Grazing damage adjacent to a rock art site, Sonoran Desert National Monument. Photo G. Anderson/WWP.
The Sonoran Desert National Monument was established in 2001 with very specific terms about how grazing should be managed on these lands. The Proclamation basically said that grazing should be permanently banned from parts of the monument and could only continue on portions of the monument where it was found to be compatible with resource protection. (You can read all about the early days of Western Watersheds Project’s involvement with the Sonoran Desert NM, but the short version is in 2008 we had to sueto get the Bureau of Land Management to start the process of determining grazing compatibility and in 2013 we filed another lawsuit because of their flawed determination process. We won that lawsuit in 2015 the Bureau was compelled to reassess its plans.)
During the Trump Administration, the Bureau of Land Management seized the opportunity of the court’s 2015 remand to expand grazing under its 2020 Resource Management Plan. To do this, they needed to determine if grazing was compatible with resource protection, for which they generally use proxy measures like rangeland health standards to assess things like wildlife habitats and cultural sites.
The 496,000-acre monument proclamation specifically identifies the need to protect and preserve:
“… [M]any significant archaeological and historic sites, including rock art sites, lithic quarries, and scattered artifacts. Vekol Wash is believed to have been an important prehistoric travel and trade corridor between the Hohokam and tribes located in what is now Mexico. Signs of large villages and permanent habitat sites occur throughout the area, and particularly along the bajadas of the Table Top Mountains. Occupants of these villages were the ancestors of today’s O’odham, Quechan, Cocopah, Maricopa, and other tribes. The monument also contains a much used trail corridor 23 miles long in which are found remnants of several important historic trails, including the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail, the Mormon Battalion Trail, and the Butterfield Overland Stage Route.”
With such a rich array of archeological and cultural sites, you might think they would want to take a hard look at the effects of cattle trampling, cow pies, increased erosion, and other livestock-caused unnecessary degradation of these places.
You might think that, but you’d be wrong.
In this April 2020 email discovered through the Freedom of Information Act, the Arizona Bureau of Land Management’s State Archaeologist admitted that he “has never thought livestock grazing results in adverse effects in the 106 process, if the allotments are properly managed. I have always made findings of No Historic Properties affected for livestock grazing activities.”
By finding that no historic properties are affected, the agency is relieved of any obligations such as identifying historic properties, evaluating historic significance and effects, or consultation, and then, you know, actually protecting them. So, what exactly is this guy getting paid to do?
It’s appalling that the Bureau of Land Management would rubberstamp grazing authorizations like this, especially since his caveat – “if the allotments are properly managed” – is easily proven to be an baseless assumption. (That map is old, but it’s the most recent map we’ve got.) A huge percentage of western public lands managed by the Bureau are completely failing land health standards and many more have only outdated assessments or none at all.
In other words, the largest land management agency in the U.S. doesn’t even know the effects livestock have on cultural sites and, at least in Arizona, doesn’t seem to think that’s any big deal. We know that 1,400-pound cattle trampling ancient pottery will destroy it. We know that cattle tend to rub against ancient walls, toppling them over. And we know that a priceless and irreplaceable cultural legacy, spanning thousands of years of human occupation, is being destroyed everywhere that cattle are turned loose and left unattended on our public lands. So why, again, is the Bureau of Land Management allowing this to happen on lands specifically set aside to protect and preserve archaeological treasures and historic trails?
Greta Anderson is a plant nerd, a desert rat, and a fan of wildness. She is the Deputy Director of Western Watersheds Project.
George Wuerthner 4 – 5 minutes
The North Bridger Range is a proposed wilderness. Photo George Wuerthner
In an article in the Bozeman Chronicle about the North Bridger Timber sale, the Forest Service justifies logging the forests based on what it calls “forest health”. The agency claims logging will “restore” resiliency. But few ask what exactly constitutes a healthy forest ecosystem?
The North Bridger Timber Sale area. Photo George Wuerthner
The agency defines forest health as a lack of tree mortality, mainly from wildfire, bark beetles, root rot, mistletoe, drought, and a host of other natural agents. To the Forest Service, such biological agents are “destructive,” but this demonstrates a complete failure to understand how forest ecosystems work.
This Industrial Forestry Paradigm espoused by the Forest Service views any mortality other than that resulting from a chainsaw as unacceptable.
The snag forest resulting from wildfire supports some of the highest biodiversity of all forest ecosystem types. Photo George Wuerthner
This perspective is analogous to how Fish and Game agencies used to view the influence of natural predators like wolves and cougars on elk and deer. Over time biologists learned that culling of the less fit animals by predators enhanced the survival of the prey species.
Similarly, wildfire, bark beetles, and other natural sources of mortality enhance the long-term resilience of the forest ecosystem.
For example, the snag forests resulting from a high severity fire have the second-highest biodiversity found in forested landscapes. Large, high severity fires promote more birds, bees, butterflies, wildflowers, bats, fungi, small rodents, trout, grizzly bears, deer, elk, and moose.
Many species of wildlife and plants are so dependent on snags and down wood that they live in mortal “fear” of green forests. Some estimates suggest that as much as 2/3 of all wildlife species utilize dead trees at some point in their lifecycle.
Even worse for forest ecosystems, the Forest Service emphasizes chainsaw medicine to “fix” what they define incorrectly as a “health” problem. Chainsaw medicine ignores the long-lasting effects of logging on forest genetics.
The tiny light spots on this lodgepole pine are areas where the tree used sap to shed bark beetles that were attacking the tree. Some trees are able to repel beetles due to genetic adaptations. Photo George Wuerthner
Research has demonstrated that all trees vary in their genetic ability to adapt to various stress agents. Some lodgepole pine and ponderosa pine have a genetic resistance to bark beetles. Others are better adapted to deal with drought and so forth. Yet, a forester with a paint gun marking trees for logging has no idea which trees have such adaptive genetics.
Research has shown that thinning even 50% of a forest stand can remove half of the genetic diversity because it is the rare alleles that are important in the time of environmental stress. Perhaps one in a hundred trees may have a genetic ability to survive drought or slightly thicker bark that enables it to survive a fire.
Weeds are spread widely along logging roads, and is one of the unaccounted costs of logging projects for “forest health.” Photo George Wuerthner
There are numerous other known ecological impacts associated with logging that are minimized, overlooked, or ignored by the Forest Service. For instance, one of the primary vectors for the spread of weeds into the forest ecosystem is logging roads. Logging roads are also a primary chronic source of sedimentation that degrades aquatic ecosystems. Logging removes carbon that would otherwise be stored on the site. Even burnt forests store far more carbon than a logged/thinned forest.
So when the Forest Service asserts it is logging the forest to enhance “forest health,” one must ask whose definition of forest health are they using? The timber industry? Or an ecological perspective? So far, the agency is more a handmaiden of the industry than a custodian of the public trust.
About The Author
George Wuerthner is an ecologist and former hunting guide with a degree in wildlife biology
http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2021/06/04/what-is-forest-health/
Photo Credit: Bureau of Land Management
A Force for Nature
Public lands that were formerly protected inside Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah are under threat from energy extraction, archeological theft, off-road vehicle abuse, and other impacts. These treasured places need to be protected once again. Please ask President Biden to act quickly to reinstate the boundaries of these two cherished places.
