Subject: SW BODIVERSITY ALERT #35
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Southwest Biodiversity Alert #35
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southwest center for biological
diversity
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ksuckling@sw-center.org
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http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/sw-center
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1.
ENVIROS INTERVENE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA DEVELOPMENT BATTLE
2. APPEAL
VICTORY: ARIZONA TIMBER SALE WITHDRAWN
3. EDITORIAL: ENVIROS HAVE RIGHT
TO 'UNLOG' SALVAGE TIMBER SALE
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1. ENVIROS INTERVENE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA DEVELOPMENT
BATTLE
The Southwest Center for Biological Diversity, the Carmel
Mountain
Conservancy, and Friends of Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve
have
filed to intervene in a suit brought by two developers against
the
City of San Diego. A rival developer has intervened on the
City's
behalf. The City and all the developers are opposing our
our
involvement.
In 1995, the City decided to essentially remove an
important
wildlife area (Neighborhood 8A / Carmel Mountain) from
development
plans. While pursuing aquisition funding, however, it allowed
Pardee
Construction to begin development. At the same time, it put two
other
developers (Mesa Top Properties and the Torrey Pines
Investment
Group) on hold. When it was learned that Pardee was counting
the
other developers' land as "open space" in its plans, the deal blew
up.
All construction is on hold while the two developers sue the
city. Pardee has
intervened to insure it will be sole developer. The
Southwest Center is
trying to intervene to prevent a settlement
whereby all three are allowed to
carve up San Diego's little
remaining open space. The City' opposition to our
involvement
indicates that a deal in the works.
2. APPEAL VICTORY:
ARIZONA TIMBER SALE WITHDRAWN
Following an appeal by the Southwest Center
and the Northern Arizona
Sierra Club, the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest
has withdrawn the
Gentry Timber Sale. The controversial sale also drew
interventions
from the White Mountain Conservation League and the
Arizona
Department of Game and Fish.
The old growth timber sale was
issued despite a standing court order
on all logging on every National Forest
in Arizona and New Mexico.
The Apache-Sitgreaves has a history of violating
court orders and
settlement agreements. Several months ago, it began to
log
despite the injunction, bringing down the rath of a federal judge
on
Jack Ward Thomas.
3. EDITORIAL: ENVIROS HAVE RIGHT TO 'UNLOG'
SALVAGE TIMBER SALE
AZ Daily Star, Sept. 27,
1996
`Un-LOGGING'
It may seem a stunt, this month's refusal by
a Tucson environmental
group to cut down 714 dead trees it purchased in the
Chiricahua
Mountains in a U.S. Forest Service ``timber salvage''
sale.
But think again.
In truth, the environmentalists have
mounted a serious bid to reform
the government's flawed administration of the
public's land using
markets as well as regulations.
Tucson's Southwest
Center for Biological Diversity initiated its
challenge last month when it
entered a USFS lottery to buy - for $5
apiece - 1,600 trees left scorched but
standing after 1994's
monthlong Rattlesnake forest fir e.
On that
occasion, the Forest Service offered the logs as one of a
half-dozen sales in
Arizona and New Mexico authorized by the
disastrous ``salvage'' rider passed
by Congress last year. Promptly
thereafter, the center won a portion of the
burned ponderosa and fir,
and paid for it.
However, when the ecology
group reiterated it planned to leave the
trees in place to foster
biodiversity, the Forest Service demurred.
Log the trees by Oct. 14, required
the Douglas District of the
Coronado National Forest, or forgo
them.
The implication: Only loggers have a right to buy federal
timber.
Only timber-cutting composes a legitimate use of
sale-allotment
timber. Which is why the Southwest Center now challenges
that
implicit dicta as other environmental groups have challenged
timber
sale practices in Washington state federal forests and grazing
permit
auctions on New Mexico state ranges.
It may seem hard, from one
perspective, to question the Forest
Service stipulation here. Salvage
permits, ``non-use'' penalties,
requirements for ``resource removal'': These
remain the basic
machinery of the commodity-oriented bureaucracies that for
60 years
have managed the West's trees and grass to produce lumber
and
livestock. Such rules and contracts, in fact, compelled loggers
and
ranchers to adhere to the superior vision of
progressive
conservation.
However, that was then. Today a virtual
consensus in the West holds
that federal management has been flawed
management, and that the
agencies' myriad permitting rules have failed to
protect forests,
streams, and rangelands or to allocate them efficiently and
equitably
among competing users.
Given that, the government should
honor the Southwest Center's
``un-logging'' proposal and accept
other
environmentally-progressive, market-sound resource contracts.
No
method offers so fair or swift a way to move land uses
in
environmentally aware directions while maximizing economic returns
from
taxpayer resources.
The Forest Service should allow those who will pay to
do it to leave
trees alone, just as the Bureau of Land Management should
make
grazing permits transferable to people other than ranchers.
This
would end the monopoly resource-extraction has enjoyed across
the
public West. Likewise, it would open the diverse lands of a
changing
region to a diversity of possibilities.
The Southwest Center
could allow dead trees to decay naturally,
providing it paid top-money for
the privilege.
Sportsmen's clubs, as resource consultant Karl Hess
suggests, could
lease grazing allotments for hunting
preserves.
Ranchers could remove cattle from their ranges and see if
people
would pay more for wildlife-watching in cow-free meadows, or
fishing
in green stream bottoms - entrepreneurial activities now forbidden
a
lease-holder.
Ultimately, the sheer size of the emerging New West
recreation
demand would likely shift much public land use to
higher-valued,
greener activities than grazing and tree-cutting without
reducing
federal income. This would be real and lasting change.
One
final reason remains for the new market-worshiping Congress to
require
agencies to embrace green markets and successful green bids.
It would
honor the idea that the federal lands belong to all
Americans, not just the
loggers and ranchers. Sometimes forgotten,
this signal motion needs
remembering.