Subject: SW BIODIVERSITY ALERT
#91
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SOUTHWEST BIODIVERSITY ALERT
#91
8/22/97
SOUTHWEST CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL
DIVERSITY
silver
city, tucson, phoenix, san
diego
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1.
SUIT FILED TO DESIGNATE CRITICAL HABITAT FOR TWO IMPERILED FISH
2. THREE
SALVAGE TIMBER SALES APPEALED-
FIRE TRACED TO TIMBER
CORPORATION
3. CENTER TO SUE STEVEN SPIELBERG, ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS
OVER
LOS ANGELES DEVELOPMENT/THEME
PARK
*****
***** ***** *****
SUIT
FILED TO DESIGNATE CRITICAL HABITAT FOR TWO IMPERILED FISH
The Southwest
Center has filed suit against the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service for failing
to designate critical habitat for the
threatened loach minnow and spikedace.
In 1994, the Center won
a lawsuit forcing the Service to designate 160 miles
of critical
habitat for the two fish within the Gila River Basin including
parts
of the Gila, San Francisco, Tularosa, and Verde Rivers.
The
designation was subsequently thrown out by a 10th Circuit
decision
that critical habitat designation must undergo
National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis. Rather than go back
and
do the required NEPA analysis, however, the Fish and Wildlife
Service has
decided to penalize the fish by giving up on critical
habitat altogether.
This inaction is particularly cynical since the
Fish and Wildlife Service, in
response to a Southwest Center
petition, has concluded that the two fish are
continuing to decline,
and now warrant listing as endangered
species.
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THREE
SALVAGE TIMBER SALES APPEALED-
FIRE TRACED TO TIMBER CORPORATION
The
Southwest Center for Biological Diversity has appealed three
salvage timber
sales on the Coconino National Forest, AZ.
Located approximately 30 miles
north of Flagstaff, on the north side
of the San Francisco Peaks, the sales
will log over 4 million board
feet of timber, including tens of thousands of
snags crucial to
songbirds and wildlife, created by the Hochderffer and
Horseshoe fires.
The Coconino plans to log every old growth snag even
though it
just amended its Forest Plan to require 2-3 snags and 3-4
reserve
snag trees per acre. With no legal basis whatsoever, the
Forest
claims the amendment does not apply to burned areas.
The origin
of the infamous Horseshoe fire was traced to a
smoldering Stone Container
Corporation slash pile by Forest Service
investigators in 1996. If the sale
goes to bid, it may well be
awarded to Stone, thus allowing multinational
timber corporations
to set timber schedules through their own
negligence. While Stone
has not been billed for the multi-million
dollar cost of fighting the
fire, the Coconino National Forest is demanding
that the families of
two boys, ages 14 and 11, pay part of the $900,000 bill
from a separate
fire started earlier in the
summer.
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SUIT TO
BE FILED AGAINST STEVEN SPIELBERG, ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS OVER
LOS ANGELES
DEVELOPMENT/THEME PARK
The Southwest Center, the Wetlands Action Network,
the Ballona
Wetlands Land Trust and California PIRG have filed an
official
60- day notice of intent to sue movie mogul Steven
Spielberg,
developer Rob Maguire, and the Army Corps of Engineers
for
destroying the habitat of 19 threatened and endangered
species.
Spielberg and Maguire plan to build a Playa Vista/Dream Works,
a
mega-development and special effects movie studio, on the 1,000
acre
wetlands. It is incomprehensible that someone with as much
money as
Spielberg, who could build his study anywhere on the
planet, has decided it
must go in the middle of one the last
wetlands in the massively urbanized Las
Angeles metro area. The
Lost World, will be considerably larger if he
succeeds.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Kieran
Suckling
ksuckling@sw-center.org
Executive
Director
520.623.5252 phone
Southwest Center for Biological
Diversity 520.623.9797 fax
http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/sw-center
pob 710, tucson, az 85702-710