Cobun Keegan

The twisting tale of the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse took another turn yesterday as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the Wyoming populations of the rodent had become adequately viable to warrant their removal from Endangered Species Act protection. This rather protracted controversy has historically centered around the question of whether or not the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse is genetically distinct from the five other subspecies in the region. But the Service says that is no longer an issue, admitting that the scientific consensus points to a divergence between the subspecies in numerous physical and behavioral traits and therefore the mouse is eligible for federal protection.

However, because Wyoming populations of the mouse seem to be growing, and because there is little land development in Wyoming, the Service has decided to provide protection exclusively for the Colorado populations of the mouse. While Colorado’s Front Range mouse population is constantly under threat as its stream-side habitat is developed, the Service reasons, Wyoming’s populations will face few threats besides continued farming and ranching. As the Service explains, “Continuation of these long-standing activities does not appear to pose a threat to existing Preble’s populations. In addition, there is no indication that these agricultural practices are likely to change in the foreseeable future in ways that would affect Preble’s populations.”

The decision comes after months of comment and review but has already been met with fresh controversy. Rocky Mountain News reports that Erin Robertson, a senior staff biologist with the Denver-based Center for Native Ecosystems, is outraged: “Wyoming has some of the best recovery habitat for the mouse, and it makes no sense to cut it out of protection.” The Center, along with other environmental groups, is prepared to file suit to restore the mouse’s threatened status in Wyoming. (Read on …)

Andrea Appleton

What’s 3-feet-long, smells like a lily and spits when pursued?

It may sound like a creature from the planet Dune, but the giant Palouse earthworm is in fact native to the deep soils of the Palouse Prairie in southeastern Washington and adjacent Idaho. The swift, secretive Driloleirus americanus—capable of burrowing some 15 feet underground—has only been positively identified a handful of times since it was first described in 1897.

In 2005, a University of Idaho grad student accidentally chopped one in half with a shovel, the first sighting in decades. This discovery led local conservation groups to petition the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for a listing under the Endangered Species Act, but last October the agency denied the request, citing the lack of scientific data on the species. In response, conservationists filed a lawsuit in January to have the earthworm listed.

(Read on …)

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

Editor’s note: This is the first of occasional blog posts about the inside workings of HCN written by its editors. The goal is to add transparency to our editing process, and to stimulate discussion among our readers. Your comments and questions are encouraged.

It goes without saying that the image that goes on the cover of a magazine is important. Really important. It needs to draw the reader in while communicating the gist of the story it illustrates. And for those who have never seen the magazine before, it provides the first impression, the entry point. For many people, it can have more impact than the thousands of words that follow it.

So it was that I agonized over the cover photo for our Pillaging the Past story. Two photos had the quality to be covers: One was of the skull of a child, ripped from a grave by a looter trying to get at the relics buried with the child; the other was a posed shot of two hands tugging on an ancient pot.

(Read on …)

Rebecca Clarren

Brad Crowder, a staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Denver office, was trying to speak quietly – he was concerned that talking to a reporter might threaten his job - but his frustration and anger could not be contained. As he spoke inside a booth at a busy Denver restaurant, his voice rose louder and louder. Crowder was concerned about the public health impacts associated with natural gas extraction, but hadn’t been able to convince his superiors to conduct any studies to investigate the issue.

“We’re told not to ask anymore questions. We get actions taken against us just for asking questions. The regional administrator has said to my colleagues, ‘get on the train. Stay off the tracks or we’ll run you over.’”

This was in 2006. Before he was diagnosed with cancer. Before he quit his job. Sadly, Brad died last year, but his words remain hauntingly relevant. The political interference he identified within the EPA, this pressure to ignore science that might create trouble for the administration’s industry allies, has plagued the majority of scientists at EPA, according to a Union of Concerned Scientists survey released yesterday.
The online questionnaire, described in the LA Times today, found that 889 of the 1,586 EPA scientists that responded had experience at least one type of interference in the last five years.

