POWER
PLANT NEXT TO IRONWOOD FOREST NATIONAL MONUMENT REJECTED
FEDS
REFUSE TO PROTECT HABITAT FOR WORLD'S MOST IMPERILED WHALE
MASSIVE
UTAH TIMBER SALE CHALLENGED
GRAZING
RESTRICTIONS GO INTO EFFECT TO PROTECT MOJAVE DESERT
SUIT
CHALLENGES MASSIVE CALIFORNIA DEVELOPMENT
POWER
PLANT NEXT TO IRONWOOD FOREST NATIONAL MONUMENT REJECTED
In January, the Arizona
Corporation Commission denied a corporate bid to build a massive power plant,
with 180-foot tall smoke stacks, less than five miles from the newly-designated
Ironwood Forest National Monument. The Toltec power plant would have spewed
thousands of tons of pollutants and consumed thousands of acre-feet of groundwater
per year in the one of the worst areas of subsidence and fissuring in the country.
Unfortunately, over 15
new gas-fired plants have already been approved in Arizona, doubling the state's
current electrical generating capacity. Several other plant and powerline proposals
are pending. Energy corporations, many of them shadowy fronts for anonymous
investors and parent companies, will make billions selling the excess energy
to California, while energy executives and Arizona Governor Jane Hull are vigorously
lobbying to open up lucrative Mexican markets. The Center will be working hard
in the months ahead to fight these schemes and to ensure that Arizona does not
become the "power farm" of the west.
FEDS
REFUSE TO PROTECT HABITAT FOR WORLD'S MOST IMPERILED WHALE
On 2-20-02, the National
Marine Fisheries Service denied a petition by the Center for Biological Diversity
to establish protected habitat areas for the North Pacific right whale in the
Bearing Sea. This right whale is the most endangered large whale on earth.
The Service asserted that
the biological requirements of the right whale are not sufficiently understood,
despite published data from the agency's own biologists about the whales' biological
and ecological needs and threats, and recommendations from its own right whale
recovery team. Although no longer commercially hunted, northern right whales
are killed each year by human activities, including being struck by ships as
they feed, sleep, and play at the ocean's surface; becoming entangled in commercial
fishing gear, pollution, and habitat modification.
The Center intends to sue
the agency for failing to designate critical habitat for the North Pacific right
whale.
For more information click
here...
MASSIVE
UTAH TIMBER SALE CHALLENGED
The Center for Biological
Diversity and eight other groups have appealed a decision by the Dixie National
Forest to log 10 million board feet of spruce-fir and aspen trees on over 4,000
acres of high-elevation forests within the Aquarius Plateau. The sale is the
first component of a larger logging-based 80,000-acre project inappropriately
titled the "Aquarius Ecosystem Restoration Project."
The Aquarius Plateau rises
over 6,000 feet above Utah's world-renowned canyon country, including Capitol
Reef National Park and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and
is covered by rich forests of spruce, fir and aspen forests, contains numerous
subalpine grasslands, wet meadows and high-elevation lakes.
For more information click
here...
GRAZING
RESTRICTIONS GO INTO EFFECT TO PROTECT MOJAVE DESERT
On 3-01-02, the Bureau of
Land Management enacted grazing restrictions to protect the desert tortoise
from livestock grazing, implementing a Department of Interior ruling that upheld
science-based arguments for endangered species protection and recovery. The
ruling seasonally limits livestock grazing on over 500,000 acres of fragile
public lands habitat within the 11.5 million acres in the California Desert
Conservation Area managed by the BLM.
The grazing restrictions
arise from a legal settlement between the BLM, the Center for Biological Diversity,
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Sierra Club. Livestock
mow down spring annual plants essential to tortoise health and reproduction,
and trample burrows, killing tortoises inside and wrecking their homes. This
landmark agreement helps BLM partially implement the U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service's 1994 Desert Tortoise Recovery Plan recommendations for livestock
For more information click
here...
SUIT
CHALLENGES MASSIVE CALIFORNIA DEVELOPMENT
The Center for Biological
Diversity, Save Our Danville Creeks, and Alameda Creek Alliance filed a lawsuit
in federal court on 3-15-02 against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, challenging improperly approved federal permits
issued for a sprawling housing development project along East Alamo Creek in
Danville, CA. The proposed Wendt Ranch development would destroy, degrade, and
fragment critical habitat for the California red-legged frog, eliminate valuable
wetlands and riparian areas along East Alamo Creek, contribute to soil erosion,
and contaminate water resources. It would also impact habitat for other sensitive
species such as the California tiger salamander, vernal pool shrimp, and the
San Joaquin kit fox.
The suit is being argued
by Wild Earth Advocates.
WANTED:
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or mail the printable version by April 10th. Whether you work with Center projects
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