Judge Halts Settlement Over Hundreds of Endangered Species, Orders Parties Back to Negotiations

Turf War or Legitimate Concern ?

Earlier, we took a look at a recent settlement struck between the Interior Department and WildEarth Guardians that seeks to clear the logjam with species listings under the Endangered Species Act.

The settlement would ask the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to make up or down determinations on a host of species, either granting actual protections for warranted species and affording critical habitat to those that warrant protections or determining that they do not warrant protection.

At first glance, the settlement seems to have the potential to do a lot of good – assuming (big) that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does the right thing.  However, groups like the Center for Biological Diversity objected, arguing that the agreement was too weak, too vague and ultimately unenforceable.  The group also objected to the fact that the would-be settling parties went behind CBD’s back, despite its previous involvement in negotiations, pushing the group out of involvement and making unwise concessions despite CBD’s effort and strong legal interest on a vast majority of the species involved.

Today, the Court agreed with CBD’s challenge of the settlement arguing that the way that WildEarth Guardians and the Interior Department went about its settlement was inappropriate, and ordered all parties back into negotiations:

Judge Halts Settlement Over Hundreds of Endangered Species, Orders Parties Back to Negotiations – Center for Biological Diversity Press Release 5/17/2011

Interior to Publish Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf Delisting Rule

Salazar announces wolves delisted in Rockies and hunting can begin – Idaho Statesman

Wolves will be delisted in the Northern Rockies except Wyoming on Thursday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said.

The rule would reinstate the 2009 decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to delist the gray wolf in Idaho and Montana, eastern Washington, eastern Oregon and northern Utah.

Download NR Wolf Delisting Reissuance

Western Watersheds Project expects to file litigation in U.S. District court challenging the delisting rider.

Interior Releases Report Highlighting Impacts of Climate Change to Western Water

Escalation of Western Water Wars Loom

The finite availability of western water is part of the reason Ralph Maughan previously posed the question : Will the resource sucking “sin city” be reclaimed by the desert ?  Perhaps eventually, but in the meantime – despite setbacks, the Southern Nevada Water Authority keeps stretching its tentacles in a continuing effort to draw-down surrounding water resources:

Hundreds Protest Las Vegas Water Grab – Great Basin Water Network Press Release

Nevadans and Utahns made it clear once again that Las Vegas won’t take water from rural Nevada without a fight.

This at a time when the Interior Department has announced a report commissioned by the Bureau of Reclamation – which has presumably brushed up on its 9th grade math – highlighting the impacts of climate change to western water resources – including a projection of an 8 to 20 percent decrease in average annual stream flow in several river basins, including the Colorado, the Rio Grande, and the San Joaquin.

Interior Releases Report Highlighting Impacts of Climate Change to Western Water Resources – Interior Press Release

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today released a report that assesses climate change risks and how these risks could impact water operations, hydropower, flood control, and fish and wildlife in the western United States. The report to Congress, prepared by Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, represents the first consistent and coordinated assessment of risks to future water supplies across eight major Reclamation river basins, including the Colorado, Rio Grande and Missouri river basins.

Budget deal stops BLM Wild Lands inventory

So much for Harry Reid’s promise that the budget bill wouldn’t be used to carry anti-environment riders

Around Christmas, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the administration would be pursuing a BLM Wild Lands initiative, vague direction to BLM to inventory lands which exhibit wilderness characteristics for future Congressional Wilderness designation consideration.

It was a brief respite from Obama’s anti-environment Interior Department.  Now that relief is being defunded, more anti-environment funding cuts carried by the budget bill:

Budget deal stops BLM Wild Lands inventory – Idaho Statesman

The budget deal prohibits the Obama administration from spending federal funds on its proposed Wild Lands initiative.

Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson authored the provision to stop the Bureau of Land Management from carrying out its inventory of public lands with wilderness characteristics.

Will the proposed budget cut funds to administer environmentally destructive subsidized uses of publics lands like welfare ranching ?

Why is Obama prosecuting Tim DeChristopher, the gas-lease pranker?