In optional essays, scientists repeatedly singled out the Office of Management and Budget at the White House, accusing officials there of inserting themselves into decision-making at early stages in a way that shaped the outcome of their inquiries. They also alleged that the OMB delayed rules not to its liking. EPA actions “are held hostage” until changes are made, a scientist from the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation wrote.

(Read on …)

Rebecca Clarren

As a rule, I don’t go east to find out about the west. But on a recent trip to New York City, just around the corner from Central Park, I learned many new things about water in our region and beyond. At the American Museum of Natural History, past the displays of stuffed hippopotami and condors, is H20 = Life, overflowing with information about, well, water – who uses it, how it’s used, and how we in this country can use less of it. Did you know, for example, that the average person or municipality in the US uses151 gallons of water per day, compared to the 31 gallons on average used in the UK, or the three gallons in Ethiopia? A basic primer on water conservation, the exhibit, with excellent photos and displays, also helps place Western water issues in a global context: Las Vegas has the same annual rain fall as the United Arab Emirates.

Luckily, you don’t have to go to New York City to glean this information. The Museum has a great website, with special content for both educators (find articles and activities to enhance curriculum for specific grades) and kids (travel virtually to the bottom of the ocean, a Mangrove ecosystem, or play a game with polar bears). If you do find yourself in New York, H20 = Life will be up through May 25.

Rebecca Clarren

Outside the trees bloom pink, yellow daffodils cluster near the sidewalk and my lawn has suddenly sprouted into a large bushy rug that has prompted chilly looks from my neighbors. To my untrained eye, spring has arrived in its usual showy fashion, but I’m missing something. We all are.

New data by bee biologists indicate steep declines of three common bumble bees species, including the Western Bumble Bee, found from the Rocky Mountains and California up into Alaska. These native populations of bees are important pollinators of wild flowering plants and crops. Though there are a number of plausible reasons for these shrinking populations, such as climate change, habitat loss and pesticides, Dr Robbin Thorp, an entomologist at U.C. Davis, suspects a more acute cause.
(Read on …)

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

A federal district judge has ruled that the Mexican spotted owl won’t be stripped of its “critical habitat” — 8.6 million acres in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. The 2004 habitat designation for the threatened raptor will stand, says Judge Susan Bolton — despite a lawsuit from Arizona cattle ranchers seeking to overturn the designation, which they fear will limit livestock grazing.

Every creature on the Endangered Species List is supposed to have “critical habitat” set aside for it — the territory “essential for the conservation of the species” (see our story here). Scientists have found that species with critical habitat do twice as well as species without it (see our sidebar here).

The Bush administration, under a steady barrage of court orders, has reluctantly set aside critical habitat for 387 species. But nine out of ten of these designations were slashed drastically (by an average of 70 percent) between the initial amount proposed by the federal Fish and Wildlife Service and the final designation. The owl’s habitat is no exception — the original critical habitat proposal, back in 1997, was 13.5 million acres.

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

Even Nobel Laureate climate researcher Steve Running, who adapted Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s “Five Stages of Grief” to the climate crisis, was amazed. “Disbelief was the primary reaction,” he told the New York Times, alluding to the cancellation of his talk at Choteau, Montana’s high school.

Running, a professor of ecology at the University of Montana, was to speak about global climate change — but parents complained to the school board that Running’s perspective was one-sided, school board members put pressure on the Superintendent, and the talk was cancelled. As the Times puts it:

…as in much of the West, Choteau is home to a deep-seated mistrust of environmentalism, which many here see as a threat to their agricultural way of life. The town has also been largely on the pro-development side of a long and sometimes bitter battle over whether to exploit oil and gas reserves along the wild Rocky Mountain front or to preserve it primarily for wilderness and wildlife.

Finally, there is the raw politics of the matter. Dr. Running specializes in an issue associated with Mr. Gore, not a popular figure among many in this predominantly Republican town.

The first two stages are denial and anger, Running noted to the Times.

