The Trump administration is clashing with conservation groups and others over protection for the greater sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus), a bird widely known for its dramatic mating displays. The grouse is found across sagebrush country from the Rocky Mountains on the east to the Sierra and Cascade mountain ranges on the west.
This region also contains significant oil and gas deposits. The Trump administration is revising an elaborate plan developed under the Obama administration that sought to steer energy development away from sage grouse habitat. Conservation groups are suing in response, arguing that this shift and accelerated oil and gas leasing threaten sage grouse and violate several key environmental laws.
This battle is the latest skirmish in a continuing narrative over management of Western public lands. Like its Republican predecessors, the Trump administration is prioritizing use of public lands and resources over conservation. The question is whether its revisions will protect sage grouse and their habitat effectively enough to keep the birds off of the endangered species list – the outcome that the Obama plan was designed to achieve.
Sage grouse under siege
Before European settlement, sage grouse numbered up to 16 million across the West. Today their population has shrunk to an estimated 200,000 to 500,000. The main cause is habitat loss due to road construction, development and oil and gas leasing.
More frequent wildland fires are also a factor. After wildfires, invasive species like cheatgrass are first to appear and replace the sagebrush that grouse rely on for food and cover. Climate change and drought also contribute to increased fire regimes, and the cycle repeats itself.
Concern over the sage grouse’s decline spurred five petitions to list it for protection under the Endangered Species Act between 1999 and 2005. Listing a species is a major step because it requires federal agencies to ensure that any actions they fund, authorize or carry out – such as awarding mining leases or drilling permits – will not threaten the species or its critical habitat.
Current and historic range of greater sage grouse. USFWS
In 2005 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared that an ESA listing for the sage grouse was “not warranted.” These decisions are supposed to be based on science, but leaks revealed that an agency synthesis of sage grouse research had been edited by a political appointee who deleted scientific references without discussion. In a section that discussed whether grouse could access the types of sagebrush they prefer to feed on in winter, the appointee asserted, “I believe that is an overstatement, as they will eat other stuff if it’s available.”
In 2010 the agency ruled that the sage grouse was at risk of extinction, but declined to list it at that time, although Interior Secretary Ken Salazar pledged to take steps to restore sagebrush habitat. In a court settlement, the agency agreed to issue a listing decision by September 30, 2015.
Negotiating the rescue plan
The Obama administration launched a concerted effort in 2011 to develop enough actions and plans at the federal and state level to avoid an ESA listing for the sage grouse. This effort involved federal and state agencies, nongovernmental organizations and private landowners.
California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Wyoming all developed plans for conserving sage grouse and their habitat. The U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management revised 98 land use plans in 10 states. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture provided funding for voluntary conservation actions on private lands.
In 2015 Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced that these actions had reduced threats to sage grouse habitat so effectively that a listing was no longer necessary. A bipartisan group of Western governors joined Jewell for the event. But despite the good feelings, some important value conflicts remained unresolved.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announces the sage grouse rescue plan in Colorado, Sept. 22, 2015. Behind Secretary Jewell are, left to right, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, and Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval. AP Photo/Brennan Linsley
Notably, the plan created zones called Sagebrush Focal Areas – zones that were deemed essential for the sage grouse to survive – and proposed to bar mineral development on 10 million acres within those areas. Some Western governors, such as Butch Otter of Idaho, viewed this element as a surprise and felt that it had been dropped on states from Washington, without consultation.
The Trump administration wants to cancel creation of Sagebrush Focal Areas and allow mining and energy development in these zones. Agency records show that as Interior Department officials reevaluated the sage grouse plan in 2017, they worked closely with representatives of the oil, gas and mining industries, but not with environmental advocates.
Can collaboration work?
If the Trump administration does weaken the sage grouse plan, it could have much broader effects on relations between federal agencies and Western states.
Collaboration is emerging as a potential antidote to high-level political decisions and endless litigation over western public lands and resources. In addition to the sage grouse plan, recent examples include a Western Working Lands Forum organized by the Western Governors’ Association in March 2018, and forest collaboratives in Idaho that include diverse members and work to balance timber production, jobs and ecological restoration in Idaho national forests.
Warning sign in Wyoming. Mark Bellis/USFWS, CC BY
There are two key requirements for these initiatives to succeed. First, they must give elected and high-level administrative appointees some cover to support locally and regionally crafted solutions. Second, they have to prevent federal officials from overruling outcomes with which they disagree.