Subject
Dear President Biden, Personalize your message Thank you for reaffirming our nation’s commitment to conserving our national treasures and monuments. Your executive order on January 20, 2021 directing a review of the boundaries and conditions for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments was a much-needed call to reconsider the proclamations of President Trump in December 2017 that dismantled these two fragile landscapes. Please work with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to move quickly to issue proclamations under the Antiquities Act that reinstate the prior Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante boundaries. Time is of the essence, as sites sacred to the Bears Ears Tribes, which were protected in 2016, are once again potential targets for looters and even grave robbers. The United States made a promise to the Bears Ears Tribes to protect this place when the monument was designated in 2016. We must keep that promise. Former monument lands face other threats, too, including oil and gas development, uranium mining, and inappropriate off-road motorized travel. Public lands previously protected inside the boundary of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument are similarly at risk. Energy extraction, increased livestock grazing, fossil collection, and off-road vehicle travel all threaten the incredible beauty and biodiversity of public lands, which had been protected inside the Grand Staircase-Escalante boundary for more than 20 years. Proclamations restoring the boundaries of these two monuments would promote other important parts of your agenda. Re-establishing the earlier boundaries will protect more than two million acres of public land, significantly advancing your goal of protecting 30 percent of U.S. land and waters by 2030. Boundary restoration will also boost efforts to address the climate crisis by ensuring that fossil fuels are kept in the ground inside the monuments. The case for restoring Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante is clear. Please act quickly to protect these important places. Thank you.
https://secure.wildearthguardians.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1152
National forests and grasslands spread across ten percent of the U.S. Also reaching across those public lands are over 370,000 miles of roads, built mainly for the industrial logging boom of the past, but not adapted to the climate crisis of today.
With enough road miles to circle the earth 15 times, the cost to fix them all runs in the tens of billions. We can be strategic on how we address this problem. By focusing repairs on the roads where the 149 million forest visitors go, we can focus road removal along streams that supply 69 million Americans with drinking water and where wildlife are most vulnerable. We simply must eliminate what we don’t need and fix what we do need for a resilient future.
Email your members of Congress today and ask them to reinstate and fund the Forest Service’s Legacy Roads and Trails Program. It’s a proven solution to an outsized problem.
Photo Credit: WildEarth Guardians
https://secure.wildearthguardians.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1142
Target: Chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Vicki Christiansen
Goal: Terminate plans to develop a copper mine on Oak Flat.
Oak Flat in Tonto National Forest, a sacred land to the Apache people, was sold to a London based company to build a massive copper mine. This will not only cause grave destruction to this ancestral land and burial site, but it will also seriously damage the environment. Oak Flat is an important habitat for endangered wildlife and migratory birds.
The project is sure to deplete water supply and quality in the region. It is predicted that the mine would eventually cause the land to cave into a crater a mile wide and a thousand feet deep. The decision to sell this land to a multinational corporation was a disturbing betrayal to the local Indigenous communities and it must be stopped. Sign the petition below to demand cancelation of the copper mine on Oak Flat.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Mrs. Christiansen,
The sale of Oak Flat to a London based copper mining company is a violation of local Indigenous communities and will be detrimental to the region’s wildlife and water supply. Oak Flat is sacred ancestral land and must be protected and regarded with respect.
President Joe Biden has spoken extensively of his desire to address the climate and ecological crisis. That being said, this environmentally harmful project is not in alignment with the current administration. Plans to place a copper mine in the Tonto National Forest must be terminated immediately. An apology also needs to be issued to the surrounding tribes for this vial disregard of their land and culture.
Sincerely,
Photo by: David Pinter
https://forcechange.com/579748/protect-sacred-native-land-from-massive-copper-mine/
Conglomerate Mesa Coalition started this petition to Inyo County Supervisors and 3 others
Help stop the destruction of the California desert! Sign our petition to protect Conglomerate Mesa from gold mining.
Conglomerate Mesa: A Gem of the California Desert
Conglomerate Mesa lies on the doorstep of Death Valley National Park and is OUR public lands. This land is part of the traditional homeland of the Timbisha-Shoshone and the Paiute-Shoshone Native Americans and the area possesses immense significance to the local tribal nations today. Conglomerate Mesa is a roadless, pristine area ranging from 3,800 to 7,700 feet in elevation. This unique environment provides a rare transitional habitat for plants and wildlife as the ground begins to rise from the badlands of Death Valley into the Inyo Mountains. Managed by the Bureau of Land Management and designated as National Conservation Lands, Conglomerate Mesa was intended to be protected for conservation and recreation. It is isolated, undisturbed, roadless, and of historic importance.
Mining Threatens Conglomerate Mesa’s Future
Conglomerate Mesa is currently threatened by an industrial open-pit gold mine. Recently, Canadian exploration company K2 Gold, and their subsidiary, Mojave Precious Metals, proposed to the Bureau of Land Management a plan that would execute 120 exploratory drills on Conglomerate Mesa and build a road into the areas. This would not only destroy valuable habitat for native plants and wildlife, but it would permanently scar a roadless desert landscape.
Sign our petition below to help protect Conglomerate Mesa.
With Malpais Mesa Wilderness to the south, Inyo Mountains Wilderness to the north, Death Valley National Park to the east and Keeler and Lone Pine to the west, Conglomerate Mesa is a vulnerable piece in a larger landscape of contiguous protected lands in the California Desert. We need you with us! Sign the petition to support the permanent protection of Conglomerate Mesa.
Paul Fretheim·1 week agoWhy should a Canadian Corporation be able to destroy our scenic landscape to extract gold? Inyo would gain nothing!
The wind whipped icy rain in every direction and gave a gray cast to the steep hilly landscape surrounding us. We were all pretty well soaked through, but we were on an important errand; investigating a former mine site for evidence of toxic pollutants and other environmental harm.
Kat Diersen/Defenders of Wildlife
The Straight Creek mine site is owned by the KopperGlo Mining Company, a company with a history of permit violations and environmental harm on the coal-rich Cumberland Plateau of northeast Tennessee. Just a few years ago, Defenders took legal action that resulted in a major mitigation settlement against one of the company’s other mines in the region. This day’s damp and chilly visit had been requested by a coalition of groups that often works together to watch-dog mining activities in TN. Our goal for the day was to assess the quality of KopperGlo’s post-mining site cleanup activities, known as “reclamation,” and ensure that the site would support basic ecological functions and do no further environmental damage to this once biologically rich watershed after the Straight Creek mine was formally closed.
Straight Creek is what is known as a re-mining site. It had been mined in the past, prior to Congress passing the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA). This means there was no law in place to require reclamation and the land was left barren and scarred. Vertical cliffs stripped of vegetation existed higher up the mountainside along the entire mine site where the previous mine had sliced away a side of the mountain like a piece of birthday cake. These “high walls,” as they are called, are unstable and dangerous, prone to erosion and landslides, and likely to allow any toxins that reside within the remaining coal seam to leach into the surrounding hillside.
Kat Diersen/Defenders of Wildlife
SMCRA is the primary legal tool that we use to conduct citizen oversight of mines in Tennessee. Under SMCRA, mining companies are required to post a bond sufficient to cover the cost of reclaiming a site before they can get a permit to operate. This is to ensure that should the mine be abandoned before it can be fully reclaimed, the responsible government agency has sufficient funds to complete the reclamation. Once a site is adequately reclaimed by the mining company, as determined by Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE), the company may request that the bond be released to them. SMCRA provides mechanisms for public engagement in the mine permitting and reclamation process. Any time a company requests a permit for a new operation or the release of bond for a reclaimed operation, OSMRE must provide notice to the public. Stakeholders can request hearings and even site visits to review, discuss or challenge these requests.
For over five hours we walked nearly the entire length of the old mine site, which was long and narrow as it had been carved into the side of a long ridge line. Along the way we stopped to take water samples at several ponds and other places where water emerged from the hillside. The ponds were former runoff catchment ponds that had been restored to become small wetland structures. Pollutants we sampled for included iron, manganese, selenium and aluminum—all well-documented, common pollutants that result from strip mining. When stakeholders had visited the site several years ago at the beginning of reclamation, several samples came back highly positive for these metals. This day’s samples later revealed that pollutant rates came down considerably, but most of our partners thought the samples were diluted because we were sampling during a time of extremely high water flow due to ongoing winter rain, while previous samples had been taken during a hot, dry summer.
Kat Diersen/Defenders of Wildlife
At one spot at the base of a small cliff, there was a fissure with gushing water where a former catchment pond had been lost during a landslide. This pool had been the one where the most concerning water samples had been taken in previous years. Now there was a large piece of pvc-like plastic, running from the outflow at the small cliff base, across the adjacent field and right off the side of the mountain. The KopperGlo representative explained that this was to ensure the water would run across the field and not sink back into the ground, further destabilizing the loose soil below and causing another land slide. Unfortunately, this probably means that any heavy metals still coming out of the ground are being dumped off the site and onto the hillside below.
