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\ SOUTHWEST BIODIVERSITY ALERT
#163
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\
12-8-98
/
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\ SOUTHWEST CENTER FOR
BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
/
\ http://www.sw-center.org
/
\________________________________________/
1. HABITAT PROTECTION ORDERED
FOR ENDANGERED OWL, PLANT
2. MEXICAN SPOTTED OWL STILL DECLINING- MAY BE
UPLISTED
TO ENDANGERED STATUS
3. GUNMAN BLASTS ANIMAL
RIGHTS OFFICE, THREATENS WOLVES
4. RANCHER CONVICTED OF KILLING JAGUARS
AND OCELOTS
5. WASHINGTON POST: SUITS & SPECIES TURNING
LIVESTOCK
INDUSTRY UPSIDE-DOWN IN
SW
*****
***** ***** *****
JUDGE
ORDERS HABITAT PROTECTION FOR ENDANGERED PYGMY OWL
& WATER UMBEL
On
11-25-98, a federal judge ordered the U.S. Fish &
Wildlife Service to
propose critical habitat for the
Huachuca water umbel and the Cactus
ferruginous pygmy owl
within 30 days. He gave the agency six months to make
a
final decision on the proposal. The order came in response
to a lawsuit
by the Southwest Center challenging the
agency's refusal to protect the two
species' habitat. The
Fish & Wildlife Service argued that publicly
identifying
protected habitat could endanger the species by
alerting
wildlife collectors to their presence. The judge, however,
agreed
that the overwhelming threat to both is habitat
loss, and that critical
habitat designation is designed to
prevent habitat loss.
The water
umbel lives along the San Pedro River and its
tributaries in southeast
Arizona. The SW Center has been
fighting a protracted battle to halt the
dewatering of the
river by urban sprawl and the Army's Fort Huachuca. The
pygmy
owl lives along desert rivers, washes and pristine Sonoran
desert
habitats. Critical habitat for it will likely include
northwest Tucson, the
Gila River, the San Pedro River, and
Aravaca
Canyon.
___________________________
MEXICAN
SPOTTED OWL STILL DECLINING, MAY BE UPGRADED TO
ENDANGERED STATUS
A recent
study of Mexican spotted owl populations on the
Gila and Coconino National
Forests by Dr. Rocky Gutierrez
has documented an enormous decline averaging
at least 10%
per year between 1991 and 1997. Since the two populations
are
at opposite ends of the Mogollon Plateau, over 200 miles
apart, Gutierrez
suggests that the entire metapopulation may
be declining.
The Mexican
spotted owl was listed as threatened under the
Endangered Species Act in 1993
in response to a petition by
the Southwest Center. Recent genetic analysis
suggests it is
a unique species, rather than a subspecies of spotted owl.
We
are reviewing additional demographic data to determine whether
it
should be uplisted to endangered status.
______________________
GUNMAN BLASTS NM ANIMAL RIGHTS OFFICE, THREATENS
WOLVES
On 12-6, the Santa Fe office of Animal Protection of New
Mexico
(APNM) was strafed with shotgun blasts. No one was
present at the time.
APNM, made up almost entirely of
women, has been an aggressive and successful
opponent of
abuse to wild and domestic animals. It has taken on the
fur
industry, the U.S. Forest Service, wolf killers, bison
killers and
circuses.
It's director, Lisa Jennings, recently a letter
warning:
"you are approaching a point where we will have to hurt you.
We
are going to make a concerted effort to kill any wolf
reintroduced in to the
wild and poison bison as long as you
interfere with wildlife
issues."
________________________
RANCHER
CONVICTED OF KILLING ENDANGERED JAGUARS
AND OCELOTS
On 11-25-98, two
Arizona men were convicted by a Tucson
jury of selling endangered jaguar and
ocelot hides to an
undercover wildlife agent. They face up to five years
in
jail and a $250,000 fine. John Klump, a southern Arizona
rancher,
tracked the jaguar through the Dos Cabezas Mountains
for 10 days in 1986
before killing it. The two also illegally
killed black bears, javelinas, and
bighorn sheep.