A good question, given all the unprosecuted, indeed celebrated, criminals at high levels-

Tim DeChristopher was convicted at his trial after not being allowed to explain the motives for his prank. Do Motives Matter? The DeChristopher Verdict. The New York Times. By Kirk Johnson.

Inside traders, coal and oil company disaster creators, military contractors break the law with no fear. Two Justices of the Supreme Court plot openly with the Koch Brothers, but who gets convicted? As climate crime continues, who are we sending to jail? Tim DeChristopher? By Bill McKibben. Grist Magazine.

Some people are outraged. Read below (written shortly before his trial).

Why is Obama prosecuting Tim DeChristopher, the gas-lease pranker? Jeremy Bloom. Red, Green, and Blue.

Tim DeChristopher Goes on Trial for Disrupting Oil Lease Auction

DeChristopher may get 10 years for unconventional method of protecting Utah’s beautiful canyonlands from oi companies-

We have had many stories on this, but not for quite a while. Tim DeChristopher could be punished far more than the Wall Street investment bankers who stole billions. He bid against oil speculators at a Department of Interior (BLM) oil and gas lease auction in 2008. He had no money, however.

Trial of eco-activist who punk’d BLM begins. Greenspace in the New York Times.

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Note. He was quickly convicted. Webmaster.

Salazar: Sonoran desert tortoise is “Warranted, but precluded” from federal protection

Tortoise Takes Place in Line For Federal Listing

Sonoran Desert Tortoise

The Sonoran desert tortoise is the next in a long line of imperiled species that the Obama administration’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services has determined is “Warranted, but precluded” from the comprehensive federal protections of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Sonoran desert tortoise now an endangered species candidate – KVOA.com

“Much like the Saguaro cactus, the Sonoran desert tortoise is symbolic of the rich Southwestern desert,” said Steve Spangle, the Service’s Arizona field supervisor. “A collection of various conservation partners have made great strides to better understand and protect the Sonoran desert tortoise, but our comprehensive analysis shows an increasing magnitude of threats is offsetting some conservation efforts. This candidate conservation status should increase opportunities for reversing this trend.”

It will be interesting to see how the alternative “candidate conservation status” measures will bring much needed protections to the tortoise, particularly given the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s acknowledgement that those conservation measures deployed have already fallen short.

Tortoise Takes Place in Line For Federal Listing – News Release 12/13/10

In his finding, Secretary Salazar determined that the Sonoran desert tortoises may be threatened by all five factors the agency uses in deciding whether a species qualifies for Endangered Species Act protection: 1) habitat loss and destruction; 2) overutilization; 3) disease or predation; 4) inadequate legal protections; and 5) other factors. Under the Act, the tortoise needs only to qualify under one of these factors to warrant listing.

Obama passed up Grijalva at Interior for more Offshore Oil Friendly Salazar

Representative Raúl M. Grijalva ‘gets it’ before it needs gettin’.  Salazar is an industry apologist

Salazar ♥♥♥ Offshore Drilling

Representative Raúl M. Grijalva issued a press release highlighting a recent Washington Post article describing how his foresight on offshore drilling, a foresight directly pertinent to any hope at having spared the world the worst environmental disaster in history, is the very reason President Obama declined to appoint him Secretary of the Interior, instead choosing industry-friendly Ken Salazar :

Wash. Post: Grijalva Passed Over for Interior Sec. Because of Tough Stance on Offshore Drilling

Tucson, Ariz. – According to a recent featured story in the Washington Post, Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva was passed over for Secretary of the Interior during the Obama transition because of his unwillingness to approve offshore drilling projects without first strengthening Bush-era environmental standards. The story, which ran Oct. 13, indicates that current Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was more in line with the president’s urge toward a “balanced” energy portfolio that included more offshore drilling.

Lifting the drilling moratorium: How politics spilled into policy – Michael Leahy and Juliet Eilperin – The Washington Post

Members of Obama’s transition team for the Interior Department, who were handling the preliminary talks with Grijalva and others, spoke enthusiastically about Obama’s “balanced” energy approach, which embraced new drilling as a transition to a day when “clean” energy could replace fossil fuels.

