iWILD

Chief U.S. District Judge John M. Roll, 1947-2011

Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, which is based in Tucson, Arizona, sent out a moving tribute today to Judge John Roll, killed in Saturday’s shooting.  Here are a few passages from the full statement, which can be seen at the Center’s website:

“The Center for Biological Diversity brought many environmental cases before Judge Roll. He was fair, thoughtful and interested. Sometimes humorous, sometimes tough, he had a knack for getting to the core of a case quickly and making attorneys focus on that core, whether they wanted to or not.

The Center didn’t win all our cases before him, but we always got a fair hearing. He epitomized the greatest value of the American legal system: the ability of a single, honest man or woman to ensure justice regardless of the weight of political and economic powers benefiting from injustice.

When jaguars once again roam the remote deserts and mountains of the Southwest, it will be because Judge Roll, in a landmark 2009 decision, had the foresight and assertiveness to overrule the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which had abandoned U.S. recovery efforts for North America’s largest cat. He struck down the agency’s refusal to prepare a federal recovery plan or designate and protect critical habitat areas north of the Mexican border. The agency is now in the process of developing a recovery plan and mapping out essential jaguar habitat in the United States.”

Group Sues to Save 4 Mountaintop Species

The Center for Biological Diversity has filed a petition to urge the increasingly-intransigent US Fish & Wildlife Service to prepare to save four high-altitude species from global-warming peril, including today’s Endangered All-Star, the White-Tailed Ptarmigan.  With its snowshoe-style feet, this small grouse is not adapted to the surfing life, which may become its fate with widespread melting of the snow pack.

The Center for Biological Diversity is suing to force NOAA to revisit a 2008 decision dismissing climate change as a severe threat to today’s Endangered All-Star, the ribbon seal, which is dependent, like the polar bear, on Arctic pack ice.

“DELAY & FOOT-DRAGGING”

News comes from the Center for Biological Diversity that today’s Endangered All-Star is now one step closer to protection from the ever-finicky and glacially-slow powers at the US Fish & Wildlife Service.  USFWS announced on Monday that the Oklahoma Grass Pink “may” warrant protection on the Endangered Species List.

But don’t start celebrating yet.  As CBD’s Noah Greenwald noted: “There are hundreds of wildlife species that, like the grasspink, are facing extinction…Wholesale reform is needed at the USFWS to unseat a culture of delay and foot-dragging, but we’ve yet to see such comprehensive reform in the endangered species program under President Obama.”

“Something is Very Wrong at the Interior Department”

And it’s name is Ken Salazar.  Paul Krugman points out in the New York Times what environmentalists have known all along:  The appointment of Ken Salazar was a big, big mistake.  Now, the Gulf of Mexico is paying the price. 

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, Salazar

• received tens of thousands of dollars in donations from oil companies as a Senator
• received “hefty sums” from BP
• stopped Congress from removing BP’s tax breaks for offshore drilling in 2005
• passed legislation in 2006 opening huge areas of the Gulf to drilling
• criticized Bush for not allowing more offshore drilling in the Gulf in 2008
• pushed through approvals of BP’s drilling in the Gulf in 2009

Obama needs to do more than clench his jaw, as the Washington Post’s piece described this morning.  He needs to take charge, fire Salazar—his most cynical politically-motivated appointment—and clean house at Interior. 

Photo: Photo by John Moore/Getty Images North America

The Fire Next Time

Its existence threatened by wildlife—another blaze like the 2003 Mine Fire could extinguish it for all eternity—today’s Endangered All-Star, Thorne’s Hairstreak Butterfly, has barely survived another kind of conflagration, one set by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.  The USFWS has repeatedly denied it protection under the Endangered Species Act, which could provide for restoration of the Tecate Cypress, the host plant of the caterpillar, and for fire suppression.  Repeated petitioning by the Center for Biological Diversity has finally convinced the Service that the species deserves consideration under the Act. 

Photo:  Kojiro Shiraiwa

It’s Endangered Species Day!

And it’s a little hard to celebrate while The Horror is unfolding in the Gulf.  Nonetheless, there are worthy events (for a full list, plus e-cards, a podcast, and other goodies, click here).  As Larry West points out on his blog, cautious optimism is warranted for some species, such as the bald eagle. The National Wildlife Federation offers a list of suggestions (although I wonder if Tweeting and changing your Facebook Profile picture are among the most effective actions to suggest).

As for today’s Endangered All-Star, a subspecies of the Brown Bear, controversy rages on over whether the Noble Griz should continue to enjoy protection as a threatened species on the Endangered Species List.  The US Fish & Wildlife Service took the Yellowstone population off the list in 2007, but the Center for Biological Diversity argues that the Yellowstone bears are genetically isolated.  The species as a whole clings to less than 2% of its former North American range.  The Center won a major victory this year, with the closure of sheep-grazing in Idaho grizzly habitat.  Clearly, we need a bigger, bolder strategy for these top dogs.

