The Great Basin stretches from Utah’s Great Salt Lake to the Sierra Nevada Mountains and from southern Idaho to southern California. About seven inches of rain falls in Nevada a year, and some areas receive less than five. The Great Basin is a cold desert, and in eastern Nevada and western Utah, it has been getting drier for a decade. [1]
The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), the water agency for Las Vegas, Henderson, and North Las Vegas, proposes pumping up to 200,000 acre-feet annually from eastern to southern Nevada through 300 miles of pipeline. An acre-foot is enough water to cover an acre of land a foot deep, or about 325,850 US gallons. Cost estimates vary from $3.5 billion (what SNWA tells the public) to $15 billion dollars (what SNWA was required by law to tell the State Engineer). This project is seen as a threat by several Indian tribes and rural communities, and is expected to do immense damage to many rare endemic species, desert vegetation, and the land itself, much of which is open range. [2]
Basin and Range
Life in the Great Basin’s valleys, human and otherwise, depends on shallow groundwater, springs, and creeks, which in turn depend on groundwater flows from rain and snow in mountain ranges. 200,000 acre-feet is about 65 billion gallons of water, equivalent to the average flow of Nevada’s Humboldt River. SNWA claims that it can pump this water from the Spring, Delamar, Dry Lake, and Cave Valleys without harm; though it’s clear to those who live in the Great Basin that if most of the water flowing in from the mountains is drawn away, eventually most everything in the valleys will die.
The Bureau of Land Management’s final decision on the right-of-way for the project [3] allows for the pumping of 150,000 annual acre-feet. [4] A drawdown projection commissioned by the Goshute Tribe [5] (and other analyses) reflect a far more destructive outcome than the SNWA claims. Access to Snake Valley (much of which is in Utah) groundwater is still in dispute, but the US Geological Survey has concluded the multiple valleys’ aquifers are connected, so it’s likely that Utah’s groundwater would be impacted anyway. [6]
According to the Great Basin Water Network, “Independent hydrologists dispute it is possible to pump and export so much water without causing major environmental degradation and destroying the livelihoods of rural residents in eastern Nevada and western Utah. The area targeted for the massive pumping proposal is home to National Wildlife Refuges… Great Basin National Park is surrounded by the proposed groundwater pump and export project. The proposed pumping scheme would bring two hundred or more wells with power lines, roads, and linked buried pipelines to cover the valleys on both sides of the National Park—some right on the border of the park.
Communities like Baker, Nevada on the Utah border would have large production wells in their backyard sending local water to a city 300 miles away.” [7] As pipeline foe Rick Spilsbury puts it, “This would mean the end of any economic development anywhere near the drained areas. The likely result would be a mass emigration and the eventual transformation of the area into a national toxic dump site.” Impacts to land, water, and air could extend as far as Salt Lake City and its surrounding urban areas (which already have some of the worst air pollution in the US). Physicians for Social Responsibility predicts a dewatered basin-and-range country could increase downwind particulate pollution from dust storms, including the toxic mineral erionite. [8] In textbook fashion, the city of Las Vegas is exporting suffering and violence to import resources that it cannot acquire in its immediate landbase.
Overdrawn River
Author Marc Reisner wrote, “To some conservationists the Colorado River is the preeminent symbol of everything mankind has done wrong—a harbinger of a squalid and deserved fate. To its preeminent impounder, the US Bureau of Reclamation, it is the perfection of an ideal.” [9] In 2013, American Rivers announced the Colorado as the US’s most endangered river, and that “over-allocation and drought have placed significant stress on water supplies, river health, and fish and wildlife. To underscore the immediacy of the problem, the basin is facing another drought this summer. The Bureau of Reclamation’s report released in December stresses that there is not enough water to meet current demands across the basin, let alone support future demand increases.” [10]
Under the interstate Colorado River Compact of 1922, the entire state of Nevada was allowed 300,000 acre feet per year (AFY) of Colorado River water. One AFY is approximately 3380 liters per day, “the planned water usage of a suburban family household, annually. In some areas of the desert Southwest, where water conservation is followed and often enforced, a typical family uses only about 0.25 [AFY].” [11] The Imperial Irrigation District, whose water rights predate the 1922 Compact, owns approximately three million acre feet (MAF) per year, and the entire city of Los Angeles uses about one MAF per year. Though laws controlling the use of water are typically state, not federal, and vary widely from state to state (in Arizona, for instance, there is little legally recognized relationship between ground and surface water), the 1922 Compact is a binding agreement between states. The Upper Basin must deliver a total of 7.5 MAF per year to the Lower Basin (the dividing line is at Lee’s Ferry in Glen Canyon, in Utah), and the US must deliver one MAF a year to Mexico. [12] Across the entire Colorado River basin, nearly all climate models predict an increase in both aridity and flooding. [13]
As increasing temperatures force the jet stream further north and more water evaporate from soil and reservoirs like Lake Powell (where an average 860,000 acre-feet of water—about 8 percent of the Colorado River’s annual flow—is lost every year) [14], overall water availability will decrease even if summer storms and spring runoff paradoxically become more intense. 2012 was the first recorded year the Colorado River flow peaked in April. [15] Though the water level in Lake Mead (where Las Vegas siphons its water from) has priority over Lake Powell’s (upstream), Las Vegas has little water from the river’s apportionment overall because in 1922, when the Compact was made, there were very few people in Nevada and no guess at what Las Vegas might become.