A dissenting Grijalva told the transition team that it was premature to talk about an expansion of drilling. His first priority, he said, would be correcting the dangerous imbalance he saw between industry and federal regulators. Before he could endorse expansion, Grijalva suggested, Interior would need to regain the upper hand.

Previously, a few of Salazar’s failures at Interior:

Madeleine Pickens ‘buys the Ranch’ setting the stage for wild horse sanctuary in northeastern Nevada

Saving America’s Mustangs: A Prospectus

Recently, Madeleine Pickens purchased the 14,000 acre Spruce Ranch and gained control of adjacent BLM livestock grazing allotments amounting to 500,000 acres between Wells and Ely, Nevada.

This private land acquisition and control of the associated public lands sets the stage for Pickens’ intent to create a wild horse sanctuary for 10,000 wild horses in northeastern Nevada.

Saving America’s Mustangs: A Prospectus

The Pickens proposal raises many legal and regulatory issues that will need to be addressed by the BLM before any such sanctuary could be created.

Biologists scour Mojave in desert tortoise roundup.

What has this society come to?
Construction of the Ivanpah Solar plant starts.

Clear the land of life for power generation that could be achieved by installing solar panels on rooftops where it is used. The bulldozers, fences, and powerlines are next.

The science shows that half of these endangered desert tortoises will die and an equal number of the tortoises that will be displaced but the moved tortoises will die as well. It’s all a charade under the guise of GREEN ENERGY that is being greenwashed by many of the big “conservation” groups.

Other alternatives were never examined because that would get in the way of the profits of those big power companies who will profit at the expense of the taxpayers and more importantly habitat and wildlife. There is a playa just across the freeway where Bob Abbey, the director of the BLM, likes to landsail. It was never considered as an alternative site.

The effort in San Bernardino County’s panoramic Ivanpah Valley, just north of Interstate 15 and about 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas, disrupted complex tortoise social networks and blood lines linked for centuries by dusty trails, shelters and hibernation burrows.

Biologists scour Mojave in desert tortoise roundup
Los Angeles Times

Feds, States and others file appeal on wolf ruling

Federal Government appeals the wolf ruling-

I missed this one but it is important. Everyone knew that the states and many other groups would appeal Judge Molloy’s ruling on wolves but no one was sure whether the Federal Government would appeal the ruling too. Now that question has been answered.

State and others file appeal on wolf ruling.
By Eve Byron – Helena Independent Record

Obama: Pygmy Rabbit “not warranted” for ESA protections

Salazar Strikes Again, Denying Meaningful Protection for Imperiled Tiny Bunny of the Sagebrush Sea

Pygmy rabbit

The declining condition of the Sagebrush Sea has been highlighted on a couple of occasions over the past couple of weeks.  In recent Washington state news we learned that jackrabbits in sagebrush habitats are diminishing.  Pygmy rabbits were rejected ESA protections by the Obama administration last week, and earlier last year Dr. Steven Herman remorsefully described his account of the extinction of the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit:

Science is seldom followed in these endangered species “interventions”.  Politics trumps science -and conservation.

We need to remember the Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit as an example of a form lost in part to the the insanity of Public Grazing.

The Sagebrush Sea is Dying

Significant threats to sagebrush habitat across the western landscape continue to threaten and diminish a variety of sagebrush obligate species.

Sagebrush habitat is among the most imperiled ecosystems in North America and the rate at which our unique western wildlife and fish communities are declining is truly alarming.

Attempting to bring the most relief in the least amount of time, environmentalists continue to push for Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for a number of umbrella species endemic to sagebrush habitats, including the grand-master of the Sagebrush Sea: the Greater Sage grouse.

Prioritizing these “umbrella” species is important, because when successfully listed, the protections secured these species will blanket entire ecosystems positively affecting the diversity of fish, wildlife, and environmental values which share the explicitly protected individuals’ habitat.  It’s like hitting a plethora of birds with one stone (bad analogy).