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

In a speech in Bali, where 11,000 delegates from 187 countries gathered to create a “road map” that will fight global warming, Al Gore criticized the Bush administration and urged delegates to bypass the U.S. government and work together without it.

“The Earth’s fever is rising and it won’t heal itself. What do you do when your child has fever and the doctor says he needs treatment? Perhaps you go for a second opinion, then a third and a fourth. When the fourth opinion says the problem is very serious, do we still withhold treatment?”

Gore was alluding to the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the group of international scientists who have now confirmed the dire state of the planet for the fourth time.

The former vice president and co-winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize used a variety of familiar quotations to prove his points, among them:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” (Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities”) “Now,” said Gore, “it is a tale of two planets, Earth and Venus. They are identical in every other way. But on the Earth, over millions of years plant life has pulled the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and has kept it underground in the form of coal and oil. Now we are evaporating our coal mines. It’s the CO2.”

He referred to Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement, “a truth force. Truth has a power to set us free, to unite us.”

He paraphrased Martin Luther King, saying, “Global warming anywhere is a threat to the world everywhere.”

Gore blamed the Earth’s population, which has grown from 2 billion to 6.5 billion in the past century, along with unbridled technology, as the reasons for the state of the planet.

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

Recently we received a card here at High Country News, which said only this: “Dear Human Race, So sad about us.” No one had to ask what the writer meant, though possibly each of us interpreted it in a personal way. As for me, I think about the mounting evidence of human-created global climate change, and the war in Iraq, sucking resources, lives and hopes. I consider the results of our various human endeavors now coming back at us — the disappearing species, the toxic waste, the unbreathable air, the speed and insanity of the urban areas of our planet.

But what really brings it home to me is the garbage island in the Pacific. It sounds like a sci-fi story, but it’s been covered by reputable journalists and discussed by reputable scientists, so — unbelievable as it is — I’m compelled to accept it as fact.

Here’s the story: “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” alternatively known as “The Earth’s Eighth Continent,” is located in the Pacifica Ocean between California and Hawaii, in the North Pacific Gyre, which creates a debris-trapping vortex. The Patch is roughly twice the size of Texas, and made up primarily of human trash, about 80 percent of it plastic. It weighs about 3.5 million tons with a concentration of more than 3 million pieces of garbage per square kilometer. It reaches more than 30 meters down into the ocean. Since the 1990s, it’s tripled in size, and is predicted to grow tenfold in the next ten years.

As we know, plastic doesn’t biodegrade — instead it photo-degrades, breaking into smaller and smaller pieces which retain the original molecular composition. These tiny pieces look like food to sea birds and fish, who eat it and eventually starve to death since the plastic can’t be digested. In addition, the small pieces of plastic act as sponges for several toxins, concentrating chemicals such as DDT to 1 million times the normal level. Even in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, plastic nodules outweigh plankton by a ratio of six to one. Nearly 300 species have been reported to have eaten from, or become trapped in, the Patch.

The seas are awash in plastic, and it’s pretty clear why. Nearly every human on the planet uses plastic materials every day, starting with plastic diapers, milk bottles and toys and moving on to condoms, diaphragms and birth control containers. We drink from 34 billion newly manufactured containers annually. Some 60 billion tons of plastic products are created every year around the planet. It’s been estimated that each of us uses 190 pounds of plastic every year.

As Paul Watson notes in a piece called The Plastic Sea, even the plastic eaten by birds and fish that die and decompose on a beach is blown back into the sea, where “these vicious little inorganic parasites continue to maim and kill in an endless assault upon life in our oceans.”

What can be done? Is it not too far gone already? Shall we simply rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic and enjoy the cruise while we can, skirting the nasty new “island”? Nobel Peace Prize co-winner Steve Running, professor at the University of Montana, says not.

Running won the Nobel for his work as one of the lead authors of the fourth assessment report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

He’s adapted Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s “Five Stages of Grief” model to climate change, and he sees people going through the familiar pattern: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance.

