Subject: SW BIODIVERSITY ALERT
**** **** SOUTHWEST
BIODIVERSITY ALERT **** ****
**Southwest Center for Biological
Diversity
**swcbd@igc.apc.org
MEXICAN GREY WOLF REINTRODUCTION HITS
ROADBLOCK
After supporting and working with the Fish and Wildlife Service
to
reintroduce wolves into the SW, both the New Mexico and
Arizona Game
and Fish Commissions have come out against wolf
reintroduction. Two
sites were being considered. The superior site
by far is the Blue
Primitive Area on the NM/AZ border. It would
allow wolves to disperse
into the Gila and Aldo Leopold Wilderness. The second
site is the DoD's
White Sands Missile Range in southcentral New
Mexico. Arizona opposed
the Blue, but supported reintroduction in
NM's White Sands. New Mexico
opposed introduction altogether. This is a
major setback to a program
which had tremendous momentum- a direct
result of strongarming by Governors
Johnson and Symington, both of
whom are businessmen with strong wise-use
ties.
While opposing reintroduction in AZ, the game commission
noted
that polls have established that Arizonans are overwhelmingly
in
favor of wolf introduction. The New Mexico game commission
canceled its
public opinion poll when it voted against introduction.
The game
commissioner state that he knew what the poll would say:
that the majority of
New Mexican's would support reintroduction while
rural folks would not.
The polling consultant, however, revealed
that had it been allowed to be
completed, the poll would show strong
rural support for reintroduction.
The League of Women Voters has
lept into the fray, funding their own New
Mexico wide poll.
R.E.I. meanwhile did its part for wolf extinction by
cancelling a
talk by Bobbie Holiday, director of Preserve Arizona's Wolves,
just before the Arizona Game and
Fish Commission's vote. Though a
tireless wolf advocate, Bobbie is
a friendly, mainstream, retiree.
Hardly a threat to R.E.I.'s rock
shredding custumers. R.E.I. stated
it's members were not
interested in wolf reintroduction and would henceforth
not permit conservation
talks. All you R.E.I. members know where to
write to...and where to
shop at.
There are no Mexican grey wolves in
the wild in the U.S. and very few
in Mexico.
SUIT FILED TO LIST QUEEN
CHARLOTTE GOSHAWK AS ENDANGERED
On November 17th, a coalition filed suit
against the Fish and
Wildlife Service for denying a petition to list the
Queen Charlotte
goshawk as endangered. The goshawk lives in coastal old
growth
between the the Olympic Penninsula and Southeast Alaska. It
is
showing classic extinction dynamics: very high mortality
rates
correlated with very large homeranges, correlated with heavily
logged
forests. Led by the Southwest Center for
Biological
Diversity, the coalition included Northwest Ecosystem Alliance,
Biodiversity Legal Foundation, Native
Forest Network, Native Forect Council,
Save America's Forests, and
several Alaskans.
In an exact replay of
its denial of the petition to list the
Alexander Archipelago wolf as
endangered, the Fish and Wildlife
Service argued that while the species'
viability is at grave risk,
promises by the Forest Service to develop an
adequate conservation
plan are suffient preclude to listing. This is
completely illegal
since the ESA requires that only "existing" management
plans be
considered. It is sickening because Forest Service protection
for
the goshawk actually decreased after the petition was filed. By
the
time the FWS denied the petition, there was no protection at all
for
goshawks on the Tongass National Forest.
The Alaska delegation has
been trying its best to kill the Queen
Charlotted goshawk and any other
imperiled species on the Tongass.
It managed to attach a rider to the
Recissions bill outlawing all
conservation plans on the Tongass, with the
exception that the
goshawk could be given 300 acres. Not much help for
species which is
known to use between 8,000 and 240,000 acres depending on
degree to
which its homerange has been logged. The delegation is now
trying to
manadate that the Forest Service adopt the highest volume
alternative
for its Forest Plan revision, making the Forest Service's pledge
to
protect goshawks in the future completely impossible.
SUIT TO LIST
NORTHERN GOSHAWK AS ENDANGERED IN WEST PROGRESSES
The Southwest Center is
leading a coalition suing the Fish and
Wildlife Service for denying its
petition to list the Northern
goshawk as an endangered species in the western
united states. The
northern goshawk is closely associated with mature
ponderosa pine and
aspen throughout the West. The Fish and Wildlife
Service admitted that the Northern
goshawk is imperiled, but argued that the
western population is not
"distinct" and therefore is not listable. At
oral hearings, the
judge stated that the FWS had acted with obvious
political
motivations, and had separate criteria for listing species which
live
in trees. He gave the Service 30 days to come up with a new
national
population policy, before making his final ruling.
SUIT FILED
TO LIST COASTAL CACTUS WREN AS ENDANGERED
The Southwest Center has filed suit
against the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service for denying its petition to list
the Californian
coastal cactus wren as endangered. The wren lives along
a thin strip
of coastal sage scrub in southern California and northern
Baja. Once
again, the Fish and Wildlife admitted the bird is
imperiled. This
time, it got real creative, misinterpreting, twisting,
obscuring and
gerrymandering a mountain of evidence indicating the cactus
wren of
coastal california are isolated by habitat loss, in order to
conclude
that the population is not distinct and therefore not
listable.
That fact that the wren's habitat is some of the most expensive
real
estate in North America of course had nothing to do with
their
decision.