Kat Diersen/Defenders of Wildlife
The intended post-mining use of this site in KopperGlo’s permit was commercial forestry and wildlife habitat, and we did see evidence of efforts on that front. The land had been sloped and graded to approximate the pre-mining topography of the site and there appeared to be a decent diversity of planted native grass, shrub and tree species on the newly-shaped mountainside. At several of the old containment ponds-cum-wetlands, I noted wetland plant species such as cattails, and in one I even spotted several eastern newts. I also saw scat from elk, deer, coyote, and a couple of other mammals, indicating that at least less sensitive wildlife is beginning to re-inhabit the area.
After the test results from our water samples came back, we concluded that overall there was not much to challenge on this site. Site restoration efforts and water quality were imperfect but within legal limits. We prepared a comment letter for OSMRE, in which we asked that KopperGlo be required to continue monitoring water quality at the site for another year and come up with a solution to the one major outflow that didn’t involve using a plastic liner to transport potentially contaminated water off of the site, and reaffirmed our commitment to continued participation as stakeholders on other mining actions throughout the region.
Kat Diersen/Defenders of Wildlife
Straight Creek is just one of hundreds of mines that have scarred and polluted this landscape and degraded its waterways over the last century. The rivers of the Cumberland Plateau are historically among the most biodiverse in the country and are currently home to a number of imperiled species, including the federally threatened blackside dace, which has designated critical habitat in the same watershed as Straight Creek. Today these systems are so degraded that the impacts of a single mine can seem like a drop in the bucket. But if we are to have any hope of repairing and restoring them, then we must keep pushing to minimize as much new mining activity as we can and ensure that existing mines reduce their harm as much as possible.
It’s a little frustrating that this site, with its visible high walls and polluted water, constitutes a “good” reclamation. There is no such thing as a good strip mine, and even the best reclamation effort is a poor option compared leaving these beautiful mountains whole and healthy. Nevertheless, I believe that our past efforts to hold KopperGlo and other mining operations in the region accountable have resulted in these companies taking more stringent efforts to comply with the letter of the law, and the Straight Creek reclamation site is evidence of that. Defenders and our allies will continue to keep an eye out in Tennessee coal country, challenging each and every new mine operation and pushing for better clean-up of this ravaged, but still rich and beautiful landscape.
change.org
Sign the Petition Lighthouse Point started this petition to The Walt Disney Company
There are plenty of places in the Bahamas where Disney can dock its cruise ships. There is only one Lighthouse Point. We are deeply concerned about Disney’s plans that threaten this unique natural place treasured by generations of Bahamians and visitors from around the world. The seas surrounding the point are so biologically rich that they have been formally proposed as a Marine Protected Area. This is NOT the place where an environmentally responsible corporation would choose to construct a massive private cruise ship port – the centerpiece of which is a half-mile-long pier cutting across coral reefs including endangered staghorn coral. The port’s construction and operation would seriously harm the environment, while the economic benefits to communities in South Eleuthera are still unclear and very questionable. Our planet’s oceans are already facing unprecedented pressures. Their future depends on the choices we make today to protect places like the proposed Lighthouse Point Marine Protected Area. Disney should follow the lead of other cruise companies that have chosen instead to rehabilitate already degraded areas for their cruise facilities. This is our last chance to protect Lighthouse Point for generations to come. Sign the petition to call upon Disney to secure a different, more suitable site for their cruise ship port and instead work with Bahamian citizen groups on a sustainable development alternative for Lighthouse Point.
https://www.change.org/p/the-walt-disney-company-last-chance-for-lighthouse-point-2
New York Congresswoman Nita Lowey has reintroduced a bill that would prohibit body-gripping traps in the National Wildlife Refuge system.
Lowey, Democratic chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, reintroduced the Refuge From Cruel Trapping Act Friday, that would ban from public land traps where animal endure hours or even days of pain. Lowey says that, each year, thousands of bobcats, otters, foxes, beavers and other wild animals are trapped in this manner across the nation’s refuges. She says more than 50 percent of the 566 refuges allow trapping. Steel-jaw leghold traps; conibear traps: and neck snares would be banned if the measure is enacted. Lowey says it’s time to restore the true meaning of “refuge” to the National Wildlife Refuge system
https://www.wamc.org/post/rep-lowey-reintroduces-bill-ban-traps-refuges
Defenders of Wildlife Logo
Stop oil and gas development from harming Alaska’s wildlife
Spotted Seal (c) Jay Verhoef (NOAA)
Alaska’s wildlife is in jeopardy. A newly proposed development by oil giant ConocoPhilips would build a huge oil field with hundreds of oil wells that would impact critical polar bear habitat and protected lands in the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recently released their Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the development, but they’re rushing through the process to open up leasing as quickly as possible, with little regard for the harm this development could bring to local wildlife.
Tell the BLM: Don’t turn a blind eye to wildlife!
Dear BLM State Director Chad Padgett,
ConocoPhillips has proposed developing a major industrialized zone, including up to five drill sites of up to 50 wells each, a central processing facility, an operations center pad, miles of gravel and ice roads, pipelines (including under the Colville River), a gravel mine just west of the community of Nuiqsut, and a gravel island in Harrison Bay. This human-made, modular island just off-shore and north-east of the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area would impact polar bear critical habitat and likely would also impact to threatened ice seals and whales. These species are already experiencing significant effects from climate change and other oil and gas activities in the Alaskan Arctic. The DEIS understates impacts to polar bears and seals, and completely omits impacts to cetaceans including listed bowhead and beluga whales.
I urge BLM to slow this analysis process down to make sure that the agency is getting sufficient public input; properly analyzing issues raised by a cross-section of stakeholders; and especially sufficiently analyzing impacts to imperiled polar bears, ice seals, whales and other wildlife.
Here’s a disturbing story from National Geographic about a planned road that would slice through Florida panther habitat.
As writer Douglas Main explains, the state of Florida recently authorized the addition of three new toll roads. While all of these roads could negatively affect a vital wildlife corridor, one of them would directly traverse the habitat of Florida’s iconic panthers.
Florida panthers are actually pumas (Puma concolor) that have managed to survive after the rest of their species was driven out of the Eastern United States. It hasn’t been easy, though. Main writes that there were only around 20 Florida panthers left in 1967, when the cats were listed as an endangered species.
Thanks to the Endangered Species Act – the extraordinary piece of legislation that was just gutted by the Trump administration – Florida…
View original post 180 more words
rainforest-rescue.org
Gorilla habitat is shrinking day by day, and one of the main drivers is the chocolate industry. In Nigeria, cocoa farms are penetrating the last refuges of the endangered primates, driven by demand from chocolate lovers the world over. We can’t let the last remaining tiny patches of gorillas’ forests be trashed for candy.
Call to action
To: Governor Ben Ayade, via the Cross River State Forestry Commission (Mr Ogbang Akwaji)
Cocoa plantations are endangering the last rainforests in Cross River State. Strengthen nature conservation and fight illegal deforestation by cocoa producers.
Read letter
Nigeria gives rise to despair and small glimmers of hope: 96 percent of the country’s forests are gone. One remaining bright spot is Cross River State in the southeast – its forests, which are among the world’s most biodiverse, are still home to gorillas.
Yet Cross River’s forests are also dying by a thousand cuts: More than 16,000 hectares were destroyed in 2017 – four times the previous year’s toll. The main causes of deforestation are illegal logging, palm oil plantations and the production of charcoal. Increasingly, cocoa plantations are encroaching on protected forests.
The ultimate driver of destruction, however, is the sweet tooth of consumers in the global North. Nigeria is the third-largest cocoa exporter in the world. The country is responsible for ten percent of the EU’s imports. Exports have grown by 65 percent over the past three years to 248,000 tons in 2018, with the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium being the largest importers.
In Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana – the world leaders in cocoa production – the destruction of forests has reached extreme proportions. Nearly all of Côte d’Ivoire’s protected areas have been plundered, and Ghana holds a sad world record for its rate of deforestation in 2018. The close link between cocoa cultivation and deforestation makes us fear the worst for Nigeria.