How’m I Doing?

New York City’s Mayor Ed Koch was known for walking the streets of the Big Apple asking that question.  If the heads of the major environmental organizations were brave enough to ask that same thing on this Earth Day, they might not like the answer.

While there are reasons to feel hopeful about conservation, there are even more reasons for alarm and regret, particularly concerning the fate of biodiversity and perilously endangered species like the tiger and the panda.  While international NGOs, or non-governmental organizations like WWF and the Wildlife Conservation Society have been using these charismatic and far-flung species—safely outside the borders of the U.S.—to raise funds here for years, the species themselves have only grown more critically endangered as the years pass.  For most endangered species, whether in North America or abroad, NGOs cannot be credited with consistent, practical solutions.

What’s more, the biggest conservation groups have shied away from taking on controversial species like today’s Endangered All-Star, the Mexican Gray Wolf, particularly when it might affect their fund-raising.  For more on the self-inflicted problems facing conservation, see my discussion of the Mexican Gray Wolf program in Rewilding the World:  Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution, or read Michael J. Robinson’s Predatory Bureaucracy:  The Extermination of Wolves and the Transformation of the West.  With the exception of gutsy grassroots groups like Defenders of Wildlife and the Center for Biological Diversity—where Michael Robinson has worked on Lobo issues for years—none of the major NGOs has entered this particular fray.  To learn how you can support the Lobo, to see wolf den photos, or to download a wolf ringtone, visit the excellent Lobos of the Southwest website.

A BIG BATTLE OVER A TINY MAMMAL

In the bitter war being waged over climate change in this country, two creatures have been drafted as poster children:  the Polar Bear and the American Pika, today’s Endangered All-Star.  The pika is a diminutive creature often compared to the chinchilla because of its size and its superbly warm fur coat which keeps this high-altitude mammal alive in the crevices of rocky slopes throughout the winter.  A lagomorph, and thus a relative of the rabbit, the pika has become the focus of conservation groups determined to force state agencies and the US Fish and Wildlife Service to acknowledge the threat posed by global warming.  While listing the species as of “Least Concern,” the IUCN Red List also notes that eight of 36 subspecies are “Vulnerable,” threatened by overgrazing and, yes, global warming.

The Center for Biological Diversity has sued repeatedly to gain protection for the species under the California Endangered Species Act and the federal ESA, pointing out that more than a third of Oregon and Nevada’s Great Basin populations have already been extirpated.  The Center also cites two studies finding that climate change would inevitably push the species to extinction.  A 2010 BioScience article, “Silence of the Pikas, by Wendee Holtcamp, quoted specialists agreeing with that assessment:  “There’s enough evidence to say that pikas are going to be among the first mammals to be adversely affected by climate change…The problem with global warming is that if [pikas] lose snowpack, which provides insulation in winter, they freeze to death, and if the ambient air temperature heats up too much in summer, then they fry. That’s the challenge… . They’re already at the top of the mountain. If you heat it up substantially, there’s no place for them to go.”  But in February 2010, the USFWS declared that additional protection for the pika “is not warranted at this time.”  In defense of the finding, the agency suggested that the pika may exhibit “physiological flexibility.” To put it in words that New York’s infamous Daily News might use:  USFWS To Pikas:  GET USED TO IT.

Will they?  Some scientists are doubtful.  For a study of Great Basin pikas published in the Journal of Biogeography in 2005, Donald K. Grayson, of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington, examined the prehistoric record.  It revealed how ancient pikas were driven farther and farther uphill, as it were, until they ran out of room. Prehistoric extinctions, he found, were “driven by climate change” and its effects on vegetation, and today’s pikas “may be on the brink of extinction.”

Good News for the Jaguar:  On January 12, 2010, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it would develop a recovery plan and set aside critical habitat for the jaguar in the U.S.  Facing a deadline of last Friday, the USFWS asked for an extension until this past Tuesday, and their decision—coming after disappointing news for environmentalists on other fronts, particularly the Obama administration’s support for the delisting of the gray wolf in Montana and Idaho—surprised and pleased groups that had been lobbying for protection for the jaguar.  “It’s a good day for jaguars in the United States and it’s also an important day for the integrity of their ecosystem,” said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity in the Los Angeles Times. “They are going to be able to recover in the United States.”

Photo:  Arizona Game and Fish Department, from a motion-activated camera near the US-Mexico border

SAVE THEM ALL:  Today’s Endangered All-Star is perhaps the most endangered snake in America:  the San Francisco Garter snake, with one or two thousand surviving in only two counties: San Mateo and a fragment of Santa Cruz.

