Trump’s Border Wall Threatens 93 Endangered Species

Trump’s Border Wall Threatens 93 Endangered Species

     by Center for Biological Diversity

TUCSON, AZ— President Trump’s border wall threatens 93 endangered and threatened species, including jaguars, ocelots, Mexican gray wolves and cactus ferruginous pygmy owls, according to a new study by the Center for Biological Diversity.

The study also found that 25 threatened or endangered species have designated “critical habitat” on the border, including more than 2 million acres within 50 miles of the border.

“Trump’s border wall is a disaster for people and wildlife alike,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center. “It could drive magnificent species like the jaguar and ocelot to extinction in the United States.”

The new study identified all threatened, endangered and “candidate” species (those being considered for protection) that have ranges near or crossing the border. These include 57 endangered species, 24 threatened species, 10 species under consideration for protection and two species of concern, golden and bald eagles. Construction of Trump’s 1,200-mile wall — along with related infrastructure and enforcement — will have far-reaching consequences for wildlife, including cutting off migration corridors, reducing genetic diversity, destroying habitat, and adding vehicles, noise and lights to vast stretches of the wild borderlands.

“The border wall won’t be effective at stopping people seeking a better life from getting to this country, but it will destroy habitat and divide wildlife populations,” Greenwald said. “Building a wall across the entirety of the border would cause massive damage to one of the most biologically diverse regions in North America and would be a boondoggle of the highest order.”

The sections of border wall that have already been built have had a range of negative effects on wildlife, including direct destruction of thousands of acres of habitat, indirect impacts from noise and light pollution, and division of cross-border wildlife populations like bighorn sheep and jaguars. The border wall would cut through the Cabeza Prieta, Buenos Aires and several other national wildlife refuges, along with Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Big Bend National Park and many other natural areas that, besides acting as corridors for wildlife, are national treasures.

Last month the Center and Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the ranking member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, sued the Trump administration over the proposed border wall and other border security measures, calling on federal agencies to conduct an in-depth investigation of the proposal’s environmental impacts.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, is the first targeting the Trump administration’s plan to vastly expand and militarize the U.S.-Mexico border, including construction of a “great wall.”

Lawsuit Filed to Protect Endangered Ocelots in Arizona, Texas From Government Killing

Lawsuit Filed to Protect Endangered Ocelots in Arizona, Texas From Government Killing

Featured image: Ocelot photo by Tom Smylie, USFWS. Fewer than 100 of these rare wildcats likely remain in the United States. 

     by Center for Biological Diversity

TUCSON, AZ The Center for Biological Diversity and the Animal Welfare Institute today filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to ensure that endangered ocelots aren’t inadvertently killed as part of the Department’s long-running program to kill coyotes, bears, bobcats and other wildlife in Arizona and Texas. The Department’s Wildlife Services program kills tens of thousands of animals in the two states every year using traps, snares and poisons.

“All the latest science shows Wildlife Services’ predator-control program is expensive, ineffective and inhumane,” said Collette Adkins, a Center attorney and biologist. “With fewer than 100 ocelots remaining in the United States, we’re trying to ensure that none will suffer and die in traps set for bobcats, coyotes and other predators targeted by Wildlife Services.”

Wildlife Services is required by the Endangered Species Act to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on its activities that may affect endangered species, including its predator-control activities. Because Wildlife Services kills wildlife within the range of the endangered ocelot, and given the similarity in size between ocelots and many of the targeted predators, the Fish and Wildlife Service warned Wildlife Services in a 2010 “biological opinion” document that ocelots could be harmed by its use of traps, snares and poisons (including baited M-44 devices that propel lethal doses of sodium cyanide into animals’ mouths).

Since that 2010 opinion, ocelots have been spotted in several additional locations in Arizona, including the Huachuca and Santa Rita mountains. New evidence also indicates that Wildlife Services has failed to comply with the document’s mandatory terms and conditions, intended to minimize risk to ocelots. This new information requires the program to reinitiate consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service to examine risks to ocelots and develop risk-mitigation measures. The complaint also alleges that Wildlife Services must use recent science to supplement its outdated environmental analyses of its wildlife-killing program in Arizona, which were prepared in the 1990s under the National Environmental Policy Act.

“The ocelot population is crumbling at the feet of Wildlife Services’ indiscriminate and haphazard wildlife-killing activities,” said Tara Zuardo, a wildlife attorney with Animal Welfare Institute. “With this lawsuit, we are sending a message to Wildlife Services that its tactics should not come at the expense of the future of this critically endangered species.”

