Editor’s note: On January 8, 2018, a federal judge dismissed US government’s criminal charges against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, two of his sons and another man linked to militia groups, over procedural errors made by the prosecution. This is a history of the Bundy grazing allotment.
• The Bundy family began grazing on federal public lands near Gold Butte, Nevada, in 1954 – lands located in the recently designated Gold Butte National Monument – some of the driest and most fragile desert in North America.
• In 1973 the Bundys were granted their first federal grazing permit. Given the aridity and fragility of the desert, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued a permit for grazing in this ephemeral range, which is subject to environmental and other conditions. Ephemeral range in the southwest desert region does not consistently produce forage for grazing.
• In 1989 the desert tortoise was granted protection under the federal Endangered Species Act because of widespread destruction of its fragile desert habitat by livestock grazing, urbanization and other factors.
• In 1991, the U.S. and Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) issued a draft Biological Opinion (BO) governing the management of desert tortoise habitat. The BLM developed a timetable to meet its requirements and shared the requirements and timetable with permittees, including Cliven Bundy, whose cattle grazed in tortoise habitat. The BLM requested and FWS then agreed to delay implementation of the BO until 1993.
• On February 26th, 1993, Cliven Bundy sent two “Administrative Notices of Intent” to the BLM asserting that the BLM has no legal jurisdiction over federal public lands, and stating his intent to graze cattle, “pursuant to my vested grazing rights.” Bundy stopped paying his grazing fees after February 28th of 1993.
• The BLM sent Bundy a notice that his request for a grazing application had not been received and requested that he re-submit within one week or BLM action would be taken.
• On July 13, 1993, BLM sent Bundy a Trespass Notice and Order to Remove which set a timeline for cattle removal given his non-payment of fees. Later BLM extended the timetable at Bundy’s request.
• On September 30, 1993, the Nevada State BLM Director requested injunctive relief—action from the court—to address Bundy’s unlawful cattle grazing.
• On January 24, 1994 BLM tried to deliver to Bundy a proposed decision to cancel his permit, request payment of trespass damages, and order the removal of trespass livestock. When BLM delivered the notice, Bundy’s son tore up the document. The torn document was recovered and used as evidence of illegal grazing by the BLM in court.
• On March 3, 1994, Cliven Bundy, given his refusal to recognize federal authority to own and administer federal lands, sent payment for his grazing permit to Clark County instead of the BLM. The county refused Bundy’s payment for lack of jurisdiction.
• In 1998, the U.S. Attorney filed suit requesting that the federal district court order Bundy to remove his cattle and pay outstanding grazing fees and fines totaling now more than $150,000.
• In October 1998, the BLM approved a new Resource Management Plan for the Las Vegas Field Office. The plan allowed for the closure of grazing allotments in critical tortoise habitats, including the Bunkerville allotment.
• On November 3, 1998, United States District Judge Johnnie Rawlinson permanently enjoined Bundy from grazing his livestock within the Bunkerville allotment. Rawlinson assessed fines against Bundy, affirmed federal authority over federal land, and wrote that “[t]he government has shown commendable restraint in allowing this trespass to continue for so long without impounding Bundy’s livestock.” Cite.
• Bundy refused to comply with the order. He filed an emergency motion for stay to try and halt the court ruling while he appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit Court.
• On May 14th, 1999, the Ninth Circuit Court denied Bundy’s appeal and upheld the district court decision ordering the removal of Bundy’s cattle from the Bunkerville allotment. Cite.
• On September 17th, 1999, after Bundy refused to comply with the court’s earlier orders, the Federal District Court again ordered Bundy to comply with the earlier permanent injunction and assessed additional fines.
• In December 1998, in order to mitigate harm to desert tortoise from urban sprawl, Clark County purchased the federal grazing permit to the Bunkerville Allotment for $375,000. The county retired the allotment to protect the desert tortoise. With the ongoing trespass cattle, Clark County inquired as to the rights of Cliven Bundy to be on the allotment. In a July, 2002 memo the BLM stated that the “Mr. Bundy has no right to occupy or graze livestock in the Bunkerville grazing allotment. Two court decisions, one in Federal District Court and another in the Circuit Court of Appeals,
fully supports our positions.”