When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced in 2015 that an endangered listing for the sage grouse was not warranted, the agency committed to revisit the bird’s status in 2020. To avoid having to list the grouse as endangered, the Trump administration must provide enough evidence and certainty to justify a decision not to list, as the Obama administration sought to do. If Interior changes land management plans and increases oil and gas leasing, that job could become harder. It also is possible that Congress might prohibit a listing.
Finding a lasting solution will require the Trump administration to collaborate with states and other stakeholders, including environmental advocates, and allow local land managers to do the same. Then, whatever the outcome, it cannot reverse their efforts in Washington. As Matt Mead, Wyoming’s Republican governor, warned in 2017, “If we go down a different road now with the sage grouse, what it says is, when you try to address other endangered species problems in this country, don’t have a collaborative process, don’t work together, because it’s going to be changed.”
WASHINGTON— Defenders of Wildlife, along with the Center for Biological Diversity and Patagonia Area Resource Alliance, today filed a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the Patagonia eyed silkmoth under the Endangered Species Act.
The rare Patagonia eyed silkmoth is clinging to survival in only three isolated locations in Arizona and Mexico. The groups previously petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to list the moth under the Endangered Species Act and designate critical habitat for the species.
“The Patagonia eyed silkmoth is hanging by a thread. With the only U.S. population existing in an Arizona cemetery, where its only remaining food source could be wiped out by cattle, this species clearly needs federal protection to save it from extinction,” said Lindsay Dofelmier, legal fellow at Defenders of Wildlife. “The Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to dismiss evidence supporting listing the Patagonia eyed silkmoth was arbitrary. By failing to provide adequate explanation for the decision and not allowing for a 12-month status review, the Fish and Wildlife Service put the species at risk. Listing the silkmoth and designating critical habitat provides the best chance for recovery.”
The Patagonia eyed silkmoth exists in a single U.S. location, in an Arizona cemetery less than half an acre in size. In Sonora, Mexico, it lives on two sky islands, higher elevation areas that are ecologically different from the lowlands surrounding them.
“The Patagonia eyed silkmoth needs endangered species protection now, so we can start the work of recovering this beautiful animal,” said Brian Segee, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Endangered Species Act has saved more than 99 percent of plants and animals with its protection from extinction, and it can do the same for this rare moth.”
Cattle grazing was the primary historic cause of habitat loss for the moth and continues to play a major role in the precarious situation of the species. Mining and climate change also threaten to destroy the last vestiges of potential silkmoth habitat on both sides of the border. A catastrophic fire at critical times of the year, when the adults, eggs or larvae are out, could completely erase the moth from any of these remaining localities. Listing the silkmoth and designating critical habitat for the species offers its best chance of survival and recovery.
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.
TUCSON, Ariz.— The Center for Biological Diversity and Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva, who serves as ranking member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, today 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.
Today’s 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.”
“Trump’s border wall will divide and destroy the incredible communities and wild landscapes along the border,” said Kierán Suckling, the Center’s executive director.
“Endangered species like jaguars and ocelots don’t observe international boundaries and should not be sacrificed for unnecessary border militarization. Their survival and recovery depends on being able to move long distances across the landscape and repopulate places on both sides of the border where they’ve lived for thousands of years.”
The lawsuit seeks to require the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to prepare a supplemental “programmatic environmental impact statement” for the U.S.-Mexico border enforcement program.
The program includes Trump’s proposed wall as well as road construction, off-road vehicle patrols, installation of high-intensity lighting, construction of base camps and checkpoints, and other activities. These actions significantly impact the borderlands environment stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, which is home to millions of people, endangered species like jaguars and Mexican gray wolves, and protected federal lands like Big Bend National Park and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
“American environmental laws are some of the oldest and strongest in the world, and they should apply to the borderlands just as they do everywhere else,” Grijalva said. “These laws exist to protect the health and well-being of our people, our wildlife, and the places they live. Trump’s wall — and his fanatical approach to our southern border — will do little more than perpetuate human suffering while irrevocably damaging our public lands and the wildlife that depend on them.”
Congressman Grijalva’s district is the largest Congressional district in Arizona and includes approximately 300 miles of the U.S./Mexico border.