To protect ocelots while the Fish and Wildlife Service completes the required analysis, the groups are seeking a halt to Wildlife Services’ animal-killing activities throughout the ocelot’s range in southern Arizona and Texas.

Background
The ocelot has a tawny coat marked by elongated brown spots with black borders. It can weigh as much as 35 pounds and stretch to 4 feet in length (including the tail). Ocelots seem to prefer dense cover but use a variety of habitats. Hunting mostly at night, they target rabbits, birds, fish, rodents, snakes, lizards and other small- to medium-sized prey.

The ocelot’s range includes Texas, Arizona, Mexico and Central and South America. Monitoring of collared individuals has shown that ocelots travel as far as 10 miles outside their home ranges. Since 2009 ocelots have been detected at least five times in Arizona, including a road-killed ocelot near Globe in 2010, a treed ocelot in the Huachuca Mountains in 2011, and a male ocelot photographed in the Santa Rita Mountains in 2014.

Since 1982 the species has been designated as “endangered” under the Endangered Species Act. Although never abundant, ocelots were historically killed incidentally during the hunting, trapping and poisoning of coyotes, bobcats and other predators. Habitat loss also contributed to the animal’s decline; only a fraction of the less than 5 percent of original native vegetation remaining in the lower Rio Grande Valley is optimal habitat for the cats. Now continuing habitat loss, collisions with vehicles and inbreeding resulting from small and isolated groups are keeping the wildcat’s population numbers low.

See more about USDA Wildlife Services at this award-winning film:

Groups Sue Government Agencies for Yellowstone Bison ESA Protections

Groups Sue Government Agencies for Yellowstone Bison ESA Protections

     by Buffalo Field Campaign

Buffalo Field Campaign (BFC), Friends of Animals (FoA) and the Western Watersheds Project have filed a lawsuit against the US Department of the Interior and U.S. Fish & Wildlife (USFWS) for failing to provide Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for the distinct population (comprised of at least two herds) segment of bison in Yellowstone National Park in response to two citizen petitions.

“What an insult to the American public that the wild bison, who was named our first national mammal in May, continues to be slaughtered because of pressure from the meat industry and ranchers grazing their doomed cattle and sheep,” said Priscilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals. “These herds are obviously in a place where they should already be protected.”

The 4,500 bison in Yellowstone National Park are the only genetically pure bison herds of that size in America. But hundreds are slaughtered every year when snow and ice cover the bison’s food and hunger pushes them to lower elevations across the park boundary in Montana. When they cross this arbitrary line, the buffalo enter a zone of violent conflict with cattle and sheep ranchers.

“Protection under the Endangered Species Act is needed to counter these management inadequacies and to get state and federal agencies to address the threats these bison face,” added Michael Connor, California director of Western Watersheds Project and author of the listing petition. “Instead of allowing these bison to behave like bison and move with the seasons, government agencies are practicing indiscriminate killing that is reducing their genetic diversity.”

The lawsuit states that in issuing a negative 90-day determination on the petitions to list the bison as threatened or endangered, USFWS failed to rely upon the best available science, applied an incorrect legal standard to the petition and ignored the plain language of the ESA, which requires that any species threatened by one or more of five factors shall be designated as endangered or threatened.

Michael Harris, director of Friends of Animals’ Wildlife Law Program, points out that USFWS failed to consider that the curtailment of habitat has already resulted in placing the Yellowstone bison at risk of extinction. USFWS deems the population status to be stable, however under the ESA, the agency is required to not only look at the current numbers of bison, but how much of the bisons range has already been destroyed. Bison historically occupied approximately 20,000 square kilometres and presently only 3,175 square kiometres within the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park serve as principal bison habitat.

“There were millions and millions of acres that were available to the bison that are no longer available to them because of cattle and sheep ranching. Their range has been curtailed by 90 percent, and that alone should be enough to warrant a listing,” Harris said.

“America’s national mammal, the wild bison, is threatened with extinction because of the actions of the agencies entrusted with protecting them,” added Dan Brister, executive director of Buffalo Field Campaign. “The Department of Interior should base its decisions on the best available science, not political pressure from the livestock industry.”

