TO PROTECT MOJAVE DESERT

SUIT CHALLENGES MASSIVE CALIFORNIA DEVELOPMENT


POWER PLANT NEXT TO IRONWOOD FOREST NATIONAL MONUMENT REJECTED

In January, the Arizona Corporation Commission denied a corporate bid to build a massive power plant, with 180-foot tall smoke stacks, less than five miles from the newly-designated Ironwood Forest National Monument. The Toltec power plant would have spewed thousands of tons of pollutants and consumed thousands of acre-feet of groundwater per year in the one of the worst areas of subsidence and fissuring in the country.

Unfortunately, over 15 new gas-fired plants have already been approved in Arizona, doubling the state's current electrical generating capacity. Several other plant and powerline proposals are pending. Energy corporations, many of them shadowy fronts for anonymous investors and parent companies, will make billions selling the excess energy to California, while energy executives and Arizona Governor Jane Hull are vigorously lobbying to open up lucrative Mexican markets. The Center will be working hard in the months ahead to fight these schemes and to ensure that Arizona does not become the "power farm" of the west.


FEDS REFUSE TO PROTECT HABITAT FOR WORLD'S MOST IMPERILED WHALE

On 2-20-02, the National Marine Fisheries Service denied a petition by the Center for Biological Diversity to establish protected habitat areas for the North Pacific right whale in the Bearing Sea. This right whale is the most endangered large whale on earth.

The Service asserted that the biological requirements of the right whale are not sufficiently understood, despite published data from the agency's own biologists about the whales' biological and ecological needs and threats, and recommendations from its own right whale recovery team. Although no longer commercially hunted, northern right whales are killed each year by human activities, including being struck by ships as they feed, sleep, and play at the ocean's surface; becoming entangled in commercial fishing gear, pollution, and habitat modification.

The Center intends to sue the agency for failing to designate critical habitat for the North Pacific right whale.

For more information click here...


MASSIVE UTAH TIMBER SALE CHALLENGED

The Center for Biological Diversity and eight other groups have appealed a decision by the Dixie National Forest to log 10 million board feet of spruce-fir and aspen trees on over 4,000 acres of high-elevation forests within the Aquarius Plateau. The sale is the first component of a larger logging-based 80,000-acre project inappropriately titled the "Aquarius Ecosystem Restoration Project."

The Aquarius Plateau rises over 6,000 feet above Utah's world-renowned canyon country, including Capitol Reef National Park and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and is covered by rich forests of spruce, fir and aspen forests, contains numerous subalpine grasslands, wet meadows and high-elevation lakes.

For more information click here...


GRAZING RESTRICTIONS GO INTO EFFECT TO PROTECT MOJAVE DESERT

On 3-01-02, the Bureau of Land Management enacted grazing restrictions to protect the desert tortoise from livestock grazing, implementing a Department of Interior ruling that upheld science-based arguments for endangered species protection and recovery. The ruling seasonally limits livestock grazing on over 500,000 acres of fragile public lands habitat within the 11.5 million acres in the California Desert Conservation Area managed by the BLM.

The grazing restrictions arise from a legal settlement between the BLM, the Center for Biological Diversity, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Sierra Club. Livestock mow down spring annual plants essential to tortoise health and reproduction, and trample burrows, killing tortoises inside and wrecking their homes. This landmark agreement helps BLM partially implement the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's 1994 Desert Tortoise Recovery Plan recommendations for livestock

For more information click here...


SUIT CHALLENGES MASSIVE CALIFORNIA DEVELOPMENT

The Center for Biological Diversity, Save Our Danville Creeks, and Alameda Creek Alliance filed a lawsuit in federal court on 3-15-02 against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, challenging improperly approved federal permits issued for a sprawling housing development project along East Alamo Creek in Danville, CA. The proposed Wendt Ranch development would destroy, degrade, and fragment critical habitat for the California red-legged frog, eliminate valuable wetlands and riparian areas along East Alamo Creek, contribute to soil erosion, and contaminate water resources. It would also impact habitat for other sensitive species such as the California tiger salamander, vernal pool shrimp, and the San Joaquin kit fox.

The suit is being argued by Wild Earth Advocates.


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