Ken Cole (age 11) holds pygmy rabbit

Pygmy Rabbits’ Race to Recovery

So it is with the charismatic, imperiled pygmy rabbit, North America’s tinniest bunny, and the only arboreal rabbit (climbs sagebrush) on Earth !

In 2003, a coalition of conservation groups petitioned the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to list pygmy rabbits under the ESA.

In early 2008, the USFWS, responding to legal pressure from conservation groups, finally issued a positive 90-day finding for pygmy rabbits, initiating a more thorough assessment of whether to protect the bunny under the ESA.

The agency dragged its feet again, prompting Western Watersheds Project et al to provide a legal reminder, again, of its court ordered obligation to the bunny …

Unfortunately, just earlier this week Pygmy rabbits were denied Endangered Species Act protections by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – Laura Zuckerman, Reuters

“We find there has been some loss and degradation of pygmy rabbit habitat range-wide, but not to the magnitude that constitutes a significant threat to the species,” Bob Williams, supervisor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Nevada, said in a statement.

Ivanpah Power Plant – Not Clean Not Green

Michael J. Connor, Ph.D.
California Director
Western Watersheds Project

Ancient Mojave yuccas on the Ivanpah power plant site. (2009) © Michael J. Connor, Ph.D.

Secretary of the Interior Salazar is about to initial a series of major giveaways of public lands in California to industrial-scale solar power producers. These “fast-tracked” power plant projects have had truncated environmental reviews in the current administration’s rush to place huge chunks of public land in the hands of developers to build on them at public expense.

The Ivanpah Solar Power Plant project is a prime example. The project’s proponent, BrightSource Energy, will build an experimental “power tower” solar power plant on over five and a half square miles of high quality desert tortoise habitat in California’s Ivanpah Valley. The 1.7 billion dollar project will be primed with $1.3 billion in public “economic stimulus” funds provided by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

The project is the first of a number of power plants proposed for public lands in the Ivanpah Valley. A photovoltaic plant is planned right next door to the Ivanpah power plant. Just down the valley over the Nevada border is the proposed Silver State power plant. These and other projects will block off the Ivanpah Valley, turn the North Ivanpah Valley into an industrial zone, and will have major consequences for rare and endangered wildlife. Although the ESA-listed desert tortoise population is declining, the Ivanpah power plant will split the North Ivanpah Valley, eliminate desert tortoise habitat, require that resident tortoises be relocated placing them and any resident tortoises at the relocation site in danger, and will severely compromise connectivity and gene flow between important desert tortoise populations. It will also impact foraging for bighorn sheep and other wildlife, a number of rare plants, and an assemblage of barrel cactus unrivaled elsewhere in the Golden State. Native Americans cultural remains including unusual stone structures will be stranded in a sea of mirrors. The agencies don’t know what these structures are, so how can they be important? No matter that the local Chemehuevi Indians don’t share that view.

Obama: Interior reforms too slow

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar

Off With His Hat

Finally some sanity ~ it’ll be interesting to see whether Obama has the integrity to follow through (not holding my breath):

Obama: Interior reforms too slow ~ By Dan Berman, Politico

White House insiders say Salazar has fallen out of favor and speculate that he will be gone after November’s midterms. Obama didn’t say directly whether Salazar would still have a job, but he acknowledged the overhaul of the former Minerals Management Service — long accused of being too cozy with the oil and gas companies it regulated — took too long.

It’s not just the MMS that’s been a disgrace under Salazar’s Interior, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management,and other agencies at Interior are all failing the American public, effectively liquidating America’s environmental heritage to appease the very industries that ran the Department under the Bush Administration.

Interior: same contractors doing their NEPA on behalf of the same industries … if it smells like Bush and tastes like Bush … we’re supposed to call it “Change” ?

Global Warming, Killer Bears?