Southern Nevada at one point had the highest growth rate in the US, but following the economic recession Nevada had the highest national rate of foreclosures, bankruptcies, and unemployment. In 2010, there were 167,564 empty houses in Nevada—one in seven. In Las Vegas, residential property prices have fallen by 50 percent on average from 2008 to 2011, when Nevada homes changed hands for an average of $115,000. [16] As one SNWA pipeline opponent remarked, “My house in Las Vegas dropped from $307,500 to be foreclosed, and then resold at $190,000.”
When the SNWA groundwater pipeline was first conceived, the water agency was planning for growth on a much higher trajectory, and this momentum has carried through the recession to the present day. So while southern Nevada’s water future in general is threatened by drought and Nevada’s small original apportionment, the groundwater pipeline is driven by hopes for future growth, not immediate need. [16]
Indigenous Human Rights
The Confederated Tribes of the Goshute, or CTGR (the name “Goshute” derives from the native word Ku’tsip or Gu’tsip, people of ashes, desert, or dry earth), [17] “reside in an isolated oasis in the foothills of the majestic Deep Creek Mountains on what is now the Utah/ Nevada state line,” according to their web page Protect Goshute Water. There are 539 enrolled tribal members, and about 200 of them live in Deep Creek Valley. “Our reservation lies in one of the most sparsely populated regions of the United States, and it has always been our home. Resulting from this isolation, we have benefited by retaining strong cultural ties to Goshute land, our traditions, and a resolute determination to protect our ways.
Ironically, water, the most elemental resource in our basin, is the very thing developers now seek to extract and send 300 miles away for Las Vegas suburbs. The Southern Nevada Water Authority’s pipeline proposal would draw 150,000 acre feet per year from the Great Salt Lake Watershed Basin lowering the water table, drying up our springs, and fundamentally changing access to water over this vast region for plants, wildlife, and people.” They go on to say that “SNWA’s groundwater development application is the biggest threat to the Goshute way of life since European settlers first arrived on Goshute lands more than 150 years ago.” [18]
In Spring Valley in eastern Nevada, a narrow band of swamp cedar trees mark the site of 1863 and 1897 US military massacres of Goshute and Shoshone peoples, and here is where the Goshute and Duckwater and Ely Shoshone tribes grieve and hold spiritual ceremonies. Goshute tribal chairman Ed Naranjo says that “Swamp Cedars is important to many tribes, certainly to CTGR, Ely, and Duckwater, but also to many Paiute, Shoshone, and Ute Tribes.” The Swamp Cedars Massacre is relatively obscure, compared to well-known massacres at Bear River [19] and Wounded Knee.
Goshute elders believe that murder victims physically and spiritually fed the swamp-cedar trees; according to former Goshute council chairman Rupert Steele, “Otherwise you’d never see swamp cedar grow this tall and strong.” In a 2011 Nevada State Engineer hearing, an SNWA attorney likened the Goshute beliefs to children fearing the bogeyman. The Spring Valley swamp cedar grove is one of many sites that could be drained by the SNWA pipeline. [20] A “Cultural Property and Cultural Landscape” report on Spring Valley, Nevada, prepared by an independent ethnographer for Goshute and Ely and Duckwater Shoshone tribes was ignored by the BLM in their environmental analysis. [21]
Rick Spilsbury, a Shoshone Indian, says that “As far as the Native Americans of Nevada and Utah are concerned, this is just a continuation of the land and resource grab that has existed since the authoring of the Bill of Rights. Those who take have been writing the rules. The Colorado River Compact was organized specifically to exclude Native Americans and Mexicans from having any water rights. And the omission of Federal water protections for Native Americans from State water affairs was obviously not an oversight, or it would have been fixed by now. Native Americans don’t have the legal ability to stop their exploitation. [22]
“The Western Shoshone still hunt and gather here—right where the worst of the environmental damage will be. The mass killing of life in this area will not only be the final blow to Western Shoshone culture, it will be a serious threat to their long-term sustainability—and even viability. Water is life. And SNWA intends to take it.”