If successful, today’s lawsuit would require the Trump administration to undertake a comprehensive review of the social, economic and environmental costs of the border wall.
Background
The National Environmental Policy Act requires that federal agencies conduct environmental review of a major federal action or program that significantly affects the quality of the human environment.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service — the precursor to the Department of Homeland Security — last updated the “programmatic environmental impact statement” for the U.S.-Mexico border enforcement program in 2001. That review identified the potential impacts of border enforcement operations, including limited border wall construction, on wildlife and endangered species in particular as a significant issue. The 2001 analysis was intended to be effective for five years but has never been updated.
In the 16 years since, the U.S.-Mexico border enforcement program and associated environmental impacts have expanded well beyond the predictions of that document, with deployment of thousands of new border agents, construction of hundreds of miles of border walls and fences, construction and reconstruction of thousands of miles of roads, installation of base camps and other military and security infrastructure, among numerous other actions.
During that same time, scientific understanding of the impacts of border walls and other border enforcement activities on wildlife and endangered species including jaguars, ocelots, Mexican gray wolves and cactus ferruginous pygmy owls has advanced significantly. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has also designated “critical habitat” under the Endangered Species Act within 50 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border for more than 25 species since the outdated 2001 analysis was prepared.
Meanwhile, the number of undocumented migrants moving through the southwestern borderlands is at a historic low, and the border is more secure than it’s ever been.
This spring, if all goes as planned, the Marines will kill hundreds of Desert Tortoises in southern California.. This is not the first such tortoise kill, but it could very well set a new record-high number.
This assault was originally scheduled for last spring, in 2016 (with the full approval of the Obama administration), and was put off for a year only because of a lawsuit filed by an environmentalist organization. Now, with all chances for legal appeal passed, it is set to commence in late March or April in the Mojave Desert.
So what’s the story?
In 2013, Congress voted to expand the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California—which was already the largest Marine base in the world—by annexing 88,000 acres (about 136 square miles) from the Bureau of Land Management’s Johnson Valley Off-Highway Vehicle Recreation Area, to the west of the base in the Mojave Desert.
This area is part of the ancestral home of the Desert Tortoise (Gopherus agassizii), a species that has lived there for many thousands of years, since the days when it was wetter. As the climate gradually dried out, the tortoise adapted by spending more time underground. In our contemporary age, they are in their burrows over 90% of the time! In the spring, when wildflowers brought by winter rains are flourishing, the tortoises emerge to eat and mate. They generally live 35-50 years, with reports of particular specimens reaching 80.
Though Desert Tortoises thrived at populations of up to 1000 individuals per square mile at the beginning of the 20th Century, their numbers have fallen drastically since then. Human activities are to blame including ranching, roads, agriculture, industry, military operations, off-highway recreation (“wreckreation”), urban encroachment, and in recent years, solar and wind projects. Also, with Global Warming, the climate is changing faster than the tortoise can adapt. In the last decade, the tortoise population has fallen by 50% in the western Mojave Desert, where the Twentynine Palms Marine base is located.
Desert Tortoises are listed as “threatened with extinction” by the federal government. Because of this status, it is illegal for anyone—even the military—to “harm” or “harass” them. The Marines plan to use the annex for training with tanks and live ammunition, which would certainly result in both harm and harassment, so they sought to move the tortoises somewhere else, although this too would cause harm and harassment. After a legal delay of one year forced upon them by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group based in Tucson, Arizona, the Marines now have the go-ahead to start “translocating” the animals, as soon as late March.
This is where the killing starts.
There is enough data from attempted tortoise translocations in the past to make estimates about how this latest effort will go. Though the rates of survival have varied from project to project, they are often no better than 50%. (See Desert Tortoise Recovery: Science and Politics Clash.) This particular translocation at the Twentynine Palms base will be the largest so far attempted, of over 1100 animals. So it would not be surprising if at least 500 deaths resulted, and perhaps far more.
This number includes about 900 adult animals (of 180mm in size or larger) who were tagged with radio-transmitters as they were found over the last three years. An additional 235 were too small for transmitters and were moved to the base where the Marines have been raising them. (So some tortoises have already been disturbed.)