Chocolate companies buy whatever cocoa they can get, no questions asked. While environmentalists in Brussels are in fact pushing for the EU to regulate the market, the gorillas can’t wait that long.
The governor of Cross River State, Ben Ayade, has it in his hands to protect the gorillas and their habitat. Please sign our petition to the governor – we can’t let the last remaining tiny patches of gorilla habitat be trashed for candy.
Background
Cross River State is already taking first steps toward preventing further deforestation for cocoa. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is currently expanding an ongoing project to villages in Afi, Mbe and Okwangwo. Its aim is to produce cocoa in an environmentally sound way. The EU is supporting the project financially.
The state government is planning a cocoa processing plant in the city of Ikom. The impact that this will have on the expansion of the plantations is currently unclear.
Cocoa in Omo Forest Reserve
Cocoa plantations are also a problem in Omo Forest Reserve. Thousands of smallholders have planted fields in the protected area in the state of Ogun. The reserve is home to at least 80 forest elephants and a crucial source of drinking water for the Nigerian metropolis of Lagos. Some settlers have already been there for decades, and the government would rather not evict them, as it would destroy their livelihoods and compensating them would be very costly. Rangers patrol the forest to stop others from encroaching, but the ranger units are too understaffed to protect the forest effectively.
Letter
To: Governor Ben Ayade, via the Cross River State Forestry Commission (Mr Ogbang Akwaji)
Your Excellency,
Rainforest Rescue is a nonprofit organization based in Hamburg, Germany. We are dedicated to preserving rainforests, protecting their inhabitants and furthering social reform.
Cross River State brings Nigeria – a country which has already lost 96 percent of its forest cover – to prominence in global discussions on the environment because it is home to some of the most biodiverse forests of Nigeria, and habitat of endangered species such as gorillas, chimpanzees and forest elephants.
It is therefore very worrisome that in Afi River Forest Reserve – a biodiversity hotspot – forest is being cut illegally for the production of cocoa. The reasons for this are manifold, amongst them the search for alternative livelihoods to replace logging for timber by local communities and a lack of knowledge about sustainable cocoa farming systems. We also observe that law enforcement within the protected areas seems ineffective.
To prevent further destruction, we call on you to implement the following measures:
Yours faithfully,
This petition is also available in the following languages:
German
Spanish
French
Portuguese
amp.azcentral.com
Ian James | Arizona Republic | 1 hour ago
A federal judge blocked construction of a giant copper mine in Arizona’s Coronado National Forest, overturning a decision by the federal government and handing a major victory to environmental groups and tribes that have been fighting plans for the mine.
Federal District Judge James Soto said in his decision Wednesday that the U.S. Forest Service “abdicated its duty to protect the Coronado National Forest” when it failed to consider whether the mining company held valid unpatented mining claims.
Conservation groups sued the government seeking to stop construction of the $1.9 billion Rosemont copper mine by Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals Inc. The company secured federal approvals for the open-pit mine in the Santa Rita Mountains southeast of Tucson, but opponents argued it would tear up the landscape, destroy streams and ravage habitat for rare animals, including endangered jaguars that roam the wilds of southern Arizona.
“This is a crucial victory for jaguars and other wildlife that call the Santa Ritas home,” said Randy Serraglio of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that filed cases seeking to stop the mine. “The judge’s ruling protects important springs and streams from being destroyed. We’ll move forward with everything we’ve got to keep protecting this southern Arizona jewel from this toxic mine.”
Other groups that sued to challenge the federal government’s approval of the project included the group Save the Scenic Santa Ritas and three Native American tribes: the Tohono O’odham Nation, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and the Hopi Tribe. The tribes object to plans to excavate remnants of ancestral villages and burial sites, and say the mine would dewater springs and seep they consider sacred.
Soto said in the ruling that he was overturning the Forest Service’s decision and environmental impact statement “such that the Rosemont Mine cannot begin operations at this time.”
The judge said the Forest Service had “no factual basis to determine that Rosemont had valid unpatented mining claims” on 2,447 acres, and that the claims are invalid under the Mining Law of 1872.
“The unauthorized dumping of over 1.2 billion tons of waste rock, as well as about 700 million tons of tailings, and the establishment of an ore processing facility no doubt constitutes a depredation upon Forest Service land,” Soto wrote in the decision. He said the agency implemented the wrong regulations, misinformed the public, and “failed to adequately consider reasonable alternatives.”
The mining company said it will appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Hudbay believes that the Court has misinterpreted federal mining laws and Forest Service regulations as they apply to Rosemont,” the company said in a statement. It said the Forest Service issued its decision in 2017 after a “thorough process of ten years involving 17 co-operating agencies at various levels of government.”
Peter Kukielski, Hudbay’s interim president and CEO, said the appeal will proceed as the company evaluates its next steps on the project.
“We are extremely disappointed with the Court’s decision,” Kukielski said. “We strongly believe that the project conforms to federal laws and regulations that have been in place for decades.”
Representatives of the Forest Service were unavailable to comment on the decision.
The judge said “defects pervaded” the Forest Service’s review and decision, and “led to an inherently flawed analysis from the inception of the proposed Rosemont Mine.”
Stu Gillespie, an attorney with the group Earthjustice who is representing the tribes, said the ruling “affirms the fundamental principle that nobody gets a free pass to destroy our public lands.”
“As the Court explained, the Forest Service provided no basis for assuming Hudbay had a right to destroy thousands of years of the Tribes’ cultural heritage,” Gillespie said in an email. “Because this crucial error tainted the entire process, the Court threw out the Forest Service’s decision and enjoined Rosemont from destroying these sacred public lands.”
The tribes’ leaders praised the judge’s decision. Ned Norris Jr., chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation, called it a victory for “all of Southern Arizona.”
“The devastation that the Rosemont mine would bring to our land, water, and cultural resources is well-documented and cannot be allowed to happen,” Norris said in a statement. “The Nation will continue to fight to ensure that our sacred lands and the region’s water are protected.”
Hudbay has disputed the concerns raised by opponents, stressing that the project has gone through a thorough vetting process involving multiple government agencies and lasting more than 12 years, with a long list of studies that have examined the potential effects on the environment. Hudbay has argued that various agencies concluded the company will be able to operate the mine in compliance with environmental laws.
The company says Rosemont would be the third-largest copper mine in the United States.
Serraglio called the judge’s decision a “momentous precedent.”
“The judge essentially ruled that the mining company does not have an automatic right to dump their toxic waste on our public lands, and that the Forest Service’s interpretation of the law to that effect undermined the entire EIS (environmental impact statement) process,” Serraglio said in an email.
https://amp.azcentral.com/amp/1885757001?__twitter_impression=true
While the company appeals the decision, the judge made clear that no work on the mine may proceed in the meantime.
Reach reporter Ian James at ian.james@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8246. Follow him on Twitter: @ByIanJames
Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and at OurGrandAZ on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
thepetitionsite.com
by: Care2 Team
recipient: Manasseh Sogavare P.M. of the Solomon Islands, Xiang Lin
To most people, the Solomon Islands may seem like small specks of land in the huge expanse of the South Pacific. But to its more than 600,000 residents, it’s home. And they will do anything to protect it. The nation’s forests face the very real threat of disappearing in the coming years due to overexploitation spawned by the voracious demand for timber in Asia.
Since 1990, for example, Solomon Islanders have seen more than 20% of their forest disappear, putting both their livelihoods and their native species’ existence at risk. Now some residents are fighting back, but if the government has their way, they will spend years in jail for their resistance.
Sign to demand justice for the Nende Five.
There are many logging concerns now toppling old-growth forests throughout the archipelago, but according to activists, one company’s operations — Malaysia-based Xiang Lin SI Ltd — showed up on their southern island of Nende and started their operations illegally. But even though it is Xiang Lin Si Ltd that is accused of breaking the law, the government has decided to prosecute the brave activists that are trying to stop them.
