Alan Gregory’s Conservation News

But only under court order, as this Associated Press article explains. The same scenario has been repeated hundreds of times in recent years, as conservationists go to court to get the Fish and Wildlife Service to enforce the law.

The Scott Bar and Siskiyou Mountains salamanders live only in old-growth forest. Timber interests, of course, don’t like even the idea of the feds reviewing the species’ status. It could curtail logging, they argue. But that’s precisely the point. These and other old-growth dependent species got to the brink of extinction because of logging.

Kieran Suckling, of the Center for Biological Diversity, told the AP:

“It’s clear that the Bush administration is doing everything possible to prevent species from ever being protected under the Endangered Species Act in the first place. That’s the most efficient way to stop conservation.”

(Full disclosure: I’ve given a few bucks in the past to the Center).

Bernard DeVoto wrote those words in 1953.

DeVoto, in describing the decay of a park system in crisis as visitation skyrocketed but budgets lagged in the post-World War II years, suggested that parks like Grand Canyon and Yellowstone be shuttered until citizens in “a more enlightened future” would demand from Congress the funding that would “save from destruction the most majestic scenery in the United States.”

Anne Mitchell and David E. Whisnant, in this op-ed for The News Observer of North Carolina, spell out the case for doing just that 54 years after DeVoto championed the parks in one of his Harper’s magazine columns.

Two years after DeVoto’s plea appeared in print, President Eisenhower endorsed Park Service Director Conrad Wirth’s for a 10-year infusion of funds that came to be known as Mission 66.  Spring forward 41 years. President Bush has come up with “Centennial Initiative” for the parks. But Mission 66 involved spending public money on the parks. The Centennial Initiative leans on private money.

Like most things Bush, the 21st century plan is all about privatization, not doing the right thing.

A column I wrote in 2004, soon after the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation began raping Bald Eagle Mountain in central PA for a new section of I-99, has been reprinted, with a few updates, by the great folks at Lowbagger.org.

Mary Hosmer, superintendent of the 513,000-acre Allegheny NF in northcentral Pennsylvania, has finally gotten around to objecting to a few energy wells. This after the forest became a pincushion of such wells.

Ryan Talbott of the Allegheny Defense Project writes:

Mary Hosmer from the Forest Service tries to downplay the significance of these objections by mis-stating that these are the first objections “this year.”  That’s just not true … these are the first objections ever filed by the Forest Service under the PA Oil and Gas Act.  The Freedom of Information Act request to obtain these documents requested all objections they’ve ever filed and these are the only two objections the Forest Service released.  So, either these are the only two objections and Ms. Hosmer is not telling the truth, or she is telling the truth and the Forest Service didn’t release all their documents in accordance with a Freedom of Information Act request.”

Hosmer told the Bradford Era newspaper that the Forest Service has objected to drilling permits in the past. Thus the discrepancy Ryan notes. In any case, there are at least 9,000 active oil and gas wells in production on the forest. An estimated 1,000 new wells were punched into the forest last year alone, but even the Forest Service isn’t sure of the exact number.

As noted before, no national forest has been hit harder by oil and gas exploration than the Allegheny. But ANF managers have kept quiet until now when they said no to the state Department of Environmental Protection issuing permits for two new wells within eyesight of the North Country National Scenic Trail and the Longhouse National Scenic Byway. There are many reasons why fewer than 10,000 acres of the Allegheny are protected as wilderness. And the Forest Service’s decision to keep quiet in the past as drillers punched holes certainly hasn’t helped.

Bush, the failed oil man (Arbusto) from Midland, Texas, talked today to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

The president (many still think Cheney is the man who pulls all the strings) had little to say about ranching and all the subsidies taxpayers throw at the livestock industry (far-below market level grazing fees, free killing of native wildlife ["predators," in ranchers' lingo], seeding of rangelands, chaining of sagebrush and pinon pine, etc.) in his remarks. Instead, he chose to use the mundane occasion as yet another platform to shill for his disastrous war in Iraq and other administration mistakes, miscues and lies.

Here’s what the president said at the top of his little speech to the cattlemen (courtesy of WhiteHouse.gov):

THE PRESIDENT: Thanks for having me. (Applause.) Thank you, please be seated. Not a bad introduction by a cowboy. (Laughter.) Thanks for having me. Welcome to Washington. I’m glad to be with you. I was telling Laura this morning, I’m really looking forward to going over to talk to the nation’s cattlemen. I appreciate being with people who understand the importance of faith, family, hard work, good values. I like to remind people, every day is Earth Day if you make a living off the land. (Applause.) It’s good to be with fellow conservationists.”