How are the tortoises found in the first place and what’s it look like to round them up? For an answer to this question, I contacted Laura Cunningham, a biologist who works with Basin & Range Watch and who has participated in tortoise translocation projects herself. She also detailed how other animals are affected when tortoises are removed. It is worth quoting her at length:
“Here is the basic mechanics of tortoise translocation: after placing tortoise exclusion fencing around a project, biologists do a ‘Clearance Survey’ which entails dozens of biologists walking in straight lines criss-crossing the project area, all carefully walking a certain length apart and following GPS coordinates. Any tortoise found above ground is radio-transmittered [if it hasn’t been already] and carefully moved into transport boxes and readied for translocation (which is going to be partly by helicopter for 29 Palms Marine Base). Each biologist carries a shovel. All burrows encountered are dug out to locate any tortoise underground. These tortoises are also carefully removed. Two or three sweeps are needed usually to find all the adults. Even then sometimes a few are missed and found later. Many of the tiny juvenile tortoises are missed, those the size of a silver dollar—they are crushed in machinery later or buried alive or impacted later during tank maneuvers.
“Digging out burrows of this keystone species, the tortoise, is difficult because it ripples across the desert ecosystem: so many other species depend on the digging abilities of the tortoise with its long front claws. Burrowing owls, rattlesnakes, lizards, tarantulas, and other species utilize the burrows. They must be dealt with as well. Rattlesnakes are left in the desert to fend for themselves. Burrowing owls are being given increasingly careful attention, if their sign is found at a burrow, the owls are watched to see when they fly out and the burrow is closed up so they cannot return. The idea is to try to get the owls to move away to another location outside the area. But I am not sure anyone has a good idea how many burrowing owls die when they are flushed from their burrow and become homeless. There are new agency guidelines to try to limit impacts to this species, which also may need federal listing under the ESA [Endangered Species Act] as it too is declining.
“Desert kit foxes dig their own burrows, but biologists must dig out those burrows to in case a tortoise is living there. So kit foxes are also displaced, and guidelines are followed to try to make this enforced homelessness have the least impacts as possible. But again, little studied. A canine distemper outbreak happened on the Genesis Solar Energy Project in the Chuckwalla Valley, killing some. Coyotes and badgers are also displaced. In parts of southern Nevada and eastern California deserts, rare Gila monsters are displaced from burrows as well.”
Additionally, the areas into which the tortoises are to be moved seem less than ideal as they already host tortoise populations that are in decline. According to Ileene https://sub.media/video/endciv-3/Anderson, a biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity whom I contacted for this story, the reasons for this decline are not entirely known but include elements that can be controlled such as grazing, off-road recreation and predation and others that are more difficult to control such as drought and disease. “Until the controllable ones are controlled,” Anderson said, “it does not bode well for the translocated or resident tortoises since they will now be competing for resources.”
Two animals that are commonly predators of tortoises are coyotes and ravens, who are both native to the Mojave Desert too. According to the Press Enterprise, the Marines have already announced that if coyotes are a problem, they will shoot them. According to the LA Times, some have already been “removed” by state wildlife authorities.
As I was finishing this story, I got word through Basin & Range Watch that the Marines at the Twentynine Palms base are hosting Coyote hunts on March 25th and 26th. The Marines’ announcement stated: “The purpose of the depredation program is to reduce the numbers of coyotes that are unnaturally inflated in the local area due to human subsidies. Elevated coyote numbers prove a safety risk to residents, and are a significant factor in the mortality of the desert tortoise.” The response to this news by Basin & Range Watch reads, in part: “The so-called mitigation of killing coyotes is a false action that will not help recover the tortoise, and will only disrupt desert ecosystems more. Coyotes are a native, natural species that belong to the Mojave Desert. Tanks, Humvees, bombing, live-fire exercises, and military maneuvers do not belong to the desert. The military has enough land to carry out tests and training, they do not need to keep expanding.”
The ravens might be luckier as they are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, though some have already been killed by “wildlife authorities.” The LA Times ran a story about how the Marines plan to use non-harmful lasers to scare the ravens away. The article also said that “the anti-raven arsenal” “includes ‘techno-tortoises’: highly realistic replicas of baby tortoises that, when pecked or bitten, emit irritants derived from grape juice concentrate, a chemical compound already used to keep birds from congregating on agricultural fields and commercial centers.” However, as John Marzluff, a wildlife biologist at the University of Washington and expert on raven behavior who was quoted in the same Times article said: “My concerns are that we don’t really know how long these forms of aversion therapy will last among raven populations, which are very clever at responding to challenges.” And then what? More killing?