Opposition
Not surprisingly, a water appropriation on this scale has been hard fought by those whose livelihoods will be affected, as well as indigenous communities and environmental groups. Even within southern Nevada there’s some rate-payer opposition [23]—the project’s costs will be added to water bills—and Utah’s governor Gary Herbert recently rejected a proposed agreement with the SNWA for Snake Valley groundwater. [24] Litigation on various aspects of this project may well proceed to the US Supreme Court.
(Though Herbert’s decision was widely praised by both West Desert ranchers and environmentalists, not everyone in Utah concurred. Ron Thompson, of the Washington County, Utah, Water Conservancy District, criticized the move as “hypocritical for us to tell Nevada not to develop a water project. Ultimately they will figure out how to do it.” [25] Washington County wants to build its own expensive water pipeline from Lake Powell to the St. George area, and Thompson thinks Governor Herbert is sacrificing a “positive tradition of bi-state cooperation” in turning the SNWA down. A Lake Powell pipeline opponent observed that “It’s imperative that opposition to both projects stays active and coordinated.” [26])
Deep Green Resistance’s Southwest Coalition proposes this strategy:
Though we’re too recently involved to have any legal standing, our emphasis on indigenous solidarity has drawn us to ally ourselves with the affected indigenous groups. Though their governments haven’t agreed to any formal affiliation, we offer them support through:
1. Organizing opposition in communities outside the reservations.
2. Fundraising for efforts to fight the pipeline, whatever that might be. Donations are tax-deductible and can be made by PayPal to deepgreenfertileground@gmail.com. Please put “SNWA” in the comments section. The Great Basin Water Network also accepts donations, at or Great Basin Water Network, P O Box 75, Baker, NV 89311 (Nevada non-profit #35-2278153).
3. Influencing public opinion and promoting taxpayer opposition to the pipeline.
4. Sponsoring educational events and outreach. This might include inviting indigenous people (and supporting travel costs) to events we can organize in Salt Lake City and Las Vegas to speak against the pipeline.
5. Organizing protests and rallies. We can help redefine this issue as one of human rights violation, not only environmental destruction.
6. Encouraging negative press coverage of the SNWA and pipeline proposal. Encouraging positive press coverage of the Great Basin’s unique beauty, and the long indigenous people’s relationship with it.
7. Discouraging project investors/lenders.
8. We can also organize and train for nonviolent civil disobedience to fight the pipeline construction, should legal or administrative efforts fail. This is a tactical tool that’s aimed at physically stopping construction. It’s not symbolic, it’s strategic; there are ways of minimizing the expense and suffering to activists and maximizing expense and delay of the enemy, and we feel it’s best to plan for the unfortunate possibility that this struggle may well arrive at this point. We believe it’s our responsibility as privileged members of the dominant culture to put our bodies between the bulldozers and indigenous peoples and lands.
[1] “Great Basin Water Issues,” Great Basin Water Network, accessed December 26, 2012, http://www.greatbasinwater.net/issues/index.php This page offers a good overview of Great Basin water issues, including the SNWA proposed pipeline.
See the U.S. Drought Monitor for current data: The U.S. Drought Monitor. National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, United States Department of Agriculture, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
[2] The U.S. Drought Monitor. National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, United States Department of Agriculture, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
[4] “SNWA appears as if it’s planning on Snake Valley water, said Rob Mrowka of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity.
