19 posts tagged “environment”
What is it that George W. has against the gray wolf? I'll bet Dick Cheney wants to kill one or something like that. So Bush continues to cement his place in history as the worst President ever.
LIVINGSTON, Mont. (January 14, 2009) – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that they will once again remove the gray wolf from the federal endangered species list in the states of Montana and Idaho, as well as the western Great Lakes region. This is the second recent attempt by the Bush Administration to remove legal protections for the species. The previous effort ended in September after the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and 11 other conservation groups won a challenge in federal court. The seemingly piecemeal exclusion of wolves in the state of Wyoming in this new effort undermines efforts to address the needs of wolves and people in the region.
“This move is not viable legally, politically, or biologically,” said Andrew Wetzler, Director of NRDC’s Endangered Species Project. “They have actually come up with a strategy that will anger everyone from ranchers and the states, to the conservation community. This simply gets in the way of finding a real solution.”
With the initial delisting in February 2008, temporary control of wolves moved to state management plans in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. Wyoming’s management plan was noted as a problem from the start as wolf hunts began immediately in the state’s “predator zone”, where wolves were allowed to be shot on sight. Rather than dealing with the problem directly, Wyoming’s wolf population was simply excluded from today’s action and left on the Endangered Species List. This move is in clear opposition to previous Department of Interior policy which stated that the wolf population in the region must be considered together and could not be broken up on a state-by-state basis. Documents stating this had been available on the Department’s Web site, including this 2004 letter to the State of Wyoming.
"Wolves don’t read maps," said Dr. Sylvia Fallon, NRDC Staff Scientist whose genetic expertise was central in the initial challenge case. “We agree that Wyoming’s plan is inadequate, but you cannot have protections start and stop at state lines. We are close to having truly appropriate conditions in place to remove these animals from the list; but until the population reaches critical size and shows genetic interchange, these policies are completely counter-productive...
A retention pond wall collapsed early Monday morning at a power plant run by the nation's largest public utility, releasing a frigid mix of water and ash that flooded as many as 10 homes and put hundreds of acres of rural land under water.
The 40-acre pond was used by the Tennessee Valley Authority to hold a slurry of ash generated by the coal-burning Kingston Steam Plant in Harriman, about 50 miles west of Knoxville, said TVA spokesman Gil Francis. An earthen wall gave way just before 1 a.m., flooding the road and railroad tracks leading to the plant, which is located in a mostly rural area.
Authorities said no one was seriously injured or needed to be taken to the hospital.
Emergency workers helped people out of two partially collapsed homes and used four-wheel drive vehicles to check other homes where people couldn't drive out, said Roane County Rescue Squad spokesman Brian Grief.
Officials originally said 15 homes were flooded, but Grief said the number is about 8 to 10.
He said rescue workers had begun evacuating a subdivision of about five houses...
Senators John Kerry and Arlen Specter introduce The High-Speed Rail for America Act of 2008
Boston Globe November 19, 2008
Senators John F. Kerry and Arlen Specter introduced a bill today (November 19, 2008) to fund high-speed rail lines along the East Coast and in several other key areas of the country...
...The bill would provide money for tax-exempt bonds to finance rail projects which reach a speed of at least 110 miles per hour. It would include $10 billion over 10 years to fund improvements in the Northeast and California, and $5.4 billion over a six-year period for 10 rail corridors, including connecting the cities of the Midwest through Chicago, connecting the cities of the Northwest, connecting the major cities within Texas and Florida, and connecting all the cities along the East Coast...
Government declares beluga whale endangered
By H. JOSEF HEBERT – 4 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government on Friday placed the beluga whales in Alaska's Cook Inlet under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, concluding that a decade-long recovery program has failed to ensure their survival.
"In spite of protections already in place, Cook Inlet beluga whales are not recovering," said James Balsiger, acting assistant administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The findings by NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service conflict with
claims by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has questioned scientific
evidence that the beluga whale population in the waters near Anchorage
continues to decline...
Scientists: 1 in 4 mammals faces extinction
By Randolph E. Schmid
October 06, 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) — Conservationists have taken the first detailed look at the world's mammals in more than a decade, and the news isn't good.
"Our results paint a bleak picture of the global status of mammals worldwide," the team led by Jan Schipper of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in Gland, Switzerland, concluded.
"We estimate that one in four species is threatened with extinction and that the population of one in two is declining," the researchers said in a report to be published Friday in the journal Science. The findings were being released Monday at the IUCN meeting in Barcelona, Spain...
...While the new report estimated that one-in-four mammals is threatened with extinction, the actual numbers listed were 1,141 out of 5,487 species. That comes out to 20.8 percent, closer to one in five.