According to villagers, Xiang Lin didn’t go through the proper steps and channels in order to acquire a license. They didn’t consult the locals, they didn’t give them the obligatory 30 day period to raise any grievances and — perhaps most troubling of all — there are signs that the previous provincial premier, Baddley Tau had accepted bribes that might have allowed logging companies like Xiang Lin to start operations without going through the correct channels.
With all the uncertainty into the illegality of the Xiang Lin’s practices, it’s no wonder that so many Nende Islanders have started fighting back. Some of them, now known as the “Nende Five” have been arrested and face serious jail time if they are found guilty.
Xiang Lin has encroached on the livelihood of an entire island of people, their culture, their ecosystem and their way of life. They have bulldozed and destroyed. And now, after all that, they are about to be the cause of unfair incarceration of people who were just want to protect their lands.
Sign the petition and ask the Solomon Islands to drop the charges against the Nende Five and tell Xiang Lin to cease operations on Nende immediately.
https://www.thepetitionsite.com/562/724/087/?z00m=31710688&redirectID=2891548854
Sierra ClubOfficial Campaign
Stop Attacks On Endangered Gray Wolves
U.S. Fish and Wildlife just announced their plans to start a process to strip Endangered Species protections from all gray wolves in the lower 48. Tell USFWS: don’t delist!
Why This Matters
Republican leadership will go to any lengths to undercut still-needed protections for struggling wildlife. This fall, House Republicans tried to pass legislation that would remove all gray wolves from the Endangered Species List while gutting the public’s ability to defend wildlife in court — first in a standalone bill, then hidden as riders in the House spending bill.
Thanks to the over 46,000 of you who wrote letters and made phone calls in opposition to these Congressional attacks on gray wolves, the riders were removed from the must-pass spending bill. So now, U.S. Fish and Wildlife is seeking to remove gray wolves’ Endangered Species protections through an administrative delisting process.
Gray wolves are just starting to recover after human persecution brought them to the brink of extinction. In Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, where wolves have already lost Endangered Species protections, trophy hunters, trappers, and others have killed more than 3,200 of them just since 2011. We already know what horrors will occur if we let the Trump administration get its way — we must push back to save the future of this magnificent, struggling species.
Dear Principal Deputy Director Everson,
I am strongly opposed to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposed rule to remove federal Endangered Species Act protections for all gray wolves in the continental U.S. at once.
Wolves have just begun to recover in some areas of the country. Since the effort to restore wolf populations began in the 1980’s, we have had some great successes, and we now have wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains and the Midwest. But it is too soon to remove wolves from the Endangered Species list, as several courts have confirmed. Continued federal protections are critical to securing the fragile recovery of existing wolf populations and allowing wolves to expand into other suitable habitats.
In Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, where wolves have already lost federal protections, trophy hunters, trappers, and others have killed more than 3,200 of them since 2011. Endangered Species Act protections are still essential to help wolves return to remaining suitable lands where they used to roam, just as the bald eagle was allowed to expand before its federal protections were removed.
Wolves are the wild ancestors of all the domestic dogs we know and love today. Polls and studies show that a majority of the public highly value wolves. These remarkable creatures are icons of our landscape and their presence is vital to maintaining the balance of their native ecosystems.
I urge you to uphold protections for vulnerable gray wolf under the Endangered Species Act to allow for continued recovery of this majestic, misunderstood species. Please, stop the delisting process.
© Sierra Club 2019 Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions Contact Us FAQ
Lobbyists for Big Oil have been allowed by the EPA to alter air pollution research which dictates environmental regulations. Sign this petition to demand that the Trump Administration stop giving Big Oil control over our environmental policies.
Source: Stop Trump Administration From Letting Oil Companies Determine Environmental Rules
as published on EcoWatch by Lorraine Chow
“The Forest Service is treating these national treasures like trash by selling them for one dollar a piece…”
About 200 horses are available for adoption and sale until Feb. 18. The fee for purchase “with limitations” has been reduced to $1 per horse, down from the original price of $25. The fee for adoption is $125.
“With limitations” includes a stipulation that prohibits using the horses for human consumption. Other requirements include appropriate transportation, adequate space and healthy accommodations for the animals, according to Ruidoso News.
The horses now up for sale and adoption are all 10 years and older. They were among the 932 mustangs that were gathered via helicopters in the territory near Alturas, California between Oct. 10 and Nov. 8.
The gathering of wild horses has prompted fierce debate about how to control populations. On the one hand, the…
View original post 421 more words
Help Strip a Poison Pill from Utah Lands Bill!
You may recall that in May, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) introduced the “Emery County Public Land Management Act of 2018” (S. 2809), a bill that involves world-class wildlands in southeastern Utah along the Green River in Desolation Canyon and in the San Rafael Swell. It was a bad bill that not only shortchanged the areas that would gain Wilderness designation, but more importantly included numerous bad provisions that would have severely compromised even the areas that were designated Wilderness.
We’ve just learned that backroom negotiations have resulted in a bill that dropped several of the bad provisions and added more Wilderness to the package. However, Senator Hatch added a very harmful, unprecedented amendment onto his bill – without any discussion or debate – that would legalize permanent fixed climbing anchors in designated Wilderness, part of a deliberate plan by the Access Fund and its allies to weaken the landmark 1964 Wilderness Act. While other changes to the bill might make it acceptable to conservationists, it is imperative that the destructive and precedent-setting “fixed-anchor” provision be removed.
The use of fixed anchors in wilderness directly contradicts the Wilderness Act’s prohibition of “installations” in wilderness. The preservation of an area as wilderness is an attempt to preserve the wildest and least tamed landscapes. Reducing a climbing route’s challenges by bolting it also goes against the essential spirit of the Wilderness Act. The maintenance of wilderness character dictates that, rather than hammer a piece of rock into submission and installing permanent bolts, a climber in Wilderness may have to accept that a route that cannot be climbed without bolts should not be climbed at all. In the first catalog for his company Chouinard Equipment, later to become Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard pioneered removable climbing chocks and a manifesto of “clean climbing.” He wrote, “We believe the only way to ensure the climbing experience for ourselves and future generations is to preserve (1) the vertical wilderness, and (2) the adventure inherent in the experience… The fewer gadgets between the climber and the climb, the greater is the chance to attain the desired communication with oneself—and nature.”
It is unfortunate that the Access Fund is mirroring the efforts of mountain bikers by turning to the same anti-wilderness Utah politicians who stripped protections for Bears Ear and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments to try to weaken the Wilderness Act as it applies to their recreational pursuits.
Please help block this unprecedented attack to legalize illegal fixed climbing anchors in Wilderness!
https://wildernesswatch.salsalabs.org/utahlandbillnofixedanchors/index.html
thepetitionsite.com
by: Care2 Team
recipient: Minister of the Environment is The Hon. Melissa Price
43,266 SUPPORTERS – 45,000 GOAL
The Australian native swift parrot is a sight to behold. With a brilliant green, blue, red and yellow plumage, anyone who gets a chance to see it should count themselves lucky. Lucky, not only because it’s such a stunning ave, but also because it’s disappearing.
The bird, which breeds only in Tasmania and then flies across to the mainland to forage for nectar is now critically endangered federally. One might think that the government, after recognizing its endangered status would do all they can to protect their habitat. But they’d be wrong. In fact, the parrot’s most vital habitat, their nesting grounds in Tasmania, could be on the chopping block.
That’s because, despite their protected status, the environmental minister could rule to allow a local council to bulldoze around 40 hectares of the birds nesting area — all in order to build a dam for fish farming and a golf course.
If this happens, not only will the parrots lose out, but it will prove that Australia doesn’t take conservation seriously.
According to a 2015 study, the swift parrot, on its current decline, is doomed for extinction within 15 years. That’s why the federal government’s threatened species commissioner made it a special priority with a goal of improving its trajectory by 2020. And yet, constant threats to its survival keep popping up.
Australia is among the top 10 countries with the highest amount of endangered species. They should be taking action rather than destroying habitat.