Despite the fact that the Nevada engineer approved water rights of 84,000 acre feet, he said, the BLM is set to approve a pipeline capable of carrying 117,000 acre feet.” Christopher Smart, “BLM poised to OK Las Vegas plan to pump and pipe desert groundwater,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 6, 2012, http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/54624691-90/blm–eis–final–las.html.csp
[6] “While the BLM’s final EIS spares Snake Valley along the Utah-Nevada border from groundwater pumping, critics say drilling in nearby valleys will draw down the aquifer beneath Snake Valley,” “Goshutes blast BLM study on Las Vegas water pipeline,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, August 5, 2012, http://www.lvrj.com/news/goshutes–blast–blm–study–on–las–vegas–water–pipeline-165082706.html
[8]“Dr. Jeff Patterson, president of PSR [Physicians for Social Responsibility], said Westerners should be worried because there is no evidence of any serious attempt to determine if erionite exists in the same areas that would be ‘de-watered by the proposed Las Vegas pipeline and would be kicked up in the particulate pollution. Erionite can cause serious lung disease and a highly lethal cancer called mesothelioma,’” Brian Moench, “No end to Nevada’s quest for water,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 6, 2013, http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/56107724-82/utah–nevada–erionite–las.html.csp
[10] Amy Souers Kober, “Announcing America’s Most Endangered Rivers of 2013,” American Rivers, April 17, 2013, https://web.archive.org/web/20130531040706/http://www.americanrivers.org/newsroom/blog/akober-20130417-announcing-americas-most-endangered-rivers-2013.html
[12] The Colorado River is managed and operated under numerous compacts, federal laws, court decisions and decrees, contracts, and regulatory guidelines collectively known as ‘The Law of the River,’” “Colorado River Compact,” Wikipedia, accessed May 14, 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Compact
[21] Sylvester L. Lahren, Jr. Ph.D., “A Shoshone/Goshute Traditional Cultural Property and Cultural Landscape, Spring Valley, Nevada. Confidential and Proprietary Report for the Goshute Tribal Council,” Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, August 9, 2010.
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin is a veteran community and anti-racist, anti-colonialist, and anti-prison organizer. He was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, The Black Panther Party, and is a founding member of the Black Autonomy Federation. Lorenzo is the author of the underground classic, Anarchism and the Black Revolution as well as many other essays and articles about fighting capitalism and white supremacy. A former political prisoner and political refugee, he currently lives in Memphis Tennessee and is working to bring attention to and combat rampant police brutality in the area including the murder of 15 year old Justin Thompson.
J. G.: What is the Black Autonomy Federation and the Let’s Organize the Hood program?
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin: Let’s Organize the Hood started out as a training program. We were training people of color activists all over the U.S. and Canada over the course of about 15 years. Organize the Hood is kinda like something that you would organize in your own community. It won’t be the same in every community. Some places the issue might be unemployment in the black community. Here in Memphis we thought the issue was going to be massive unemployment and poverty because this is the poorest big city in the country. So far that has not proven to be the case though.
We trained people in Detroit who were interested in building a black led tenants movement. We trained people in Atlanta who had issues that they wanted to deal with around massive unemployment and police shootings ‘cause, you know, we have experience in grassroots organizing around all of these things. We don’t project ourselves as some sort of experts who are over and above the people but we’ve got practical experience. We’re not putting out any national plan or something that we haven’t done ourselves; that we haven’t actually got our hands dirty in doing. It’s a program that’s for the community to take up.
Organizers might bring it to the community but the plan is that the organizers would ultimately be removed and the community would run its own programs, ‘cause that’s the way I was taught in the 1960’s with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. You had organizers who would be sent to a community and in the community they would find who the leaders were and they would train and develop that leadership then they would get out of the way and let the people do what they feel like they needed to do. Now they would be around if people had questions or wanted help or something but basically the community made all the major decisions.
So this is what we’re trying to develop in Memphis. This is something brand new here in Memphis in the sense that we’ve only been living here for a couple years ourselves and our program has only been in existence two months. And in two months time especially once we figured out that the community has had a long running history with the police department, we’ve become the main organization in the city dealing with police brutality. There’s no other groups doing anything. The so-called civil rights groups haven’t said anything. They’ve been neutralized completely.
I guess you could say that Let’s Organize the Hood is what you want it to be in your community. There’s no rule that says that you have to organize everything thus and thus and thus. Although there is a national program. We got areas that we work in but each community and sometimes even each neighborhood would be able to pick out its own particular program and carry that out.
JG: What is the situation in Memphis with police brutality?
LKE: To really understand why these things happen in Memphis, you have to look at the political structure here and go back a little ways. Back some years ago there were so many shootings of black people here by what was then an openly racist police department. An all white police department was killing black people including several young kids. There was a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court called Tennessee v. Garner and in that case the issue was brought up of a “fleeing felon law” which allowed the police to use deadly force in situations where a person was unarmed and merely trying to elude capture. Well they could shoot you in the back of the head and that’s what they were doing. A lot of people were dying in that period here.