The groups’ petition to list Yellowstone bison is available online at:
Buffalo Field Campaign ESA Petition (PDF)

UN report confirms corruption is biggest threat to ivory, as wildlife officials arrested across Africa and Asia

UN report confirms corruption is biggest threat to ivory, as wildlife officials arrested across Africa and Asia

Featured image: Cameroonian “ecoguard” Mpaé Désiré, who in 2015 was accused of beating Baka and in 2016 was arrested for involvement in the illegal wildlife trade. © Facebook

A new UN report has confirmed that corrupt officials are at the heart of wildlife crime in many parts of the world, rather than terrorist groups or tribal peoples who hunt to feed their families.

The reports’ findings have coincided with a wave of arrests of wildlife officials across Africa and Asia, raising concerns of a global “epidemic” of poaching and corruption among armed wildlife guards who are supposed to be protecting endangered species.

Recent conservation corruption arrests include:

-A wildlife guard in Cameroon, Mpaé Désiré, and a local police chief who were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the illegal ivory trade on the ancestral land of the Baka “Pygmies” and other rainforest tribes. Mr Mpaé has been accused by Baka of beating up tribespeople and torching one of their forest camps after accusing them of poaching.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has been funding wildlife guards in this part of Cameroon since at least 2000, despite reports of guards arresting, beating and torturing tribal hunters.

One Baka man told Survival in 2013: “Ecoguards used to open tins of sardines and leave them as bait to attract leopards, so they could hunt them for their skins.”

Another said: “The ecoguards don’t want anyone in the forest at all so that no one hears the gunshots as they poach.”

Elsewhere:

– Four park employees in India have been arrested for involvement in poaching endangered one-horned rhinos in the notorious Kaziranga reserve, where wildlife guards are encouraged to shoot on sight anyone they suspect of poaching. 62 people have been killed there in just nine years.

– A forest officer has been arrested near Kaziranga after police found a tiger skin and ivory in his house.

– In the Pench tiger reserve in central India, a guard, named in reports as Vipin Varmiya, has been arrested for killing a tiger and her two cubs.

A tiger was allegedly killed by a park guard in Pench tiger reserve, India

A tiger was allegedly killed by a park guard in Pench tiger reserve, India © Survival International

A recent Brookings Institution Report confirmed that the big conservation organizations are failing to tackle the true poachers – criminals conspiring with corrupt officials. The link between corruption and wildlife crime has also been reported in Tanzania, South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Indonesia.

The involvement of armed guards in poaching, in countries where militarized conservation tactics are employed, raises questions over the advisability of using violence and intimidation to protect flora and fauna. In many parts of the world, armed conservation has led to violence against local tribal peoples, including in Cameroon, and in India where summary execution in the name of conservation is in danger of becoming more widespread.

In February 2016, Survival filed an OECD complaint against the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for its involvement in funding repressive and often violent conservation projects in southeast Cameroon, rather than tackling the real poachers. Persecuting the environment’s best allies in place of real action to tackle these systemic problems is harming conservation.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “Conservation’s response to poaching has been to accuse local tribespeople when they hunt to feed their families, to support the use of shoot-to-kill policies and to blame terrorists. None of it works; it’s harming conservation. The true poachers are the criminals, including ecoguards, who conspire with corrupt officials. As the big conservation organizations partner with industry and tourism, they’re harming the environment’s best allies, the tribal peoples who have been dependent on and managed their environments for millennia. Tribespeople should be at the forefront of the environmental movement, they know who the poachers actually are, they can protect their land from logging, they protect biodiversity, and are better at looking after their environment than anyone else.”

Notes: Latest reports indicate Mr Mpaé has been released from custody and is awaiting trial.

“Pygmy” is an umbrella term commonly used to refer to the hunter-gatherer peoples of the Congo Basin and elsewhere in Central Africa. The word is considered pejorative and avoided by some tribespeople, but used by others as a convenient and easily recognized way of describing themselves.

Hoopa Valley Tribe: San Luis Settlement Agreement will “Condemn Tribe to Poverty”

Hoopa Valley Tribe: San Luis Settlement Agreement will “Condemn Tribe to Poverty”

By  / Intercontinental Cry

On May 24, the Hoopa Valley Tribe from Northern California filed its objection to two bills proposed in the House of Representatives to implement the controversial San Luis Settlement Agreement, saying the agreement would “forever condemn the Tribe to poverty.”

The Tribe filed its complaint prior to a hearing on the two bills, H.R. 4366 (Rep. David Valadao) and H.R. 5217 (Rep. Jim Costa, D-CA), held by the U.S. House of Representative Natural Resources Committee Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans.