• On April 2, 2008 the BLM sent Bundy a notice of cancellation, cancelling Bundy’s range improvement permit and a cooperative agreement. The notice called for the removal of his range improvements, such as gates and water infrastructure.
Cattle have been grazing in the vast Gold Butte area since an armed standoff between the government and self-styled militia in 2014. Kirk Siegler/NPR
• On May 9, 2008 Cliven Bundy sent a document entitled “Constructive Notice” to local, county, state, and federal officials, including the BLM. It claimed that Bundy had rights to graze on the Bunkerville Allotment; it called on state and county officials to protect those rights from the federal government; and it responded to the BLM’s April 2 Notice of Cancellation by saying he has not ignored it, and that he will do whatever it takes to protect grazing rights.
• In 2011, BLM sent Bundy a cease-and-desist order and notice of intent to roundup his trespass cattle.
• In 2012, BLM aerial surveys estimated about 1000 trespass cattle remained.
• In April 2012, the BLM at the last moment canceled plans to roundup trespass cattle to ensure the safety of people involved in the roundup after Cliven Bundy made violent threats against BLM.
• On July 2013, U.S. District Court of Nevada again affirmed that Bundy has no legal rights to graze cattle. It ordered Bundy to remove his cattle from public lands within 45 days and authorized the U.S. government to seize and impound any remaining cattle thereafter. Cite.
• In October 2013, after an appeal by Bundy, the federal court again affirmed that Bundy had no legal right to graze cattle on federal public lands. The court ordered the removal of cattle within 45 days and ordered Bundy not to interfere with the round-up. Cite.
• In March 2014, the BLM issued a notice of intent to impound Bundy’s trespass cattle and closed the area to the public for the duration of the action.
• On April 5, 2014 the roundup began.
• On April 9, 2014 heavily armed militia from across the U.S. converged on the Bundy ranch to confront federal officials conducting the roundup.
• On April 12, about 300 cattle that had been rounded up and held in a corral were released by the BLM after the heavily armed militia confronted and aimed rifles at federal agents. The BLM canceled the roundup out of safety concerns for employees and the public.
• In April 2015, Bundy held a weekend barbecue and “Liberty Celebration” to mark the one-year anniversary of the standoff.
• In June, 2015, shots were fired near public land surveyors working in the Gold Butte area. BLM orders all employees to stay away from Gold Butte.
• On Feb 11, 2016, Cliven Bundy was arrested at the Portland, Oregon airport on his way to support his son’s paramilitary occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.
• As of February, 2017, Bundy’s trespass cattle continue to graze illegally on federal public lands near Gold Butte.
Featured image: The critically endangered North Atlantic right whale is a species of utmost concern should seismic airgun blasting be allowed off the Atlantic coast. Photo Credit: Moira Brown and New England Aquarium.
The Trump Administration has unveiled its plan to open nearly all of the United States’ coastal waters to oil and gas drilling.
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announced the National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2019-2024 yesterday, which includes a proposal to open up more than 90 percent of the country’s continental shelf waters to future exploitation by oil and gas companies. The draft five-year plan also proposes the largest number of offshore oil and gas lease sales in U.S. history.
“Responsibly developing our energy resources on the Outer Continental Shelf in a safe and well-regulated way is important to our economy and energy security, and it provides billions of dollars to fund the conservation of our coastlines, public lands and parks,” said Secretary Zinke. “Today’s announcement lays out the options that are on the table and starts a lengthy and robust public comment period. Just like with mining, not all areas are appropriate for offshore drilling, and we will take that into consideration in the coming weeks.”
The Obama Administration blocked drilling on about 94 percent of the outer continental shelf, but, in April 2017, Trump issued an executive order that called for a review of the 2017-2022 Five Year Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program finalized under Obama in favor of implementing Trump’s so-called “America-First Offshore Energy Strategy.”
The draft five-year plan that has just been released by the Trump Administration’s Interior Department would open up 25 of 26 outer continental shelf regions to drilling. The North Aleutian Basin, which lies off the northern shore of the Alaska Peninsula and extends into the Bering Sea, was the only region exempted from drilling in the new plan, the New York Times reports.
The Interior Department proposes to hold 47 lease sales in those 25 regions — including 19 off the coast of Alaska, 12 in the Gulf of Mexico, nine in the Atlantic Region, and seven in the Pacific Region. “This is the largest number of lease sales ever proposed for the National [Outer Continental Shelf] Program’s 5-year lease schedule,” the Interior Department said in a statement.
Earlier moves by the Trump Administration to open the U.S. Atlantic coast to drillinghave already drawn fierce opposition. An alliance of more than 41,000 businesses and 500,000 fishing families from Florida to Maine was joined by fishery management councils for the Mid-Atlantic, New England, and the South Atlantic regions in speaking out against oil exploration and development in the Atlantic. One of their chief concerns is the incredibly disruptive exploration technique known as seismic airgun blasting, which would need to be used to determine how much oil is actually underneath the floor of the Atlantic Ocean off the U.S. East Coast given that oil drilling has been banned there for decades.
Drilling in the Pacific Ocean off the U.S. West Coast has been banned since a 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Local officials there also vowed to fight the Trump Administration’s move to open their coastal waters to the oil and gas industry: “For more than 30 years, our shared coastline has been protected from further federal drilling and we’ll do whatever it takes to stop this reckless, short-sighted action,” California Governor Jerry Brown, Oregon Governor Kate Brown, and Washington Governor Jay Inslee said in a joint statement.
Featured image: The American Chestnut giants were known as the sequoias of the east. Genetic engineering is no gift to future generaltions and will be the death knell of delicate and essential biodiveristy on which all life on Mother Earth depends.
“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose…” We don’t even have to provide the score for you to hear this song clearly in your head. “The Christmas Song” written in 1945 by Bob Wells and Mel Tormé is a classic. However, by that time in history, the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) trees had almost completely vanished. They had fallen victim to an airborne fungus introduced by the import of an ornamental chestnut from Japan.
This was an epic loss. Before Europeans clearcut huge swaths of eastern woodland forests, chestnut saplings and large sheets of bark were used to build naturally strong and weather resistant Longhouses for the Haudenasaunee and many other tribes. And in most cases, it was done without killing the trees. The leaves provided medicine for countless generations who lived up and down the eastern seaboard. The nuts were ground into flour, boiled, and eaten raw.
But American chestnut trees were quickly targeted as the wood of choice beginning with the first boat-load of immigrants. They dominated the forests of the New World and were felled to build ships, settlements, and furniture. Huge beams were cut for dwellings of all sizes. The wood was dense, naturally rot resistant, and prized by woodworkers across the North American continent. The nuts were roasted and ground into flour for cakes, puddings, and breads.
Today, chestnuts are still a staple during the holidays and winter months, and the majority of these come from European or Chinese stock.
There is no question why decades of dedicated and extensive research has been done to return the American chestnut to the forests it once dominated. The most promising to date has been the conventional breeding techniques done to combine the disease resistance of a Chinese variety with surviving American chestnut trees to produce a hybrid that will be unaffected by the airborne fungus that still lives on other tree species.
But is our meddling risking further damage to already fragile ecosystems that have since compensated for the loss of the American chestnut tree? And how should we go about reintroducing it? Conventional wisdom would indicate that any reintroduction in a natural setting should be done slowly, with changes monitored closely, outcomes assessed, with contingency plans in place to quickly address any negative consequences.
ONCE RESEARCHERS HAVE A RESISTANT CHESTNUT, THE QUESTION IS WHERE TO PLANT IT. FOREST ECOSYSTEMS HAVE TRANSFORMED IN THE PAST CENTURY, AND REINTRODUCING THE CHESTNUT COULD UPSET THE NEW ECOLOGICAL BALANCE. “YOU CAN’T ASSUME THAT A FOREST WITH CHESTNUT IS BETTER THAN A FOREST WITHOUT. YOU CAN’T ROLL THE CLOCK BACK.” STEVE HAMBURG, CHIEF SCIENTIST AT THE ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND IN BOSTON, NATURE.COM
The development of a hardy 100% American chestnut backcross has also shown promise, but conventional breeding takes time, time that geneticists claim we don’t have. But rushing this delicate and complex process in order to begin the reintroduction of this once king of the forest is classic human hubris.
Learn From Our Mistakes?
It was, in the early years, the rush to salvage-log the wood from an estimated 3-million American chestnut trees, whether they were sick or not, that may have unwittingly destroyed trees resistant to the fungus. If more time was taken or even possible to assess the situation, we might have avoided the near loss of these trees. Young American chestnuts remain scattered throughout the forests of the east, though few make it to maturity. These are the ones that researchers from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY/ESF) will be cross pollinating (contaminating) with their genetically engineered (GE) version.
Deregulation of the GE American Chestnut
William Powell, lead American chestnut scientist at SUNY/ESF recently announced his team is almost ready to apply for Federal deregulation to allow them to distribute their GE trees, free of charge, in hopes they will be planted in great numbers. Some of these GE trees, modified with a wheat gene, will be planted near surviving disease resistant non-GMO American chestnut trees. The goal is for the GE tree to cross pollinate with the others and create the next generations of disease-resistant offspring.
Powell and his team hope that the government agencies charged with reviewing their research results will modify the process to make it much easier to obtain permission to release novel GMOs like their GE chestnut. And with government agencies now managed by anti-regulation leadership coming directly from industry boardrooms and research facilities, chances are good that requirements for scientific review or public input will greatly diminish– at our peril.
Powell and his team, along with researchers from North Carolina State University, have spent considerable time with stakeholders from the Oneida Nation in New York State. They, along with their brother nations of the Haudenasaunee, hold vast swaths of eastern woodland areas where a majority of the wheat-altered GE chestnuts could be planted. Support for this plan has been mixed. Traditional elders remind us that communication with these natural entities is a key element in medicinal efficacy. By changing its genetic makeup it is a totally different and foreign organism. Tom Goldtooth, an elder and executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network has said that GE trees have no soul. Others, however, are cautiously optimistic and are taking a wait and see approach.
WHEN WE LOOK AT GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS, AND WE WE LOOK AT GENETICALLY ENGINEERED TREES A LOT OF OUR PEOPLE SAY THERE’S REALLY NO LIFE TO THAT TREE, THERE’S NO SPIRIT TO THAT TREE, IT’S ALREADY BEEN CORRUPTED AND IT EFFECTS ON WHETHER YOU USE PARTS OF THAT TREE – YOU KNOW HOW CAN THAT SUSTAIN THE VITAL LIFE CYCLE OF MOTHER EARTH ITSELF AND THAT’S OUR MESSAGE WE’RE TRYING TO GIVE AS INDIGENOUS PEOPLES.
TOM BK GOLDTOOTH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INDIGENOUS ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK
GE Chestnuts Have Far Reaching Consequences
Deregulation of this tree could very well become the first step to public acceptance of other GE trees. But the deployment of any GE trees conveys a great risk for the destruction of biodiversity wherever GE trees are grown. Whether planted willy-nilly in the forest with no controls, as in the plan to reintroduce the American chestnut or in vast, water-intensive industrial plantations, like ArborGen’s GE freeze-tolerant eucalyptus trees are predicted to cause great harm.
Under the guise of protecting remaining natural forests, biotech and related industries are running public misinformation campaigns that make ambitious and largely false claims. Proposals include the biological manipulation of trees and forest fauna to combat the damaging effects of disease, drought, and related symptoms of climate change. Large regions of the country are witnessing widespread die-offs of oaks, ash, and hemlock from non-native pests and microorganisms. Diseases we could have avoided if not for an ever-expanding system of economic globalization that embraces trade in whole logs and wood chips.
Industrialization of GE American chestnut
SO, I PUT THIS WORD COMMERCIALIZATION IN THERE, AND I’VE KIND OF ALREADY…SPILLED THE BEANS, GEE THIS ISN’T JUST ABOUT RESTORATION ANYMORE, YOU THINK MAYBE YOU COULD GET A LOT MORE TREES PLANTED IF LANDOWNERS SAID ‘HEY I’D LIKE TO PLANT ABOUT YOU KNOW, 10,000 CHESTNUTS TREES ON MY PROPERTY,’ WELL THAT’S NOT JUST RESTORATION ANYMORE, THAT IS COMMERCIALIZATION BECAUSE EVENTUALLY PEOPLE ARE GONNA WANT TO PLANT CHESTNUTS FOR TIMBER AND FOR NUTS.” SCOTT MERKLE, UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA PROFESSOR OF FOREST BIOTECHNOLOGY
Millions of acres of tropical and subtropical forests and rainforests in the global south have been and continue to be destroyed. Tree plantations are rapidly replacing these primeval forests. These plantations are harvested every 5 to 7 years for wood chips, pulp or charcoal. They are doused in toxic agrochemicals to control pests and competing vegetation–risking human health and polluting groundwater, streams and rivers. Could this be the real future of “restoring” the GE American Chestnut?
