Subject: SW BIODIVERSITY ALERT
#48
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SOUTHWEST BIODIVERSITY ALERT
#48
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~ SOUTHWEST CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL
DIVERSITY
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ksuckling@sw-center.org
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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.