Marty Durlin

Online Editor

More than 90 formal protests from local governments, organizations and individuals, plus a letter from the Salazar Brothers…taken together, they’ve halted the auction of 144,000 acres of prime land in southern Colorado’s Rio Grande National Forest — at least for a while.

The BLM announced the deferral of 84 parcels from its May 8 oil and gas lease sale “until additional analysis can be completed.” But a spokesman for the BLM said the agency is “completely unsure” of how long the leases may be deferred (all part of The leasing protest game). The agency cited information “received from the public, local governments and our own internal review” as the reason for the deferral. Among the concerns: the impact of gas and oil development on lynx habitat (the deferred parcels are within the core release area used by the Colorado Division of Wildlife to reintroduce lynx), potential damage to the cutthroat trout and other wildlife including the greater and Gunnison sage grouse and the boreal owl. There was also a general outcry from the public — concerned about the impact of oil and gas development on health and quality of life.

One protester, retired organic farmer Greg Gosar, put it this way: “Now our life’s work and final dreams could possibly be sacrificed to a short-term, destructive, and so far impotent attempt by the out-going administration to deal with world-wide energy problems. We are deeply angered at the shallowness and futility of this idea.”

Three parcels near Crestone (one of the local governments that filed a formal protest) will still be auctioned May 8.

Felice Pace

Was anyone surprised by the article about the abuse of conservation easements which appeared in the March 31^st edition of HCN? If you were, you have not been paying close attention to what has been going on in our society.

In a country where energy traders collude to rip off customers, corporate leaders cook the books to deceive investors, brokers sell mortgages to folks they know can’t afford them and federal regulators wink at usury and worse, what else should we expect?

Stay tuned for the carbon credit scandals to come.

This is all the product of a society in which the highest good is making obscene amounts of money and in which one can sin all week and get forgiven on Sunday without penance or consequences.

(Read on …)

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

“Save a logger – eat a spotted owl.” That bumper sticker adorned pickups all over the Northwest in the ’80s, as loggers blamed the rare bird for the decline of their industry. Now a plan to protect the northern spotted owl is going back to the drawing board.

The owl, which hit the endangered species list in 1990, helped put the brakes on timber-cutting across the old-growth forests of Oregon, Washington and Northern California, and logging companies have been pushing the industry-friendly Bush administration to find a way around the restrictions (see our stories “When is a barred owl a red herring?” and “Spotted owl or red herring?“).

The administration has tried twice now to write a recovery plan for the bird. The first attempt got a failing grade from scientists assigned to review it, and now the second draft has flunked as well. The new plan underestimates threats like wildfire and logging, say the biologists who evaluated it; they call the plan’s habitat analysis “deeply flawed.” The Associated Press reports:

“We identified several areas where we thought their science could be improved,” Sustainable Ecosystems Vice President Steven Courtney, who led the review, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “Some of those areas were relatively important. However, in other areas they did a pretty good job.”

Among the failings, Courtney said: “The method they used to design the amount of habitat to be preserved, the technique used was wrong, was not based on good science.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service promises to take the critique to heart in its final version, due next month. Want fries with that owl?

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

The Chicago Tribune stories come with a sad photo gallery (scroll down the story page to click into the still photos) … and a self-amused TV news video (prefaced by the inevitable TV commercial).

The lion seems to have come a long way to die on the concrete.

About a half-million people have sought out the online photos. Whole thing provides another window into the relationship of wildlife and modern human beings.

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

‘Tis Spring, and that means the owl babies are hatching. Great horned owls nest early, usually in January or February, and both male and female tend the 2-3 white eggs, which incubate for about a month. Great horned owls use other birds’ nests, generally those built by hawks, herons or crows, but they also nest in alcoves, tree hollows, abandoned buildings or even on the ground. The babies fledge from the nest at 45-55 days old.

Adult great horned owls weigh 3-4 pounds, standing as high as two feet tall with a wingspan of more than a yard. The owls’ diet consists of pretty much anything they can get their talons into, including prairie dogs, rabbits, squirrels, mice, weasels, skunks, snakes, cats, bats, beetles, scorpions, frogs, grasshoppers and other birds. They upchuck pellets of the indigestible stuff — fur, feathers, exoskeletons and bones — several hours after they’ve eaten, often at a favorite roost. Both parents feed the young.

Check out the live owl cam at Boulder’s NCAR, where “Maude” and “Harold” have a brood of two. Whooo.

Rebecca Clarren

Yesterday Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, announced he will waive the environmental review required by 36 federal laws in order to speed construction of an 18-foot high fence along the Mexico border. The two waivers cover 470 miles of the border from California to Texas, plus a separate 22-mile span in a Texas wildlife refuge. The fence, to now be completed by the end of this year, will block illegal border crossers that travel by foot and car. The department has already built 309 miles of fence. As reported today by the New York Times,

Previously, Mr. Chertoff had used his waiver authority three times to overcome environmental hurdles along limited segments of the border in San Diego and Arizona. But as the department strives to meet a deadline of year’s end for nearly 700 miles of fencing, he has now greatly expanded the use of his waiver authority, which was granted by Congress as part of the “Real ID Act.”

“We value the need for public input on any potential impact of our border infrastructure plans on the environment,” said Chertoff in a prepared statement, “and we will continue to solicit it.”

It’ll be a little late for solicitation after we power the bulldozers, build a concrete wall, and install extra cameras, towers and roads. Such actions conducted with no environmental review or public process is shortsighted and arrogant. (Read on …)

Francisco Tharp

The War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and now, the War on Endangered Species. That’s right, it’s official once again: as far as endangered wildlife is concerned, the Bush administration is as scary as Dick Cheney with a shotgun. According to a Washington Post report printed Sunday, a whole heap of memos and documents indicate that Bush administration officials in the Fish and Wildlife Service (under the Department of Interior) have gone out of their way in recent years to make listing a species as endangered very hard.