Genetically engineered trees haven’t been properly studied and by inserting these foreign trees into an ecosystem we risk unwanted and unpredictable damage to plants, insects, animals, soils, water, and the foundational bacterial and fungal organisms that create a healthy ecosystem.
In regard to the GE American chestnut, it is possible that they will live for centuries like their wild predecessors. During a tree’s life cycle they produce pollen year after year that can travel for miles, via wind and pollinators, and seeds (nuts) that are distributed unchecked across a wide area. Genes activate and deactivate in response to environmental stresses leading to unpredictable consequences. Besides which, there have been no long-term studies on the effects on humans or animals consuming the GE chestnuts–not to mention what happens when GE American chestnuts contaminate existing non-GE and organic chestnut orchards.
The process of inserting foreign DNA into an organism, or even non-transgenic genetic manipulations like CRISPR, causes permanent damage to the genome that leads to unanticipated and unpredictable mutations which have unanticipated and unpredictable impacts on the delicate web of biodiversity in forest ecosystems. All the studies on GE chestnut should be made widely available so the public can see for themselves what is and is not being taken into consideration regarding the release of GE trees into the environment. Already the Earth is suffering the effects of unchecked climate change. Why should we add to the risk the future collapse of natural systems that have sustained life on this planet because of ill-advised meddling with tree genomes? We must subscribe to the tenets of the Precautionary Principle when it comes to risking irreversible damage to what we barely understand to begin with.
The Trump administration released on Wednesday its long-overdue recovery plan for Mexican gray wolves, one of the most endangered mammal species in North America with an estimated wild population of just over 100. However, the plan charts a course for extinction rather than recovery, cutting off wolf access to vital recovery habitat and failing to respond to mounting genetic threats to the species.
“It’s a ‘recovery plan’ in name only. Without additional habitat and greater genetic diversity, the wolves will continue to teeter on the brink of extinction. The plan provides none of these essential needs,” said Heidi McIntosh, an attorney with the nonprofit environmental legal organization, Earthjustice, which sued the federal government on behalf of conservation organizations.
The Trump administration refused to listen to the tens of thousands of people who asked them to fix their awful draft plan before finalizing it. Among the people who weighed in asking for stronger protections for the wolves were concerned citizens, business owners and scientists.
“Lobos waited decades for a plan to save them, only to be given one that does not guarantee recovery,” said Bryan Bird, Southwest director for Defenders of Wildlife. “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had the opportunity to build a plan on a foundation of science and conservation, but instead decided to let politics rule.”
“Instead of moving forward with a plan based on legitimate, science-based recommendations, the Service collaborated exclusively with the very states that have gone to extraordinary lengths to obstruct Mexican wolf recovery,” said Maggie Howell of the Wolf Conservation Center. “Critically endangered lobos deserve better.”
“The Fish and Wildlife Service published over 250 pages of supporting ‘scientific’ justification, used a sophisticated model to predict extinction probabilities, then tossed the science aside and asked the states how many wolves they would tolerate with no scientific justification whatsoever,” said David Parsons, former Mexican wolf recovery coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service. “Using the states’ arbitrary upper limit as a population cap in the population viability model and forcing additional recovery needs to Mexico, the plan will guarantee that from now to eternity no more than a running average of 325 Mexican wolves will ever be allowed to exist in the entire U.S. Southwest. This plan is a disgraceful sham.”
The best available science indicates that recovery of the Mexican gray wolf requires at least three connected populations totaling approximately 750 individuals, a carefully managed reintroduction effort that prioritizes improving the genetic health of the animals and the establishment of at least two additional population centers in the southern Rockies and in the Grand Canyon area.