Obama’s Abandonment of the West

Grizzly feeding on elk © Ken Cole

Doug Peacock continues to enrich the debate over grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem :

Global Warming, Killer Bears? Doug Peacock, Counterpunch

Biologists sometimes like to quibble that losing the grizzly because of the collapse of whitebark pine forests may be the least of our ecological worries. Ecosystems are, of course, founded on the backs of bugs and bacteria not bears. But there is another argument, less scientific, for keeping a few grizzlies around: the American grizzly bear, especially the isolated population marooned on the island of Yellowstone Park, stands alone in defiance of human arrogance. It is the single North American animal who challenges our dominion, reminds us that we are not top dog in the wilderness or within the food pyramid.

Obama, like Bush, seems to be stifling salmon science

Manipulation of science remains the same or worse.

In the first year and a half of the Obama Administration nothing has really changed with regard to environmental policy across several agencies. In fact, I think it has gotten worse for two reasons. One, things haven’t changed, and two, people just want to believe that Obama cares about the environment. The BLM and USFS still willfully break the law in their grazing decisions, the MMS issued categorical exclusions for deepwater oil drilling, and now it appears that biologists are still being pressured to manipulate science surrounding salmon to protect dams.

Obama, like Bush, seems to be stifling salmon science.
Crosscut.com

Clinton-Era Secretary Blasts Interior; Scientists Say Salazar Should Quit

Scientists & Conservation Groups: Time for Salazar to step down

Clinton-Era Secretary Blasts Interior; Scientists Say Salazar Should Quit featured in the New York Times

Read the letter

The Gulf Coast disaster is a cataclysmic failure. It’s a failure of insatiable industrial greed. But to leave it at that – to blame BP and demand accountability of BP alone – is too narrow. It keeps the reigns of control in the hands of the private actors who ought no longer be trusted, and it ignores the fact that the environment in which private industry’s over-step of influence took place was only made possible by a failure of our representatives to clean shop. There’s a systemic problem.

The Spill, The Scandal and the President

The inside story of how Obama failed to crack down on the corruption of the Bush years – and let the world’s most dangerous oil company get away with murder

A revealing article in Rolling Stone points out how Obama and Salazar did nothing to reform the well known corruption at MMS. It is expected that industry will try to cut as many corners as possible but the culture at the Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service did nothing to curb the corruption of gas and oil companies and instead facilitated the current destruction of the Gulf of Mexico.

“Bush owns eight years of the mess,” says Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from California. “But after more than a year on the job, Salazar owns it too.”

Greens call for Salazar’s resignation

Dozens of Environmental Groups and Scientists sign letter asking Obama for Ken Salazar’s Resignation.

Ken Salazar, Secretary of Interior

WildEarth Guardians initiated the drive to find signatories to the letter in which a number of conservation groups and scientists have called for the resignation of Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar. Many of the signatories had asked Obama to not appoint him in the first place.

I believe that Ken Salazar has been a disaster for the environment. He has not tackled the corruption in the Minerals Management Service, has done virtually nothing to reform public lands ranching, and has the worst record for protecting endangered species. This all comes on top of the BP Gulf Oil Spill which will forever change the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico and its coastal areas.

I have not seen who all has signed the letter but I have seen the letter floating around for about a week. I do know, however, that Western Watersheds Project (which I am an employee of) and Buffalo Field Campaign (which I am a member of the board) have signed it.

Greens call for Salazar’s resignation.
Juliet Eilperin -Washington Post

Colorado Group Urges Ken Salazar to Stay in Colorado
WildEarth Guardians – Press Release

Interior Science Has Integrity Issues, Inspector General Says

Politics still reigns supreme in the Interior Department

A new report outlines how very little has changed under Obama and Salazar. Science is being ignored and managers manipulate it to support predetermined political outcomes.

In my experience, I would say that the Interior Department under Obama and Salazar is as bad or worse than under Bush and Kempthorne.  Substantial changes need to be made to protect the environment and imperiled species.

It seems that Obama appointed Salazar simply because a westerner is traditionally appointed due to the fact that the West has most of the public lands.  Well, as we can see with the Gulf oil spill and endangered species, there is much more to it than that. A Secretary of Interior needs to have a greater understanding of science rather than a simple understanding of politics and cattle ranching.