Yes, every day in the Bush encampment (not “camp”) is Earth Day. Sure, sure, sure.

All but toughened conservationists and tree-huggers may have missed this story as it broke at midweek — amidst the din of corruption- and sleaze-related stories siphoning forth from inside the Washington, D.C. Beltway.

Here’s the deal, though. My friend, author Scott Weidensaul, calls it “an extremely disturbing story” and it’s all about an end-run the administration is attempting around the Endangered Species Act — essentially gutting it by reinterpreting it from within, instead of re-legislating it through the Congress.
Weidensaul: “The proposal would, among other things, set biologically nonsensical time limits on protection, eliminate any way to stop federal projects like dams or logging even if scientific evidence shows they may drive a species to extinction, and define a species’ range to mean only the land it now occupies — thus eliminating any chance for reintroductions like those that have benefited peregrine falcons and gray wolves, to name just two.”

The Los Angeles Times has one of the better reviews of this sneaky move that broke into the media thanks to a leaker. And it all brings to mind former Congressman Richard Pombo’s legislative attempts at gutting the Endangered Species Act. Now we have George W. Bush, son of Pombo.

The commissioners of Grant County, N.M. (county seat is Silver City), have passed a resolution requesting that the state and federal governments pay for livestock and pets (allegedly) killed by reintroduced Mexican gray wolves.

The Santa Fe New Mexican has the story. You know what to do.

Predictably, the local cattlemen’s group likes the idea very much. Opponents point out that livestock producers should be required to cart away cattle carcasses before wolves get used to eating the beef. And they argue, quite reasonably, that cattlemen aren’t taking other steps as well to better protect their herds.

The Grant County Area Cattle Growers forgot to note how heavily their cows are subsidized by Americans across the country, through below-market grazing fees and the killing, by USDA’s Wildlife Services branch, of native wildlife cattlemen scapegoat for their livestock losses.

The Mexican gray wolf, reintroduced in 1998 to a tiny sliver of its original range, continues to be boxed into a politically-drawn territory that has no ecological rationale.

Note: The commissioners of adjacent Catron County earlier passed a resolution allowing a designated local wolf cop to trap or remove a wolf if the feds don’t act first.

The executive director of the Albuquerque-based Rewilding Institute has resumed his “campfire” series of columns. Ralph Maughan has the link to Foreman’s latest, which was picked up by NewWest. (You can sign up to receive Foreman’s writings via e-mail. You know what to do.

Maughan summarizes Foreman’s points as follows:

Foreman is correct, I think that some conservation groups have given into resourcism, with the Nature Conservancy being a prime example.

To quote Foreman, the principles of resourcism are:

1) Professionalism—Trained experts are best qualified to manage natural resources and public lands.

2) Progressivism/Optimism—Progress as a secular religion of material, informational, moral, and organizational advances is key to resourcism, as is an intensely optimistic view of the future benefits of wise management.

3) Engineering—The science behind resourcism is manipulative and controlling—not pure science, but rather technology and engineering.

4) Resources for people—Resource management by experts is to result in benefits for everyone. (In principle this standard is still touted; in practice it is corrupted in favor of those with wealth and political power.)

5) Multiple Use—Properly managed lands can produce multiple uses of timber, minerals, forage, water, wildlife, and recreation, often on the same acre.

6) Sustained Yield—Lands are to be managed for the maximum they can produce on a sustained basis without harming the future productivity of the land.

7) Utilitarianism—Resources and the land are here to be used to produce goods and services for humans.

Dusk falling on the High Peaks Wilderness southeast of Lake Placid, N.Y. Photo copyright Alan Gregory

It’s one of the most photographed vistas in the 6-million-acre Adirondack Park of New York state — the trail-less peaks of Street and Nye off to the right and Indian Pass in the lower left corner.

J. Stephen Griles has long carried sleaze and corruption around in his pockets. And the guy who’s almost single-handedly responsible for the continuing outrage known as mountaintop removal coal mining (the landscalping rape of Appalachia) has finally given up, admitting guilt in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal (”Abramoffgate”).

Ralph Maughan at Ralph Maughan’s Wildlife News has the link.