This can be applied not only to our reactions to climate change, but to the damage we have done and continue to do to the planet in other ways, such as our use of plastic — just one part of our dependence on petroleum, a big part of the climate change story.

I admit to swinging between denial and acceptance, and often being bogged down, like our letter writer, in depression. But now, knowing about the Patch, I can no longer be blase about my use of plastic, nor continue to forget my cloth bags when I go to the market. One small thing done by one small person, but I can only believe it’s better than doing nothing.

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

In the next three hours, another species will go extinct. That’s eight species per day, and the rate is accelerating.

Why should we care? Humankind may be ravaged by war, disease and starvation, but we’re multiplying: 6.6 billion and counting, currently at a clip of about 80 million people a year.

But consider that recent research is underscoring the fact that ecosystems are one: interconnected and inseparable species living in harmony, or at least balance. There’s been some attention on animal species and what happens when a “keystone” species is threatened. Now we learn that when a critical number of unique plant species die off, half their living plant biomass dies too. And because plants are the only source of oxygen on Earth, the supply of oxygen is decreased by about half in that ecosystem.

And lest we forget…plants on land and phytoplankton in the oceans are absorbing about 40 percent of human emissions of CO2. The rest is in the air, causing global warming. As less CO2 is removed from the atmosphere, the warming increases.

And so on…

An unprecedented four-year research project called the 2006 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment predicts that up to 30 percent of all species on Earth could vanish by 2050 due to unsustainable human activities. Some of the findings of this “meta-analysis” were published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. See article by Stephen Leahy of IPS here.

The biggest single threat to species is loss of habitat due to deforestation, followed by expansion of agricultural areas and cities.

With the Southwestern drought and Western growth continuing, the dry and arcane subject of water policy is suddenly … sexy. And the new new thing in Western water supply is the recycling of sewage plant effluent as drinking water.

After having effluent-recycling proposals shot down a couple of times by opponents calling them “toilet to tap” boondoggles, San Diego is once again studying effluent purification to supplement drinking water supplies, according to the brilliant online news site voiceofsandiego.org. If there’s one more winter of subnormal Sierra snowpack, it seems, San Diego will face mandatory water rationing.

And the south suburbs of Denver are looking at the possibility of cleaning wastewater sufficiently to put it into their drinking water supply. And why is that? Here’s how the Denver Post puts it:

The Water Supply Initiative estimated in 2005 that Colorado likely could add another 2.8 million people by 2030, raising the demand for water by another 202 million gallons of water a year.

The south metro region is being forced to look for new, costly water supplies. Most of the region relies on aquifers that are running dry.

A 2003 regional study by water providers found that shortages and higher costs would be commonplace for customers in as little as 20 years.

Of course, High Country News has, as usual, been an early trend-spotter on the toilet-to-tap issue, as evidenced by Peter Friederici’s sprightly and authoritative cover story on the phenomenon, “Facing the Yuck Factor.”

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

It’s official: This summer was hotter than a June bride in a featherbed, hotter than a fox in a forest fire, even hotter than a habanero topped Hatch green chile cheeseburger. Anyone who stepped out of their air-conditioned homes and offices anywhere from Boise to Phoenix, anytime from June to mid-September, probably already guessed that. But now the numbers have been crunched by the NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.

Some of the findings include: Summer 2007 was the sixth warmest on record since 1895; this was the warmest summer ever for Utah and Nevada, and was in the top 10 for 11 other states; and the entire West was warmer than average, aside from Washington and Oregon, which fell in the “normal” range.

That meant a lot more air conditioners were running, meaning that the nation’s residential energy demand was 8 percent higher than under “normal” climate conditions (meaning more power plants burned more coal and spewed out more carbon dioxide creating warmer temperatures … ) Meanwhile, drought persisted across most of the West (in spite of above normal summer precipitation in California and Arizona).

In related news: Oceans are expected to rise by about one meter, in the next 50 to 150 years. If you’re curious how that might affect your beachfront home, check out this cool page from the University of Arizona.