No. 383, March 19, 2007

BUSH CAUGHT CENSORING POLAR BEAR SCIENTISTS IN ALASKA

   

POLAR BEAR’S ROAR ADDED TO FREE WILDLIFE RINGTONES

   

SACRED PEAKS PROTECTED IN ARIZONA

   
RARE BUTTERFLY HABITAT PROTECTED IN NEVADA
   
CHEVRON GAS PROJECT BEATEN BACK IN MEXICO
   

CARIBOU PROTECTED IN WASHINGTON

   

FEDS KILL ANOTHER WOLF IN NEW MEXICO

   

PETITION FILED TO PROTECT PYGMY OWL AS “ENDANGERED”

 

 

 


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BUSH CAUGHT CENSORING POLAR BEAR SCIENTISTS IN ALASKA

Barely a week seems to pass without the Bush administration getting caught hiding, censoring, or denying global warming science. Last week the Center for Biological Diversity and former Clinton official Debora Williams obtained an internal administration order prohibiting U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists from talking about polar bears, sea ice, or global warming.

Congressmen Jay Inslee (D-WA), Bart Gordon (D-TN) and Brad Miller (D-NC) have demanded the administration withdraw the policy and explain its actions to Congress. Check out the media coverage at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Washington Post.


POLAR BEAR’S ROAR ADDED TO FREE WILDLIFE RINGTONES

Your chances of hearing a polar bear roar in a major metropolitan area have just improved dramatically. The Center for Biological Diversity's endangered species cell phone ringtones, available for free download at www.rareearthtones.org, have been so popular since they were unveiled in December that more than 50,000 people have the calls on their phones. Today a ringtone of a polar bear roaring was added to the list.

Cell-phone users in more than 50 countries have downloaded the ringtones, primarily in the United States, Britain, Italy, China, Canada and Brazil. The new polar bear ringtone is also being made available to the 10,000 or more friends of the polar bear signed up on the Center's polar bear page on myspace.com.


SACRED PEAKS PROTECTED IN ARIZONA

On March 12th the Center for Biological Diversity, six American Indian tribes, and other environmental groups won a stunning victory protecting the San Francisco Peaks from being sprayed with wastewater effluent. Though the peaks — the highest in Arizona — are public land and sacred ground to 13 tribes, the Bush administration gave a private ski resort permission to spray it with artificial snow made from human wastewater. A federal judge stopped the plan saying it clearly violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The plaintiffs in the suit included the Center, Navajo Nation, Havasupai Tribe, Hopi Tribe, Hualapai Tribe, White Mountain Apache, Yavapai-Apache Nation, Sierra Club, and Flagstaff Activist Network.


RARE BUTTERFLY HABITAT PROTECTED IN NEVADA

On March 15th the federal government closed off 3,985 acres of public land from off-road vehicles to protect the rare Sand Mountain blue butterfly. The emergency closure came in response to a 2004 petition by the Center for Biological Diversity, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, and the Nevada Outdoor Recreation Association to list the butterfly as an endangered species.


CHEVRON GAS PROJECT BEATEN BACK IN MEXICO

Chevron announced on March 13th that it is abandoning a planned $650 liquefied natural gas terminal next to Mexico's Coronado Islands on the U.S. border near San Diego. One of the world's biodiversity hotspots, the islands are home to six endangered seabirds and ten other species of plants and animals found nowhere else in the world. The decision comes two months after a Center for Biological Diversity-initiated international investigation of the project was approved by NAFTA's Commission for Environmental Cooperation.  

In May 2005 the Center for Biological Diversity, American Bird Conservancy, Greenpeace Mexico, Alfonso Aguirre, Los Angeles Audubon, Pacific Environment, and Wildcoast petitioned the NAFTA Commission to stop the project, charging that the Mexican government approved it in violation of its own environmental laws. On January 18, 2007, the Commission formally refused Mexico’s request to dismiss the petition and ordered the launch of a full investigation.


CARIBOU PROTECTED IN WASHINGTON

On February 26th a federal judge responded to a lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity and other groups by prohibiting snowmobiles within a 2.5-mile-wide travel corridor needed by the endangered Selkirk caribou to migrate from the northern portions of its range to southern areas.

Just 37 individual caribou remain in the Selkirk Mountains of North Idaho and Canada, making the species the most endangered large mammal in North America. The suit was brought by the Center, Selkirk Conservation Alliance, Conservation Northwest, Idaho Conservation League, The Lands Council, and Defenders of Wildlife.


FEDS KILL ANOTHER WOLF IN NEW MEXICO

On March 16th, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials shot an endangered Mexican gray wolf from an airplane on the edge of the Gila Wilderness in southern New Mexico. M1007, as the government called him, was shot for eating cattle, i.e. for being a wolf.

He was the tenth wolf to be gunned down by the government since the reintroduction began in 1998. Twenty others were killed by the government’s incompetent capture program. The 1996 federal plan predicted that by 2006 the wolf population would grow to 102 animals, including 18 breeding pairs. Due to the constant killing and capture of wolves, however, there are just 57 wolves and five breeding pairs today.


PETITION FILED TO PROTECT PYGMY OWL AS “ENDANGERED”

The Center for Biological Diversity and Defenders of Wildlife filed a petition on March 15th to re-establish protection for the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl as an endangered species. The petition asks the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the owl as endangered throughout the Sonoran Desert in Arizona and northern Sonora.


 

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