_______________________
WASHINGTON POST: SUITS & SPECIES
TURNING
LIVESTOCK INDUSTRY UPSIDE-DOWN IN SW
The following excerpt is from
a lengthy front page story in the
Washington Post on 11-29-98. It is the
second of two stories the
Post has done this year on the decline of the
livestock industry
in the Southwest. After nearly a hundred years of
political
dominance, the industry has been shaken by a barrage
of
Endangered Species Act petitions by the Southwest Center,
copious
environmental litigation, scathing critiques by Forest
Service and academic
scientists, and changing public attitudes
about the management of public
lands.
Grazing Laws Feed Demise Of Ranchers' Way of Life
By Tom Kenworthy
"Spurred by lawsuits from without and new
leadership within --
and in response to the changing values -- the
Forest Service is
changing the way it manages millions of acres of
forest and range
in the Southwest. The new management, designed to
better protect
ecologically sensitive stream corridors and the
wildlife that
depends on them, is having a dramatic impact on
Southwest
ranchers, who often own just a few hundred acres of private
land
and must rely on public rangeland for most of their cattle
forage."
...
"Forest Service officials concede that
protecting fish and wildlife
has historically not been their top
priority. Created in 1905, the
Forest Service has been guided by the
philosophy of founder
Gifford Pinchot, who with President Theodore
Roosevelt added
nearly 150 million acres to the country's forest
reserves. Natural
resources, preached Pinchot, should be managed to
provide "the
greatest good to the greatest number."
In
practice, that has largely meant using the forests to produce
timber
and forage. And it is only relatively recently that this has
come
under serious challenge, from without and within. Early this
year, the
recently retired head of the Forest Service's endangered
species
program in the Southwest wrote to the agency's chief
blasting the
service's "unwillingness to manage resources for the
public good
instead of the financial benefit of the livestock
industry." Livestock
grazing, wrote Leon Fager, "is the major
reason that ecosystems are
deteriorating, species are near
extinction and watersheds have lost
much of their ability to yield
high quality and quantities of
water."
Over the years the Forest Service has been adept at
muzzling or
shrugging off internal critics such as Fager. But the
agency is
finding it more difficult to fend off a ferocious legal
assault by
environmental groups such as the Santa Fe-based
Forest
Guardians and the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity
in
Tucson. They have bombarded the agency with lawsuits
demanding better protection for endangered species and less
intrusive
ranching. Leaders of both groups make no bones about
their agenda:
ending ranching on public land in much of the arid
Southwest.
Cattle grazing "is the single most devastating impact
on the
ecosystems of the Southwest," said Kieran Suckling,
executive
director of the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity.
"It just
doesn't belong here."
In a broad suit, the two
conservation groups allege that the Forest
Service has repeatedly
violated the Endangered Species Act by
failing to determine whether
grazing on scores of federal
allotments in New Mexico and Arizona is
harmful to threatened
and endangered wildlife and fish.
Last spring, to clear away some of the underbrush in that suit, the
Forest Service and the environmental plaintiffs signed off on an
agreement under which the government promised to ensure that
cattle
are kept away from rivers and streams on almost 60 grazing
allotments
in the Southwest. At the same time, the agency has
been conducting
what are known as environmental assessments
under the National
Environmental Policy Act on hundreds of
southwestern grazing
allotments to determine the appropriate
level of usage. More often
than not, the number of cattle is being
cut substantially after those
reviews are completed.
The key findings for many of the Blue River
ranches: The soils
have "an inherent inability to withstand grazing,"
and in river
areas, as much as 95 percent of the habitat for wildlife
is in
"unsatisfactory" condition.
"It's painful for us
to see" the wrenching changes taking place on
the Blue, said Dave
Stewart, head of the range program in the
Forest Service's Southwest
region. "But our number one
obligation as federal public servants is
to the resource itself, and
to make sure these lands are managed on a
sustainable basis."
The sense of doom that pervades the Blue is
based in part on a
solid reading of recent history. Within the past
three years,
measures taken to protect the Mexican spotted owl
have
decimated the Southwest timber industry, which is unlikely
to
ever recover from logging restrictions and two
court-imposed
logging moratoriums, now
lifted."
_____________________________________________________________________________
Kier�n
Suckling
[email protected]
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