Please sign the petition and ask Australia’s Minister of the Environment is The Hon. Melissa Price to say no to the proposed dam and fish farm that could push the swift parrot over the edge.
https://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/523/271/460/
By Karen Lane –
December 10, 2018
The Norwegian parliament has voted to make Norway the first country in the world to exclude biofuels based on high deforestation risk feedstocks such as palm oil from 2020.
A majority in the Parliament, including the ruling coalition, has requested that the government develop measures to avoid high deforestation risk biofuels.
“This is a victory in the fight for the rainforest and the climate,” the Rainforest Foundation Norway, said in a statement.
The decision follows an all-time high consumption of palm oil based fuels in Norway last year. In 2017, 317 million litres of biodiesel – around 10 percent of the total diesel consumption in Norway – were based on palm oil. Norwegian politicians, including prime minister Erna Solberg, have raised concern over the use of palm oil based biofuels, due to the link between increased demand for palm oil and deforestation.
Norway has a set of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport, including policy incentives to increase the use of biofuel – such as a volume blending mandate for road transport rising to 20 percent in 2020, and a road tax exemption for biofuel supplied above the volume blending mandate threshold. An unintended consequence of these policies is that almost half of all biofuels consumed in Norway in 2017 were based on palm oil. The Norwegian government acknowledges that the demand for palm oil for fuel results in deforestation, due to indirect land use change effects.
The EU earlier this year agreed to phase out the use of biofuels with high indirect land use change risk by 2030, and Norway’s decision goes far beyond this, as the Norwegian parliament requests that the measures be effected beginning on January 1, 2020.
“The Norwegian parliament’s decision sets an important example to other countries and underlines the need for a serious reform of the world’s palm oil industry,” said Nils Hermann Ranum of Rainforest Foundation Norway.
Europe has seen an aggressive growth in demand for palm oil, stimulated by policies to increase the consumption of renewable energy in transportation.
The increase in demand in Europe has in turn driven the expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, at the expense of carbon and biodiversity-rich rainforests and peatlands.
The report ‘Driving Deforestation‘, released by Cerulogy and Rainforest Foundation Norway earlier this year, showed that should the current and proposed targets for future consumption of biofuels be implemented without strong measures against using palm oil feedstock, biofuel driven demand for palm oil could potentially see a sixfold increase by 2030 – a total of up to 67 million tonnes. This would exceed today’s total global production of palm oil.
Beyond the obvious disaster this demand increase would spell for biodiversity and indigenous and other forest-dependent communities, the planet’s climate would be impacted by 7 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions over the next two decades, resulting from deforestation and peat drainage. This is more than the total annual greenhouse gas emissions of the USA.
Also in 2017, the Norwegian parliament voted in favor of a ban on palm oil-based fuels in public procurement. However, the government has failed to implement the parliamentary decision, opting instead to propose voluntary measures in its earlier proposal for the 2019 national budget, which was put forward previous to the budget agreement adopted yesterday by a parliamentary majority.
Contact us: contact@worldanimalnews.com
© Copyright 2018 – WorldAnimalNews.com
Change.org
Campaigns Lab started this petition to Pacific Gas and Electric Company
2 minutes
Last autumn, Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) equipment was responsible for causing 17 out of 21 wildfires in Northern California. The exact cause of the Camp Fire and other fires blazing across California right now are largely unknown. But one thing is clear, PG&E will be responsible for $15 billion in damages caused last year. If PG&E is found responsible for causing the Camp Fire, that number could double. Customers could be left paying the bill through increased rates, or via a tax bailout if PG&E is forced into bankruptcy.
Communities suffering from fire damage shouldn’t have to foot the bill. There’s no time like the present to hold PG&E accountable, and demand they make their power lines safer.
PG&E equipment ignited those 2017 fires thanks to poor maintenance and failure to remove debris. Power lines running through dried tree limbs, over crowded lines, and bent poles all put Californians in harm’s way. Before the Camp Fire started, PG&E reported damage and an outage to one of the transformers in Paradise, CA. Investigations are still underway. Infrastructure shouldn’t put communities in peril. PG&E needs to better maintain power lines by removing tree debris and making sure power lines are secure.
Nearly all of Northern California’s 2017 wildfires were caused by unsafe PG&E power lines and utilities equipment. Who knows how many of this fall’s fires will be caused by PG&E? PG&E needs to make their power lines safer, now.
Now that California’s wildfire season is year-round, it’s never been more important for PG&E to make their equipment safe and help prevent fires. Communities and lives are at stake. Tell PG&E to make their grid safe.
SOURCE: Wild Horse Freedom Federation
The Department of the Interior’s request to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) will purge massive amounts of records that involve documents about oil and gas leases, mining, wild horses and burros, livestock grazing, dams, wells, timber sales, water, marine conservation, endangered species, non-endangered species, critical habitats, land acquisition, and much more. You can help stop this.
You can copy and paste the text below, edit or add your comments, then date, sign and fax or email to the National Archives. Or, underneath the letter text, we’ve also attached 2 pages at the bottom of this page that you can click on and print, then sign, date, and fax or email. Comments are due Nov. 26th. You can learn more and read Wild Horse Freedom Federation’s complete comments HERE.
NARA (ACRA) …
View original post 662 more words
lujangrisham.house.gov
Rep. Lujan Grisham Supports BLM Decision to Suspend Certain Lease Sales Around Chaco Canyon But Joins APCG to Continue to Call for Permanent Protections
2-3 minutes
Rep. Lujan Grisham Supports BLM Decision to Suspend Certain Lease Sales Around Chaco Canyon But Joins APCG to Continue to Call for Permanent Protections
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Rep. Lujan Grisham released the following statement to Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) announcement that the agency would suspend the sale of several leases within 10 miles of Chaco Canyon. Rep. Lujan Grisham had previously urged BLM to maintain a 10-mile protection zone around Chaco Canyon and to not include it in any future lease sales.
“Despite this announcement, I remain concerned that if BLM does not take additional precautions, important archeological and cultural resources in the area could be damaged and destroyed by hasty development,” said Rep. Lujan Grisham. “The 10-mile zone around Chaco Canyon should be permanently protected from oil and gas development to safeguard both the archeological sites of ancient civilizations in the area and present-day communities. But we cannot stop there. In order to fully protect Chaco, the BLM must suspend all lease sales including the active March leases until BLM completes a comprehensive cultural resource study in coordination with impacted tribes.”
“While the BLM has removed parcels for the December lease sale near Chaco Canyon, the March 2019 lease-sale is still on the horizon. BLM’s delay is a step in the right direction but we must ensure that there are long-term protections put in place for the Greater Chaco landscape. Our ancestral homelands remain at risk and the All Pueblo Council of Governors continues to call on the administration to protect this UNESCO world heritage site and all cultural sites in the region,” said All Pueblo Council of Governors Chairman Edward Paul Torres.
###
Chaco Canyon petroglyphs. Photo by Steve Snyder, Flickr.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is barreling ahead to auction New Mexico public lands for fracking and steamrolling, sidelining, and shunning the American public in the process.
The agency yesterday announced its intent to sell more than 84,000 acres of the Land of Enchantment to the oil and gas industry this December. This includes more than 43,000 acres in the Greater Chaco region of northwest New Mexico and 41,000 acres in southeast New Mexico’s Greater Carlsbad Caverns region (the sale also includes more than 5,000 acres in Oklahoma and Texas).
See for yourself where these lands are located, click here to access an interactive map >>
Simultaneously, the Bureau of Land Management rejected a request from WildEarth Guardians and many others for public hearings around the proposed sale. A broad coalition of environmental, Tribal, health, and clean energy…
View original post 408 more words
By WAN –
September 10, 2018
Sadly, one of our least favorite members of the U.S. government, Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, will open more than 251,000 acres of land to new or expanded hunting and fishing at 30 national wildlife refuges across the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Wildlife Refuge System. This will shockingly bring the number of units where the public can hunt to 377, and the number for fishing to 312.
This will open more acres to the hunting and fishing of many threatened species, many of which are on the brink of extinction in the United States. These species need to be able to recover before they could be wiped out, not only by hunting, but by illegal poaching as well.