However, the researchers noted that there were several hundred species about which they don't have enough data to classify. They believe that the lack of information about those animals indicates that they exist in such small numbers that many could be endangered, raising the total to 25 percent or higher, Smith explained...
...the new analysis isn't all bad news. It found about five percent of currently threatened mammals showing signs of recovery.
The black-footed ferret moved from extinct in the wild to endangered after a successful reintroduction by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in eight western states from 1991-2008. Also, wild horses moved from extinct in the wild in 1996 to critically endangered this year after successful reintroductions started in Mongolia in the early 1990s.
In addition to raising concern about mammals, new additions to the IUCN Red List include:
_ Indian tarantulas, sought by collectors and threatened by the international pet trade.
_ The Rameshwaram parachute spider has been listed as critically endangered due to habitat loss.
_ The squaretail coral grouper from the coral reefs of the Indo-Pacific has been listed as vulnerable because it has become a luxury food.
_ In Costa Rica, Holdridge's toad moved from critically endangered to extinct, as it has not been seen since 1986 despite intensive surveys.
_ La Palma giant lizard, found on the Canary Island of La Palma and thought to have become extinct in the last 500 years, was rediscovered last year and is now listed as critically endangered...
The full IUCN red list report can be found by clincking here
Hurricane Kyle forms in open ocean, Maine on watch
1 hour ago
MIAMI (AP) — National Hurricane Center forecasters say Hurricane Kyle has formed in the Atlantic Ocean and it's expected to pass near eastern New England.
Kyle had top sustained winds near 75 mph Saturday afternoon. The storm is moving north in the open Atlantic at 23 mph and could make landfall anywhere from Maine to Nova Scotia.
A hurricane watch is in effect for the Maine coast from Stonington north to Eastport. Hurricane conditions are possible in that area within 36 hours.
A tropical storm warning is in effect from Port Clyde south to Cape Elizabeth, an area that includes Portland.
New Orleans ordered evacuated ahead of Gustav
Sun Aug 31, 2008 1:12am EDT
By Tim Gaynor and Kathy Finn
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered the city's more than 239,000 residents to evacuate on Sunday in the face of powerful Hurricane Gustav, which he called "the mother of all storms."
The evacuation order issued on Saturday was the first in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina devastated the historic Southern city in August 2005.
"This is the mother of all storms," Nagin said of Gustav, a monstrous Category 4 storm...
...The evacuation order, which will not be physically enforced by officials, will start with the city's low-lying West Bank starting at 8 a.m. CDT (9 a.m. EDT) on Sunday, followed by the East Bank at noon CDT (1 p.m. EDT)...
Palin is quoted as saying that “I’m not one though who would attribute it [global warming] to being man-made,” Sarah Palin, 44, has made a habit of pitting herself against environmental safety. This comes as a surprise, as she actually disagrees with McCain on several things, such as anthropogenic global warming.
Two Bigfoot hunters claim they have the body of one and plan to release a photo and what they claim is DNA evidence at a news conference in Palo Alto on Friday.
The Bigfoot is claimed to have been found in the woods of northern Georgia by Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, and the claim is being supported by a Bay Area Bigfoot researcher Tom Biscardi, a multiple local Democratic candidate...
Endangered Species Act Changes Give Agencies More Say
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
The Bush administration yesterday proposed a regulatory overhaul of the Endangered Species Act to allow federal agencies to decide whether protected species would be imperiled by agency projects, eliminating the independent scientific reviews that have been required for more than three decades.
The new rules, which will be subject to a 30-day per comment period, would use administrative powers to make broad changes in the law that Congress has resisted for years. Under current law, agencies must subject any plans that potentially affect endangered animals and plants to an independent review by the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service. Under the proposed new rules, dam and highway construction and other federal projects could proceed without delay if the agency in charge decides they would not harm vulnerable species.
In a telephone call with reporters yesterday, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne described the new rules as a "narrow regulatory change" that "will provide clarity and certainty to the consultation process under the Endangered Species Act."
But environmentalists and congressional Democrats blasted the proposal as a last-minute attempt by the administration to bring about dramatic changes in the law. For more than a decade, congressional Republicans have been trying unsuccessfully to rewrite the act, which property owners and developers say imposes unreasonable economic costs.
"I am deeply troubled by this proposed rule, which gives federal agencies an unacceptable degree of discretion to decide whether or not to comply with the Endangered Species Act," said Rep. Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, who asked for a staff briefing before the proposal was announced but did not receive one. "Eleventh-hour rulemakings rarely, if ever, lead to good government -- this is not the type of legacy this Interior Department should be leaving for future generations."
Bob Irvin, senior vice president of conservation programs at the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife, questioned how some federal agencies could make the assessments, since most do not have wildlife biologists on staff...