“This isn’t a recovery plan, it’s a blueprint for disaster for Mexican gray wolves,” said Michael Robinson, conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity. “Limiting recovery to south of Interstate 40 keeps wolves out of the Grand Canyon and southern Rocky Mountains, areas that would greatly benefit from having wolves back and that scientists have determined are absolutely essential to their recovery.”
The recovery plan just released by the Trump administration ignores the science and falls short in several key and interrelated ways:
Fails to establish the additional population centers and limits wolves to inadequate habitat with low recovery potential;
Does not provide for sufficient releases of wolves into the wild;
Fails to ensure conservation and enhancement of genetic diversity to ameliorate inbreeding;
Relies excessively on Mexico for recovery, where habitat is unpromising.
“It is critical for the health of the Mexican wolf population to obtain a sound, scientifically reviewed and based recovery plan. Politics should not play a role in management of an endangered species,” said Virginia Busch, executive director of the Endangered Wolf Center.
The critically endangered Mexican gray wolf almost vanished from the face of the earth in the mid-20th century because of human persecution. The entire population of Mexican wolves alive today descends from just seven individuals that were captured and placed into a captive breeding program before the species was exterminated from the wild.
In 2014, Earthjustice on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, retired Fish and Wildlife ServiceMexican Wolf Recovery Coordinator David R. Parsons, the Endangered Wolf Center and the Wolf Conservation Center, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to develop a recovery plan.
WEST YELLOWSTONE, MONTANA: Montana and Yellowstone’s severe mismanagement of wild, migratory bison has caused a serious decline in Yellowstone’s Central bison herd. The current management practices have diminished herd viability to the point that bison biologists are recommending hunt closures in Montana’s Hebgen Basin, west of Yellowstone National Park, lands where only buffalo from the Central Herd migrate to.
So far, this recommendation is not being heeded. Bison from the imperiled Central herd are already being killed by hunters.
The burden should not be on hunters alone. Yellowstone National Park must also take responsibility for their actions and refuse to kill for Montana cattle interests. Yellowstone’s unnecessary capture-for-slaughter operations far exceed the number of buffalo killed by hunters.
The Montana-based wild bison advocacy group, Buffalo Field Campaign, will hand deliver a letter to the Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) decision-makers at an IBMP meeting held today in Chico Hot Springs, Montana. The letter urges hunt managers and Yellowstone to both take the necessary steps that will allow the Central bison herd to recover. The letter will also be sent to Montana Governor Steve Bullock as well as the Tribal Councils and Tribal Fish & Wildlife Commissions of the five Tribes hunting under treaty right.
“If Yellowstone moves forward with capture-for-slaughter operations, they will be neglecting their responsibility to the buffalo, ignoring the tragic shift that they recognize and have directly caused, and will be placing the bulk of the conservation burden on the five Tribes hunting under treaty right,” said James Holt, Buffalo Field Campaign Board Member from the Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) Tribe.
Bison managers know Central herd buffalo migrate west into the Hebgen Basin and also north into the Gardiner Basin. These distinct migrations doubly expose and impact the Central herd to capture and slaughter, hazing, and hunting firing lines on Yellowstone’s border.. The Central herd is in dire straits, hovering now at around 830 individuals, one-fourth the size it was in 2005. Barring a few radio-collared females, slaughter managers can’t differentiate Central from Northern herd buffalo.
“The Central herd is in this predicament because of Montana’s and Yellowstone’s gross negligence, and now Yellowstone biologists are calling for a hunt closure to offer a respite to Central herd buffalo, yet still want to kill up to 1,250 buffalo this winter – from both the Central and Northern herds – as they migrate north into the Gardiner Basin,” said Buffalo Field Campaign Board President Mike Mease. “While a hunt closure on the west side is badly needed, Yellowstone needs to do their part and stand up to Montana and refuse to capture. It is irresponsible and negligent for them to recommend hunting cease while they carry on with indiscriminate slaughter.”
The Central herd needs to recover before they disappear completely.
“The reality is Montana’s and Yellowstone’s “management” is causing a fundamentally tragic shift in buffalo behavior, migrations, and population structure,” said Buffalo Field Campaign media coordinator Stephany Seay. “Without additional habitat and protections, the Central herd will soon be gone, and the entirety of this last wild population is at risk of extinction.”