This subspecies of the common garter snake is a specialist, preferring to dine on a single species of freshwater frog, the California red-legged frog, which has disappeared from 70% of its range and is itself threatened.  The snake haunts ponds and wetlands and is one of the few species that can ingest the toxic California newt without intestinal repercussions.  One of the last significant populations occurs west of the San Francisco International Airport, and in 2001, construction on the airport BART commuter station was brought to a halt when one of the snakes was killed.

To secure a haven for the snake and its prey, the Center for Biological Diversity is promoting the development of a lagoon habitat at Sharp Park in Pacifica, California.  In 2008, the Center filed a notice of intent to sue the city of San Francisco for illegally killing the snake on a nearby golf course.  Sharp Park is said to present one of the “great restoration opportunities” in the Bay area, but so far, golf-aficionados have resisted, applying for landmark status for the 1930s-era course despite the fact that it is often flooded.

Photo:  copyright Don Roberson

Batter Up:  The Jaguar is today’s Endangered All-Star, thanks to the US Fish & Wildlife Service’s latest failure to respond to a court-ordered decision on establishing a critical habitat and recovery plan for the species.  Listed as “Near Threatened” on the IUCN’s Red List, the jaguar is certainly endangered in the American southwest, due to habitat loss, hunting, and the proliferation of border fences and infrastructure, yet the government continues to drag its feet.  So far, the Obama administration’s record on listing endangered species is an embarrassment and a grave concern to environmental supporters:  Only two species have made the ESA list during the past year, a Hawaiian vine and the reticulated flatwoods salamander.  Notoriously, Ken Salazar, Obama’s Interior secretary, refused to back down from the Bush decision to delist the wolf, with predictably serious consequences for the recovering population.

SAVE THEM ALL:  While the Obama administration dithers, making decisions about species based on politics, not science—a violation of campaign promises—the jaguar’s recovery rests on luck, which has been running out.  Last year, the Arizona Fish and Game agency deliberately snared “Macho B,” one of the few male jaguars caught on camera traps in the U.S.  Collared and released, the animal was recaptured weeks later and euthanized, causing an outcry against the state and federal agencies and their failure to develop responsible plans.  Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity told the AP:  “The jaguar has suffered from delay after delay, year after year, and even decade after decade to get real on-the-ground protection that it should have received back in the 1970s.”  This is not change we can believe in.

Photo: Jaguar at the Milwaukee County Zoological Gardens in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

“The Little Things That Run the World”—That’s how E. O. Wilson once referred to invertebrates, the objects of his affection and study.  These creatures play a disproportionately powerful role in the affairs of the planet:  In 1987, Wilson surmised that there were 42,580 species of vertebrates described by humankind—including a paltry 4000 mammals—versus 990,000 species of invertebrates, the majority beetles.  Most, however, remain undiscovered and undescribed, adding up to perhaps as many as a whopping 30 million.  And as Wilson pointed out, both in a Conservation Biology essay and in a Nova program, these busy little creatures are keeping the planet alive:  pollinating plants, composting waste, returning nutrients to forests, comprising a third of the biomass on earth.

SAVE THEM ALL:  One invertebrate that has been described only to face imminent extinction is the Sacramento Mountains Checkerspot Butterfly, which exists in some 33 square miles of New Mexico, in the meadows around the town of Cloudcroft.  Like so many invertebrates, it is dependent on a single plant, New Mexico beardtongue or Penstemon neomexicanus, which itself is endemic to the Sacramento and Capitan mountains:  The adult checkerspots lay their eggs only the leaves of this plant, found in mixed-conifer forests at the 7,800-9000 foot range. 

Threats are proliferating:  Road construction, development, livestock grazing, pesticide spraying, and invasive species, and climate change are crowding out the butterfly and its host plant.  In 2001, the species was proposed for listing under the Endangered Species Act but several years later, the proposal was withdrawn pending the development of a draft conservation plan.  That plan, however, offers less hope for the species since it applies only to publicly-owned land (which amounts to half the remaining checkerspot habitat), and has no force or effect on private land.  WildEarth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity sued to force evaluation for an E.S.A. listing for the checkerspot, but in September, 2009, the US Fish and Wildlife Service denied the petition, saying there were no “current significant threats,” a decision termed “reckless and illegal” by the Guardians.  Michael Nivison, a former mayor of Cloudcroft, had a different perspective:  He told High Country News that the process of developing a conservation plan has changed minds in the town:  “We’re a tourist community, so it allows us to maximize another facet of the mountains where we live to draw tourists here.”  He failed to mention, however, that Otero County, where the butterfly is found, continues to pursue a policy of spraying pesticides that could potentially drive the species to extinction.

Photo: Julie McIntyre, USFWS