Subject: FW: SW BIODIVERSITY ALERT #48

Subject: SW BIODIVERSITY ALERT #48

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~           SOUTHWEST BIODIVERSITY ALERT #48             ~
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~       SOUTHWEST CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY        ~
~                ksuckling@sw-center.org                 ~
~           www.envirolink.org/orgs/sw-center            ~
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1.  INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION SOUGHT FOR AZ AND NM WETLANDS

2.  UNLOGGING PETITION FILED


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1.  INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION SOUGHT FOR AZ AND NM WETLANDS

Arizona Republic, February 2, 1997

ACTIVISTS FEAR LOSS OF WETLANDS
Groups seek protection for state areas

  A coalition of Arizona environmental groups wants to protect 10
wetland areas under a little-known but globally recognized
international treaty. [inset: color map of Arizona wetlands]
  The groups want places such as the north Valley's Cave Creek,
northern Arizona's Mormon Lake and southeastern Arizona's San Pedro
River protected under the Ramsar Convention.
  Never heard of it?
  While Americans speculate today about groundhog shadows, 97 nations -
from Albania to Zambia - will celebrate World Wetlands Day. It
commemorates the 1971 signing of an international treaty in Ramsar,
Iran aimed at protecting wetlands worldwide.
  "By protecting these Arizona wetlands through the Ramsar Convention,
we get international oversight, and that's exactly what the
developers don't want," said Kieran Suckling, executive director of
the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity. The Coalition also
includes the Southwest Forest Alliance.
  Suckling contends that wetlands, especially the few remaining sites
in the desert Southwest, are being systematically drained or polluted
by urban sprawl, mining, livestock grazing and timber cutting.
  Although the Ramsar treaty recognizes 836 swamps, marshes, rivers and
glades that support hundreds of rare and endangered plants and
animals, only 15 places are designated in the United States. They
range from Florida's Everglades National Park to such little-known
places as Alaska's Izembek Wildlife Refuge on the coast of the Bering
Sea.
  The United States signed the treaty a decade ago. The total U.S.
acreage under the treaty's protection - 2.9 million acres - is
dwarfed by each of the world's seven largest wetlands under the
Ramsar Alliance.
  Canada has the most land, with more than 32 million acres of wetlands
designated.
  Arizona has none, despite its recognition among the
international bird-watching community as a migration superhighway
between Canada and Latin America.
  Herb Raffaele chief of the Office of International Affairs for the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the treaty has not been a
priority in the United States because this country has attempted to
protect wetlands through other means. One way has been the nation's
system of more than 500 wildlife refuges, which cover more than 92
million acres.
  However, only a fraction of those refuges are wetlands, and many of
those are designated hunting grounds.
  Raffaele said his agency will not forward any nominations to the
Ramsar headquarters in Gland, Switzerland, without the consent of the
individual states.
  Suckling said he believes Arizona's elected
officials would be reluctant to approve the new wetlands protections
because of the international embarrassment it would cause if they
were harmed.
  Gov. Fife Symington was scuba diving in Mexico and
unavailable for comment. A spokeswoman said the governor would need
to study the proposal before he could judge its merits Rory Aiken,
spokesperson for the Arizona Game and Fish Department, which is the
lead state agency on such matters, said the state has not been
contacted about international protection of Arizona wetlands.
  "We've got nothing on the table," Aikens said. "However, wetlands
protection in Arizona would normally be something that this agency
would support."
  Suckling said state and federal wildlife agencies should have been
pushing long ago for such protections. Because of their inaction, he
said, environmentalists will send their petition directly to Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt.


2.  UNLOGGING PETITION FILED

The Northwest Ecosystem Alliance (NWEA), the Southwest Center for
Biological Diversity, and the Oregon Natural Resources Council have
filed an Administrative Procedure Act petition with the Secretary of
Agriculture requesting that U.S. Forest Service timber sale bidding
practice be changed to allow conservation groups to buy timber sales
in order to preserve them. Current rules only allow timber companies
to buy timber sales.

Though NWEA was the high bidder on the Thunder Mountain Timber Sale
on the Okanogan National Forest (WA), the Forest Service refused to
award them the contract because they pledged not to log it. Members
of the Southwest Center did successfully purchase permits for half
of the Rustler Salvage Sale on the Coronado National Forest (AZ),
but the Forest Service has pledged to resell the permits if the
Center does not log them.

While conservationists can not, and should not, be expected to buy
nature in order to protect it, the petition graphically draws
attention to the economic value of conservation and the corrupt
system which has turned our public lands into quasi-fiefdoms of the
timber industry.