“Our Tribe is an indispensable party to this settlement,” said Chairman Ryan Jackson, in a press release. “We notified Congress and the Bush and Obama Administrations on numerous occasions over the past several years of our concerns. Though we have been mostly ignored, rest assured, this legislation will not advance in absence of protection of our interests.”

The invited witnesses were John Bezdek , Senior Advisor to the Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of the Interior; Tom Birmingham, General Manager, Westlands Water District; Jerry Brown, General Manager, Contra Costa Water District; Steve Ellis, Vice-President, Taxpayers for Common Sense; and Dennis Falaschi, General Manager, Panoche Water District.

Notably, the Committee did not invite those most directly impacted by the deal. These include the leaders of the Hoopa Valley, Yurok, Karuk, Winnemem Wintu and other Tribes, commercial and recreational fishermen, family farmers and others whose livelihoods have been imperiled by decades of exports of Trinity, Sacramento and San Joaquin River water to corporate agribusiness interests irrigating drainage-impaired land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.

Jackson said the Settlement Agreement contains Central Valley Project (CVP) water supply assurances for 895,000 acre feet of water for the Westlands Water District that originate from the Trinity River, a watershed that the Tribe “has depended for its fishery, economy and culture since time immemorial.”

Michael Orcutt, Hoopa Tribal Fisheries Director, said, “It is a travesty that the pristine waters of the Trinity Alps that have nurtured our people have been diverted from their natural course, sent 400 miles from our homeland and converted into toxic industrial waste by agribusiness in the Central Valley.”

“What makes this worse is that the destruction of our water quality was aided and abetted by our Federal Trustee, the Department of the Interior,” said Self-Governance Coordinater Daniel Jordan.

Instead of ensuring that existing law is enforced for the Tribe’s benefit, the Tribe said the United States government has “focused its energy on escaping federal liability for the generations of mismanagement of the reclamation program.”

The Tribe said it has the first right of use of Trinity River water under the 1955 federal statute that authorized the Trinity River Division of the CVP, but the San Luis Unit settlement and legislation as proposed ignores this priority right held by the Tribe.

“The Secretary of the Interior and Attorney General are blatantly ignoring our rights and the Congressionally-mandated responsibility of the Bureau of Reclamation to furnish the water necessary for fish and wildlife and economic development in the Trinity River Basin,” stated Orcutt.

The Tribe’s testimony includes a proposal for settlement of the drainage issue that also provides for long overdue fair treatment of the Hoopa Valley Tribe. “If Congress approves our proposals, the Hupa people would finally get a long overdue measure of justice,” according to the Tribe.

“Our culture and economy have been devastated by the federal government’s mismanagement of the Central Valley Project and the San Luis Unit contractors’ ongoing assaults on our rights to Trinity River water,” said Jackson, “Now is the time to end the fighting and begin the long process of recovery.”

A coalition of fishing groups, conservation organizations, Delta farmers, Tribal leaders and environmental justice advocates is opposing the bills. Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta, said U.S. taxpayers, and Californians in particular, should be “alarmed” that H.R. 4366 and H.R. 5217 (Rep. Jim Costa, D-CA) are moving forward.

“The settlement agreement reached in September 2015 between the Obama Administration and these large industrial agricultural, special-interest water districts, will result in a $300 million taxpayer giveaway without addressing or solving the extreme water pollution these irrigation districts discharge into the San Joaquin River, and ultimately, the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary. It is exactly these types of taxpayer giveaways to corporations that have incensed voters in both parties this election year,” said Barrigan-Parrilla in a statement.

The objections filed by the Hoopa Valley Tribe on May 24 come just a week after the Tribe filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) and NOAA Fisheries for violating the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by failing to adequately protect salmon on the Trinity and Klamath rivers.

“Failure by these federal agencies to reinitiate consultation on the flawed 2013 Klamath Project Biological Opinion (BiOp) will simply add to the millions of sick and dead juvenile salmon already lost due to the Klamath Irrigation Project. High infection prevalence of the deadly salmon parasite Ceratomyxa nova has been directly linked to the Project and its effect upon natural flows in the river,” according to a statement from the Tribe.

“The juvenile fish kills in 2014 and 2015, while not as noticeable to the naked eye as dead adults on the banks, are as devastating to Hupa people as the 2002 adult fish kill,” said Chairman Ryan Jackson.

Meanwhile, the Brown and Obama administrations are pushing a plan that threatens the San Francisco Bay-Delta and Klamath and Trinity rivers, the California Water Fix to build the Delta Tunnels. The plan would hasten the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River winter run Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt and green sturgeon, as well as imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers.