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\ SOUTHWEST BIODIVERSITY ALERT
#132
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5-14-98
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\ SOUTHWEST CENTER FOR
BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
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1.
SOUTHWEST CENTER TO SUE FOUR CALIFORNIA FORESTS OVER SYSTEMATIC
IMPACTS TO ENDANGERED SPECIES
2. FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE REFUSES TO
CONSIDER YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO
FOR ENDANGERED SPECIES PROTECTION:
ONE MORE E.S.A. SUIT TO FOLLOW
3. AZ DAILY STAR: COLORAD RIVER PLAN MUST
INCLUDE RESTORATION OF
COLORADO RIVER DELTA, WATER FLOWS TO
MEXICO
4. ARMY CORPS TO APPROVE TOXIC WASTE PILE ENDANGERING TWO
ENDANGERED
SPECIES: WRITE TODAY, STOP THEM BEFORE THEY KILL
AGAIN!
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SOUTHWEST CENTER TO
SUE FOUR CALIFORNIA FORESTS OVER SYSTEMATIC
IMPACTS TO ENDANGERED
SPECIES
The Southwest Center has formally notified the Los Padres,
San
Bernardino, Angeles, and Cleveland National Forests that it will
file
suit to force a review the systematic impacts of their
entire Forest Plans on
51 endangered species including the
red-legged frog, Southwest arroyo toad,
steelhead trout, California
condor, San Bernardino bladderpod, Laguna
Mountain skipper,
Southwestern willow flycatcher. Southern California's
extremely
diverse national forest are under assuault from
overgrazing,
road construction, development, exotic species introduction,
dams,
and industrial-scale tourism.
_______________________________
FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE REFUSES TO
CONSIDER YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO
FOR ENDANGERED SPECIES PROTECTION: ONE MORE
E.S.A. SUIT TO FOLLOW
The Southwest Center filed a formal notice on 5-14-98
that it will
sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for refusing to
consider
protecting the yellow-billed cuckoo under the Endangered
Species
Act. The Southwest Center and 21 western environmental
groups
petitioned to list the cuckoo as endangered on 2-9-98. The
agency,
however, has refused to process the petition, citing a
Babbitt
policy prohibiting the acceptance of new ESA petitions because
the
agency has "higher priorities."
Ironically, the ruling on the
cuckoo was due on May 11th, the same
day Babbitt announced plans to delist 29
species. So while the
agency is too busy to protect declining species, it is
spending its
time and money decreasing protection for other
species.
The yellow-billed cuckoo is dependent upon riparain
forests
throughout the West. Grazing, development and dam-building
have
extirpated the species from most its range.
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AZ DAILY STAR: COLORAD RIVER PLAN MUST
INCLUDE RESTORATION OF COLORADO
RIVER DELTA, WATER FLOWS TO MEXICO
The
following editorial supporting efforts by the Southwest Center and
Defenders
of Wildlife to ensure that management of dams and water
diversions on the
lower Colorado River are changed to ensure a steady
supply of water to Mexico
and the once magnificent Colorado River
Delta appeared in the Arizona Daily
Star on 5-6-98. Lack of fresh
water flows have dessicated the delta and
devastated edangered species
and shrimp fisheries in the Gulf of
California.
Don't ignore Colorado delta
A river and its delta are
inseparable; to heal one you must heal the other.
For that reason,
environmentalists are right to urge that a multi-player
drive to repair the
sad, subjugated Colorado River also address the state of
the river's
dried-out Mexican delta.
Only through such a widening of regard can there
be a true restoration of
this critical river.
At present, the
so-called Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation
Program remains
incomplete, if welcome.
Established last year, the program embodies a
hopeful bid by more than two
dozen state, federal, Indian and utility
interests to collaborate on a
50-year scheme for protecting the species and
resources of the great river.
Since 1909 the Colorado has been turned by
dams and diversions into the most
engineered river in the world. Now at last
a sizable array of stakeholders
is working to save some 102 river-dependent
rare birds, fish and mammals
from the extinction the engineering
threatens.
All told the project represents the widest-ranging push going
to respond to
the ecological crisis that has turned the once-wild Colorado
into a string
of biologically-impoverished reservoirs.
Yet for all
this the Lower Colorado conservation program falls short because
it stops
short.
Consider that while the river that begins in northwestern Colorado
continues
into Mexico - or at least used to - the multi-species conservation
effort as
of now ends at the U.S./Mexico border.
This occurs because
the species effort's steering committee is resisting
inclusion of the river's
delta in the program's early study phase. In
effect, those plotting the
river's future - no doubt fearing the
identification of new water needs - are
refusing to deliberate on the
conversion, mostly by U.S. water diversions, of
the delta's once-vast
complex of marshes into a wasteland of salt
flats.
Which is to say: The Southwest's major effort to apply
conservation
principles to managing the river seems intent on ignoring that
the river
does not reach the sea, and only rarely receives in its delta the
water
flows that once made it, as the conservation pioneer Aldo Leopold wrote
in
1922, ``a milk-and-honey wilderness . . . a paradise of
birds.''
Clearly, this myopia makes no sense. As a matter of fairness,
such
exclusivity perpetuates the disregard for Mexico of 90 years of
American
river management. As conservation, the steering committee's
narrowness flies
in the face of the fundamental principle of ecology that
calls for land
managers to look to the good of the whole system, not just its
parts.
And so the river committee should accede to the suggestions of
some of its
own members - including the well-regarded Defenders of Wildlife -
to
consider in its thinking the 90 miles of the Colorado that lay dry
and
troubled in Mexico.
Badly in need of water, and respect, those 90
miles remain crucial to the
success of any effort to re-create some of the
integrity of the whole river.
There can, finally, be no true restoration of
the Lower Colorado without
restoration of the river's delta, and its run to
the sea.
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ARMY CORPS TO APPROVE TOXIC WASTE PILE
ENDANGERING TWO ENDANGERED
SPECIES: WRITE TODAY, STOP THEM BEFORE THEY KILL
AGAIN!
The Army Corps of Engineers is proposing to approve a plan by
ASARCO,
Arizona's largest polluter, to construct a new tailings pile at
its
Green Valley Mission Mines complex south of Tucson. The toxic
dump
would eventually rise to 3,000 feet. Construction will require
the
transplanting of over 300 endangered Pima pineapple cacti and
destroy
suitable habitat for the endangered Cactus Ferruginous pygmy
owl.
Despite the enormous effects that will result, the Corps has made
a
"preliminary determination" that an EIS is not necessary. You have
until
NEXT FRIDAY, May 22nd to tell the Corps that issuance of a
404 dredge and
fill permit which harms two endangered species and
allows the construction of
huge toxic waste pile requires a full
blown Environmental Impact
Statement:
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
ATTN:
Marjorie Blaine, Regulatory Branch
5205 E. Comanche Street
Tucson, AZ
85707
_____________________________________________________________________________
Kieran
Suckling
ksuckling@sw-center.org
Executive
Director
520.623.5252 phone
Southwest Center for Biological
Diversity 520.623.9797 fax
http://www.sw-center.org
pob 710, tucson, az 85702-710