You’ll have to read down the article a ways, but the juicy stuff is in there. For example, the Post reports that one memo read: Employees “can use info from files that refutes petitions but not anything that supports, per Doug” (That’s Douglas Krofta, head of the Endangered Species Program’s listing branch).

Additionally, agency officials “regularly overruled rank-and-file agency scientists’ recommendations to list new species,” the Post writes.

Fish and Wildlife is so behind on listing endangered species that WildEarth Guardians, a nonprofit conservation group, filed a lawsuit on March 19 against Fish and Wildlife seeking the immediate protection of 681 plant and animal species. A WildEarth spokesperson called the Endangered Species Act “our nation’s ark,” and said that the Bush administration had essentially locked the door to it.

Compared to his father’s administration as well as President Clinton’s, George W. Bush and company have done remarkably little in terms of endangered species protection, according to the Post report. Since 2001, the big W has listed 59 species, compared to Clinton’s 521 and his Daddy’s 231. Of the current administration’s 59 listed species, not a single listing was requested by the administration. About 4 percent of the two previous administrations’ listings were initiated in-house. (Read on …)

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

Desert tortoises survived for tens of thousands of years in the Mojave Desert.

Officially designated as a threatened species for nearly two decades, today the reptiles are vulnerable to disease, crushing by vehicles, suburban and military development, habitat degradation and predation by dogs and ravens. An impending relocation may make things worse.

As a result of expanding the Fort Irwin tank-training site northeast of Barstow, California, the U.S. Army is planning to move some 800 desert tortoises to nearby public lands by Interstate 15. In preparation, the Army has spent nearly $1 million on the new site to install fencing along the major highways, and to construct underpasses so tortoises could migrate. The Army says it must expand the training site to accommodate faster-moving tanks. Troops from around the country train against the Fort Irwin “home team” that acts as the enemy.

But two environmental groups, the Center for Biological Diversity and Desert Survivors, this week put federal agencies on notice that they intend to sue over the relocation of “these charismatic and imperiled animals,” which are also California’s official state reptiles.

“Moving healthy tortoises into low-quality habitat that contains diseased tortoises is a recipe for disaster,” said Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. She said the new site has pockets of diseased tortoises, mines and illegal dumping and off-roading.

A normal life cycle for the tortoises is 80-100 years.

Francisco Tharp

Rural Iraqis and rural Americans have at least one thing in common: wolves.
The LA Times ran this story today:

SAMAWAH, IRAQ — The bloodthirsty enemy had gathered on the city’s perimeter, but this time the locals were ready.

They had formed armed committees similar to the “Sons of Iraq” forces fighting off Al Qaeda militants in western Iraq. They were gearing up for a fight.

Their foes had been attacking them with increasing abandon on the outskirts of this river city 145 miles southeast of Baghdad. They struck along the harsh desert plain leading to Saudi Arabia. They came day or night.

Among children, supernatural powers were attributed to these adversaries. They could withstand intense cold, according to legend, and their eyes changed from yellow to orange to green.

There would be no mercy for this enemy. And no negotiations.

The enemy, after all, was packs of hungry gray wolves who had overcome their fears of humans and had begun feasting on livestock, right in front of farmers.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Recently we wrote about the Fish and Wildlife Service’s attempt to back out of an agreement about its upcoming decision on whether to list the greater sage grouse as threatened or endangered (see our story “Crying fowl“).

The agency had promised to consider a major upcoming scientific report in making its determination, to allow public comment on that report, and to come out with a listing decision next spring. But a few days later, officials tried to wiggle out of the agreement, claiming that the deal hadn’t been properly approved (despite the fact that Department of Justice lawyers had signed off on it).

Critics charged that the agency was playing politics, trying to avoid listing the bird because of the potential impacts on energy development and home-building. Now, a federal judge has ruled that Fish and Wildlife can’t abandon the deal, reports the AP:

Judge B. Lynn Winmill rejected (the agency’s) claims, saying the deal, which was filed with the court, should be treated and honored like any other legally binding contract.

The ruling is another setback for the agency since it ruled in January 2005 that the sage grouse did not merit threatened or endangered status.

Score one for the sage grouse.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

… in the many stories about taking Idaho-Montana-Wyoming wolves off the endangered species list.

It’s worth a click to The New York Times for this intimate glance at wildness. (I’m providing two links trying to help you around the Times sign-on screen, but if it nabs you, sign-on is free.)

The wolf photo shows how the Times has more to offer than the lame — or at least incomplete — smear job it did yesterday on Sen. John McCain.

The Times is catching a lot of flak from the rightwing professional loudmouths and media critics. At least one respected newspaper in the Times chain refused to publish the smear. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer managing editor explains why he also refused to run it. The noise has obscured the Washington Post’s better — straighter — analysis of McCain’s ties to lobbyists.

When I look at the photo of the wolves circling the big, slow bison, I imagine the Times thought it was a wolf, but now it’s the bison.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Pity Texas billionaire Red McCombs and his developer sidekick, Bob Honts. For five years now, they’ve been fighting the Forest Service, environmental groups, locals, and the owners of a southern Colorado ski area so that they can build their dream resort.
(Read on …)

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Guess I’ve always wanted to write a headline like that.

Anyway, the Idaho Statesman has a series of wildlife photos that offer relief from the onslaught of usual news. Here’s one of a bird on a deer amid snow … and it’s an entry point into the photo series.

You know the saying that goes: What were they thinking?

Wonder what the magpie and deer were thinking.