Not all of the tortoises will be subject to translocation. Some will be subject to staying, to face the tanks and live ammunition. Any tortoises that show signs of communicable disease will be left behind, so as not to infect healthy tortoises in the new area. Anderson estimates these would number 100 or less. She thinks that the Marines “might” monitor these animals to see if they survive.
Summing up the desert tortoise’s plight, Ileene Anderson said that “this species is continuing to decline throughout its range, and continually decreasing its habitat—whether that be through military expansions or other types of development—will only be detrimental to recovery efforts, because the tortoise needs habitat in order to survive, just like every other species on the planet.”
* * *
Militarism is problematic, to say the very very least, for many many reasons. We might first mourn the human casualties, of course; those killed, maimed or made homeless or stateless. We might also think of the cities turned to rubble, with their art and history buried or burned. We might consider, too, the immense monetary cost of all of it, and how every bomb is, in a very real way, stealing food out of someone’s mouth or a roof from over their heads. But rarely do we consider the affected ecosystems and their inhabitants. (One exception is this excellent article by Joshua Frank: Afghanistan: Bombing the Land of the Snow Leopard.)
Unfortunately, the military is seeking to expand into other desert areas (such as in Nevada). In protesting or attempting to curtail these expansions, I would hope to see some collaboration between activists who oppose war and those who support animal rights.
* * *
How the Media Whitewashes Stories Like This
An AP story about the planned translocation from Twentynine Palms ends with the sentence, “Critics say the move will devastate the threatened species.” Considering the facts, this way of putting it is pretty flip and really only just short of dismissive. Which is why I titled this piece, “Headlines should read, ‘Marines to Kill Tortoises’.” Because it’s a fact that they will and somebody ought to just say it.
When we speak of the bias of the corporate media, we are referring to multiple aspects. In general, there is bias in favor of the wealthy, the conventional and the institutional and against the poor, unconventional and the individual. For example, anyone who has ever attended a boisterous protest and then watched the TV coverage of it afterwards will have noticed the corporate media bias against protesters and in favor of the police. If the police attacked the protesters, this will almost assuredly be described as, “protesters clashed with police.”
There is also a bias in the media in favor of stressing stated intent and brushing aside likely consequences when the consequences will be negative. This one is subtle but universal. As far as the media’s point of view is concerned, it’s not that tortoises are sure to die, it’s only that the Marines plan to move them, and, it is implied, move them safely. But it is sure that tortoises will die. Just as it is sure that civilians will be killed when cities are bombed, even if the intent is “humanitarian” and the targets “terrorists.”
“Collateral” is the word typically used by the media to describe the deaths of civilians in warfare, and it would be their style to apply it to tortoises killed by translocation. Wiktionary defines this sense of that adjective as “being aside from the main subject, target, or goal; tangential, subordinate, ancillary.” But if such death is inevitable, how can it be separated from the “main subject”? How can it be considered “tangential”?
There is a fundamental dishonesty in every news story that presents stories in this fashion. It’s called “white-washing.” Because all our information is spoon-fed to us in this same sanitized way, we first of all never think about it and secondly, have little collective knowledge (and hence concern) about what’s going on in the world, and how the US and its policies affect other people, living things, and the planet at large.
It is a measure of our misbegotten privilege that we can live in such a state of denial at all, in a bubble. And it is violence that empowers that privilege in the first place. It is upon the graves of Indians and the whipped backs of slaves that the US gained its power and it is through the military and economic subjugation of much of the world at large that it is now sustained. There’s nothing “collateral” about any of the suffering and damage that results from this system.
What do the poor tortoises have to do with any of it? Nothing, obviously, but this is the way of empire, that they must suffer too.
Finding a lasting solution will require the Trump administration to collaborate with states and other stakeholders, including environmental advocates, and allow local land managers to do the same. Then, whatever the outcome, it cannot reverse their efforts in Washington. As Matt Mead, Wyoming’s Republican governor, warned in 2017, “If we go down a different road now with the sage grouse, what it says is, when you try to address other endangered species problems in this country, don’t have a collaborative process, don’t work together, because it’s going to be changed.”