Zinke’s final rule outlines expanded hunting and fishing at 136 national wildlife refuges. The changes will be implemented in the 2018-2019 hunting seasons. This is an urgent matter that all U.S. citizens should be able to voice their opinions about.
A shocking quote comes from Cynthia Martinez, Chief of the National Wildlife Refuge System: “Hunting and fishing are family activities that pass down from generation to generation. National wildlife refuges provide all Americans with places to hunt, fish, observe the natural world firsthand, and experience the great outdoors.” Really?
“Hunting and fishing are not family activities and should not be taught to children of any age. The last thing that this world needs is to teach children that killing and violence is acceptable. What we really need to be teaching our children is to have more compassion to save our planet and it’s species for future generations to come,” stated Katie Cleary, President of Peace 4 Animals & WAN.
Secretary Zinke, an avid hunter, said in a statement: “The last thing I want to see is hunting to become an elite sport, rather than a tradition passed on from generation to generation. Today’s announcement protects critical ‘CON-servation’ funding, and ensures sportsmen have access to public lands for generations to come.”
“This couldn’t be more false. Hunting is not a tradition and we are not living in the stone age. We are a progressive world that needs forward-thinking leaders who care about the welfare of the species of who it is our job to protect as the stewards of this planet,” continued Cleary.
The amount of funding brought in from eco-tourism and photo safari’s worldwide is much greater than that of what hunting brings in per year. A 2017 report, commissioned by Humane Society International and conducted by Economists at Large, found that the total economic contribution of hunters is at most an estimated 0.03 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). In Botswana, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, hunting brings in just 0.78 percent or less of the overall tourism spending and has only a marginal impact on employment in those countries, providing approximately 0.76 percent or less of overall tourism jobs. It is estimated that roughly 105.3 million U.S. travelers prioritize vacations dedicated to giving back to our environment, planet, and animals, than not.
Findings from the report include:
While overall tourism in the eight study countries is between 2.8 percent and 5.1 percent of GDP, the total economic contribution of trophy hunters is, at most, an estimated 0.03 percent of GDP. As the report’s author explains: “In terms of the wider tourism economy, which relies heavily on wildlife resources, trophy hunting is relatively insignificant.”
Trophy hunting brings in less than $132 million in tourism spending to the eight study countries out of $17 billion annual tourism spending, or just 0.78 percent. Safari Club International (SCI) wrongly alleged that trophy hunting-related tourism contributes $426 million annually.
Trophy hunting has only a marginal impact on employment in the eight countries, estimated between 7,500-15,500 jobs. Even when using inflated SCI estimates of direct employment contribution from trophy hunting (19,733 jobs), this is still only 0.76 percent of 2,589,000 average jobs generated by overall tourism.
Non-hunting tourism industry is growing much faster and has a much brighter future in Africa. Between 2000 and 2014, overall tourism spending in the eight study countries grew every four months by as much as the annual claimed direct value of the entire trophy hunting industry ($326 million).
Foreign trophy hunters make up less than 0.1 percent of tourists in the studied region.
Non-trophy hunting tourism employs 132 times more people than trophy hunting.
The average increase in tourist arrivals over 54 days in Namibia and 60 days in South Africa exceeded the total of annual foreign trophy hunter arrivals. The growth over a year in general tourist numbers is about six times larger than a year’s worth of hunting tourists.
Because trophy hunting is a tiny part of overall tourism sector, with little scope for sustained future growth, even a small effect of trophy hunting deterring growth in other tourism uses (like eco-tourism) may overwhelm its own economic benefits.
Facts:
As well as being cruel, trophy hunting is detrimental to conservation because:
Hunters kill the strongest animals that are critical to strengthening the gene pool.
Hunting quotas are frequently set without a solid scientific basis.
Age restrictions for hunted animals are ignored so that, for example, lions are killed as juveniles before they can contribute to the genetic pool.
Corruption prevents trophy hunting funds from making it to conservation.
U.S.-based SCI is one of world’s largest pro-trophy hunting organizations with 50,000 members. It keeps a record book of kills and offers awards in dozens of categories, such as Bears of the World, South American Indigenous Animals, and the World Hunter of the Year for which a hunter must kill more than 300 animals across the globe.
SCI’s 2017 convention featured more than 900 international hunting outfitters and auctioned off almost 1,000 mammals in global hunts valued at over US$5.3 million. In 2015, this convention brought in nearly US$14.4 million. Some of the most shocking SCI 2017 auction items offered up were a Canadian polar bear hunt (valued at USD $72,000) and two Namibian elephants hunts (valued at USD $25,000 and USD $35,000).
Sadly, per Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, hunting and/or fishing will expand or be opened on the following refuges:
Arkansas
Felsenthal National Wildlife Refuge: Expands existing migratory game bird, upland game, and big game hunting.
California
San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge: Expands existing migratory game bird hunting, and open sport fishing for the first time.
Florida
Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge: Opens wild turkey hunting for the first time.
Illinois
Cypress Creek National Wildlife Refuge: Expands existing migratory game bird, upland game and big game hunting.
Illinois and Missouri
Great River National Wildlife Refuge: Expands existing migratory game bird, upland game and big game hunting.
Illinois and Wisconsin
Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge: Opens migratory game bird, upland game, and big game hunting to all legal species in the State of Illinois.
Indiana
Patoka River National Wildlife Refuge: Expands existing migratory game bird, upland game, big game hunting, and sport fishing
Maine
Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge: Expands existing migratory game bird, upland game and big game hunting.
Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge: Expands existing white-tailed deer and wild turkey hunting.
Maine and New Hampshire
Umbagog National Wildlife Refuge: Opens wild turkey hunting for the first time, and expands existing migratory game bird, upland game, and big game hunting.
Maryland
Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge: Expands existing migratory game bird and big game hunting.
Patuxent Research Refuge: Expands existing white-tailed deer and wild turkey hunting.
Michigan
Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge: Opens hunting of certain migratory bird, small game, and furbearers, and expands existing migratory game bird and big game hunting.
Minnesota
Glacial Ridge National Wildlife Refuge: Opens certain gamebird and small mammal hunting for the first time, and expands existing migratory game bird, upland game, and big game hunting.
Montana
Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge: Expands existing big game hunting.
Swan River National Wildlife Refuge: Opens big game hunting for the first time.
New Jersey
Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge: Opens wild turkey and squirrel hunting for the first time, and expands existing migratory game bird and big game hunting.
New Jersey and New York
Wallkill River National Wildlife Refuge: Expands existing migratory game bird hunting and sport fishing.
New Mexico
Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge: Opens Eurasian-collared dove and Gambel’s quail hunting, and expands existing migratory game bird hunting.
North Dakota
J. Clark Salyer National Wildlife Refuge: Opens moose hunting for the first time.
Lostwood National Wildlife Refuge: Opens moose hunting for the first time.
Ohio
Cedar Point National Wildlife Refuge: Opens white-tailed deer hunting for the first time.
Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge: Opens hunting of certain gamebirds, small mammals, and furbearers for the first time, and expands existing migratory game bird and big game hunting.
Oregon
Cold Springs National Wildlife Refuge: Expands existing migratory game bird, upland game, and big game hunting.
Upper Klamath National Wildlife Refuge: Expands existing migratory game bird hunting.
William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge: Expands existing sport fishing.
Pennsylvania
Cherry Valley National Wildlife Refuge: Expands existing migratory game bird, upland game and big game hunting.
John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum: Opens white-tailed deer hunting for the first time.
Utah
Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge: Expands existing migratory game bird and upland game hunting.
Wisconsin
Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge: Opens hunting of certain gamebirds, small mammals, and furbearers for the first time, and expands existing migratory game bird and big game hunting.
Please contact The U.S. Department of the Interior and tell them why you oppose opening up more National Wildlife Refuges to hunting and fishing.
Mailing Address:
Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington DC 20240
Contact Form HERE!
Phone (with employee directory): (202) 208-3100
National Parks Service
Office of Communications
1849 C St NW
Washington DC 20240
202-208-6843
Contact Form HERE!
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Office of Public Affairs
Office: (703) 358-2220
Fax: (703) 358-1930
5275 Leesburg Pike
Falls Church, VA
22041-3803
Contact HERE!
© Copyright 2018 – WorldAnimalNews.com
by: Talya Honor
recipient: World Bank and the Government of Guinea
139,228 SUPPORTERS – 140,000 GOAL
Last year the World Bank created a 6,426 s/km sanctuary for chimpanzees in Guinea that protected over 4,000 chimpanzees, and now China wants to build a dam inside the park that could flood it and kill thousands of the chimps.
The Guardian reports: “The nature reserve was intended as a “chimpanzee offset” and funded by two mining companies in return for permission to open mineral excavation sites inside other territory of the critically endangered primate.
After an 80% decline in the past 20 years, western chimpanzees are considered critically endangered – the highest level of risk – by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The planned Koukoutamba dam would flood an area twice that of San Francisco within the park, forcing the displacement of 8,700 people and causing irreparable damage to species that cannot easily be relocated.
The government [of Guinea] approved plans for China’s Sinohydro to build the dam inside the park, which could wipe out up to 1,500 western chimpanzees. The World Bank funded the feasibility study for the dam and an environmental impact assessment that predicted only 200-300 chimpanzees were likely to be affected. But Kormos, who helped to conduct Guinea’s first nationwide survey of western chimpanzee numbers, believes this underestimates the population and fails to account for the deadly territorial conflicts that would ensue if the primates are driven into surrounding areas.”
Please sign this petition to demand the Government of Guinea stop the construction of this dam that will devastate chimp habitat.
more
Update #517 days ago
Over 100,000 signatures!!! i have forwarded the petition and all it’s signatures to the World Bank and I hope to update you all with a success soon!
Full Update
Update #418 days ago
Unbelievable!!!! Less than 3,000 signatures needed and then I’ll be emailing the World Bank!
Update #323 days ago
We only need 15,000 more signatures! Please keep sharing! We’re almost there!
Update #226 days ago
Just 30,000 signatures needed! Please share on Facebook and Twitter!
Update #129 days ago
We’re just below the halfway mark!! When we hit 100,000 I can send the petition to the World Bank to stop the dam. Please share on Facebook and Twitter! Every signature will help! Talya
Full Update
grist.org
By Elizabeth Shogren on Jul 26, 2018
This story was originally published by Reveal and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
As deputy director of the National Park Service, Michael Reynolds played a key role in developing a sweeping new vision for managing national parks. The new policy, enacted in the final weeks of the Obama administration, elevated the role that science played in decision-making and emphasized that parks should take precautionary steps to protect natural and historic treasures.
But eight months later, as the first acting director of the Park Service under President Donald Trump, Reynolds rescinded this policy, known as Director’s Order 100. Newly released documents suggest that top Interior Department officials intervened, ordering Reynolds to rescind it.
A memo addressed to Reynolds states: “Pursuant to direction from [Interior] Secretary [Ryan] Zinke, I hereby instruct you to rescind Director’s Order #100.”
Reynolds, now the superintendent of Yosemite National Park, did not respond to requests for an interview.
The emails were among 170 pages of documents released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Union of Concerned Scientists, an activist group.
Some top officials in the National Park Service were dismayed that the policy was canceled in August 2017, according to the emails. Chris Lehnertz, superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, called it “hard news for me to swallow,” according to an email she wrote to Reynolds and others.
Jonathan Jarvis, who was President Barack Obama’s Park Service director, said now that the order has been rescinded, national parks could become more welcoming to drones, jet skis, and private companies that want to build luxurious accommodations.
“We’re back into the era when those kinds of things will be proposed,” Jarvis said. “I’m sure we’re going to see some.”
Jarvis, who signed Director’s Order 100, said he thinks the Trump administration objected to the policy because it stressed that parks follow the “precautionary principle,” preventing actions or activities that plausibly threaten park resources and human heath, even when there is uncertainty. It also acknowledged the significant impact that climate change has on parks and directed them to incorporate climate change science in management decisions.
One memo to Reynolds said that Zinke will replace the order with his own strategy for the national parks, “including potential changes to the Department’s priorities and organization over the next 100 years.”
The emails show that Daniel Jorjani, the Interior’s principal deputy solicitor, played a key role in reversing the order. Jorjani is a Trump appointee who was an attorney from 2010 to 2016 for foundations funded by the Koch brothers, fossil fuel billionaires who support the spread of free-market principles throughout government. During the Bush administration, Jorjani was an Interior Department counselor and chief of staff.
In one June 13, 2017, email exchange heavily redacted by the Interior Department, a lawyer in the solicitor’s office said Jorjani “or someone else may want to change the language, but …” The next part of the email is blanked out. The next day, another lawyer asked Jorjani in an email: “Do you want us to hold this pending your review or should we start moving it through to get it signed?”
On June 19, Jorjani emailed another lawyer, asking her to “strengthen the language” on the rescission memo. Later the same day, Jorjani emailed Reynolds and another top Park Service official asking: “Do you have a preferred date for withdrawing DO-100?” Later that day, Jorjani sent the rescission memo to the Park Service.
Jarvis, who worked with Jorjani during the Bush administration, wasn’t surprised that Jorjani directed the withdrawal of the order.
“This fits well with Jorjani’s worldview — the private sector can do anything better than government,” Jarvis said. During the Bush administration, Jorjani pushed to transfer various activities in the national parks to the private sector, Jarvis said.
The rescinded policy was developed in response to the 2012 “Revisiting Leopold” report from the science committee of the Park Service’s advisory board. The scientists urged the Park Service to update the vision of national parks to reflect the many changes underway in parks due to climate change and other factors. (In January, most members of that board quit in protest after Zinke hadn’t met with them even once.)
The Trump administration has repeatedly downplayed climate science and eliminated efforts by previous administrations to address climate change. The National Park Service pressured a scientist to remove every reference to the human role in causing climate change from a scientific report projecting the risk to parks from sea-level rise and storm surge.
Tony Knowles, the last chair of the Park Service’s advisory board, said the Trump administration is veering far from the principles outlined in Director’s Order 100.
For example, in May, the Trump administration proposed canceling rules that ban certain types of hunting in much of Alaska’s large national preserves. These rules, developed in 2015 through an extensive scientific and public process, prohibit using artificial light to kill black bear sows and their cubs at their dens, using bait to lure black bears to their deaths, and shooting swimming caribou from a motorboat.
If the order was still in place, “it would be very difficult to justify doing away with these regulations,” said Knowles, a former governor of Alaska.
The trove of documents also provides insight into the Interior Department’s public relations strategy. Officials drafted news releases to explain the rescission of the policy but the day the withdrawal became effective, Park Service spokesperson Jeremy Barnum told top Park Service officials that Interior’s communications team had decided there would be no press release. Reynolds emailed the press official asking: “If no press I’m curious how we are now to notify folks.” No response to his question was included in the released documents. Barnum declined to comment.
https://grist.org/politics/science-based-policy-for-the-national-parks-not-on-zinkes-watch/
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Save The Mackenzie Petition | GREENPEACE
2 minutes
There are already too many cows for our rivers and our climate to cope with.
New Zealand urgently needs fewer cows but corporate dairy is so out of control it’s still trying to expand and convert more land into dairy farms, even in unique and fragile places like the Mackenzie country. Right now, a businessman and land developer from Dunedin has approval to convert a huge station in the Mackenzie to intensive dairy. He plans to put 15,000 cows right next to Lake Pūkaki.
Enough is enough.
The Government has said it’s going to release a new set of freshwater regulations in the middle of this year.
If we we act quickly now, together, we can get the Government to stop new dairy conversions. Together we can save the Mackenzie!
Please sign the petition to stop the expansion of industrial dairying and Save the Mackenzie
STOP INDUSTRIAL DAIRY EXPANSION
PETITION
David Parker, Minister for the Environment: For the sake of our rivers, our climate and the unique and precious Mackenzie country, I call on you to stop all new dairy conversions and intensification of existing livestock farming by making them both prohibited activities, effective immediately, in the National Policy Statement for Freshwater.
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