For more information about what is happening to America’s last wild buffalo, our National Mammal, visit www.BuffaloFieldCampaign.org.
When I was asked to tell in pictures the story of the Colorado river, I’ll admit that besides being honoured to be asked, that I also felt a little overwhelmed. How could I, an immigrant settler, tell one of the most American stories of all? Before I even began I was humbled by the river’s story.
We know of the Colorado’s significance in the spiritual and practical lives of the native peoples who lived in harmony with her flow. Historical accounts recall her part in the ‘taming’ of the west by European colonisers. Powell, his expeditions and novels were lauded for the accounts of their grand adventures down the river and her canyons, adding to the aura of the west.
Her beauty is world renowned. As she winds her way around Horseshoe bend and carves her majestic path through the red sandstone of the Grand Canyon, she is the Mona Lisa of the natural world. Since the dawn of time she has been sculpting the earth as it rose to meet her, working her way to its heart, unveiling its history layer by layer as she went. For millions of years.
In a relatively short timespan of 150 years humans industrialised and multiplied to such as extent that we felt compelled to change what a river had been doing for millennia. So along the Colorado we built massive dams and thousands of miles of infrastructure to control her according to the insatiable energy and water needs of 40 million of us across 7 states. But what is the complete story today that plays out along her foreshortened journey from the clouds to the sea?
In September a first of its kind lawsuit was filed in federal court in Denver seeking Rights of Nature for the Colorado river. The Rights of Nature movement seeks protections for nature that assert that nature has inalienable rights to flourish and regenerate regardless of it’s use to humans. The concept of the Rights of Nature movement is built on the premise that If the corporations that profit from earth’s resources have rights then why can’t nature have rights? Why is one awarded privileges and protections and the other not? Nature is not our subject so why do we act like her master?
Will Falk, a writer, attorney and member of the activist group Deep Green Resistance is one of 7 individuals named on the lawsuit as a ‘friend’ of the river. Will and I came together to tell the river’s story, highlight the case and prepare for what it’s outcome may mean in the stakes to protect life on earth. What will it mean for us and other species if the legal system refuses to grant nature the protections she needs given the current crisis, that might save her from annihilation by corporations? Have you thought about what that world looks like? I have.
When we can’t watch the birds or hear their song anymore, when all the polar bears are gone, when we can’t go to the beach because the beach is there no longer and the glaciers have all melted.
The intrinsic worth of nature has no value in the industrialised global economy. An endangered species knows this and so too do four endemic fish species of the Colorado river on the brink of extinction. Whether or not you value life, one thing is certain. Extinction is forever.
As Will and I began our journey, I realised that I had been perhaps a little naive to think that at the Colorado’s headwaters in Rocky Mountain National Park, I would find some wildness intact. The reality is a river shackled by a canal called ‘The Grand Ditch’ wrestling her into compliance at her birthplace, sending her through valleys and rusty culverts to a series of reservoirs. From there she is forced uphill and through a 13 mile tunnel blasted beneath the peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park. From west of the great continental divide the Colorado is wrangled east to front range farmland and thirsty cities where no cities should be. This is just the beginning of her life.
Moving southwest through her Upper Basin, along the Yampa and Green Rivers we followed a sea of oil and gas wells in Colorado and Utah. We took a random diversion off the highway near Roosevelt, Utah and followed it into the mesa, uncovering a litany of drill pads disemboweling the earth of its carbon. Any road would have revealed the same thing. Coal fired power plants and their tailings ponds put the finishing touches on an industrial landscape where city billboards proclaim their love for coal and drilling. Out here is energy nirvana for oil and gas fracking companies getting drunk on the resources beneath America’s public lands.
However we spend our lives, one thing is clear. Nothing happens without nature. Without nature we have nothing. Yet nothing may be what we deserve. Though not what other species deserve or future generations who have played no part in our narcissism. We have a choice which we need to wake up to and act upon. Do we continue to let corporations do what they want? Including mining and destroying our lands, displacing us, poisoning our water and selling it back to us in plastic bottles? Or do we protect what we love and stand for something much bigger than ourselves? It’s a choice between doing nothing or doing something.
Wherever you are there’s a Colorado waiting to hear your choice.