So this case wound up in the Supreme Court. The court looked at this situation and they found that fleeing felon law unconstitutional. They forbade the Memphis PD from using deadly force in a situation where someone was trying to elude capture that didn’t represent any threat of violence to the public. Well of the nine people that were killed by the Memphis PD this year, none of them were armed and five of those were trying to run for their lives with police shooting at them. And this young man Justin Thompson that was killed, they claimed he was shot just one time but there were at least four other bullets that they pulled out of peoples houses. So he was shot at at least five times and they refused to let his family see the body.
In February a young man, 20 years old, was shot in the back. They claimed that he was the leader of a car theft ring. And when they ran up on him, they shot him in the back. They admit he didn’t have any gun. He was just trying to get in the car and escape.
Then you had the case of a young man who was 19 years old. He was mentally challenged. They claimed that he ran at six cops with a knife. They knew who this guy was. They knew he was mentally challenged and they had arrested him two months before this. They shot him. We don’t know how many times they shot him because they cover all this stuff up. Now Memphis claims that they have a model for how to deal with mentally challenged people that does not require them to use deadly force. And they claim to have at least 200 officers who are specially trained to defuse such situations. Well the question is where were those officers at? Because the police station is right up the hill within a couple of blocks from where this boy was killed. Any one of these officers could have defused the situation. They could have just overpowered him. Six cops can do that. The same night a white man was arrested with a knife and they didn’t beat him they certainly didn’t kill him.
Then there was another situation where a black man was in a relationship with a white woman and was driving around in her car. She reported the car stolen. Even after they found out that the car was not stolen, they went after this guy and shot him 32 times.
You got two people who were in police custody who got choked to death. One guy was arrested at a July 4th party and he turned up dead, choked to death. And the police won’t release the autopsy reports. So part of our struggle is to get them to release this information.
Then you got two people killed here in an automobile accident with a police officer. This guy was driving at 101 miles per hour with no sirens or running lights and just ran into a 13 year old girl and her grandmother and killed them. And this is the third case of what is essentially vehicular homicide by a cop in the last five years.
In all these cases, every one of these people was unarmed. One guy was sleeping in his car. How do you get killed for sleeping in your car? They say they beat on the door and woke him up and he jumped out of the car and grappled with the police and then jumped back in his car and started the engine and therefore they had to shoot and kill him. This is their story. And it really doesn’t matter to them what they tell us.
So this is the type of thing that goes on. But Memphis has a long history of this. Back in 1983 they killed seven young black men over a minor incident. This group was a so-called MOVE type organization according to the cops. So they set up an incident where they had the police go to the door claiming that someone had stolen something and forced their way in and surrounded the place. They killed everybody. They executed them. They shot every one of those men in the back of the head.
So this is what accounts for this kind of police terrorism in this town that has gone on for years and years. And we are the first group to be doing this type of grassroots organizing in 20 years. But the civil-rights groups have been neutralized by the election of a black mayor and also by money and status and all that kind of thing. In some places they will come out and demonstrate at least. They will at least acknowledge a police killing. But we’ve heard nothing in Memphis from the NAACP; nothing from the Southern Christian Leadership Council which we call the Southern Christian Liar’s Club; nothing from these groups. So this wasn’t the issue that we thought we were going to be organizing around but we’ve been pushed into it by community need and we’re the only force dealing with police brutality in Memphis.
JG: On September 8th there was a rally and march against police brutality. Can you tell us how that went? How do you see this movement against police brutality moving forward in Memphis and throughout the state?
LKE: We did have people come to this event from other cities especially Chattanooga which is my home town some five hours away from Memphis. And there is talk now of building a statewide movement. But the demonstration itself was fantastic if you consider the fact that what the media here does is they don’t report on anything that we do. We’re persona non grata. They are extremely opposed to us. If we give a press conference, nobody comes. I think one media source is pretty sympathetic, he comes. None of the other stations even report on it.
So if you consider this media white out that’s been going on for quite some time for us to get 70 people just with our own networks and flyers. That is absolutely phenomenal. And people were really militant and they took over the center of the city. And we went to the police station with all these tough guy cowboy cops and demonstrated in front of there and they would not come out.
And this is the place where they’re quick to beat you up. You can go on YouTube and see videos of them beating women up, beating children up, beating all kinda people up. But they would not come out to face us. So we marched on the city hall and went through the tourist district and had a 2 hour rally at city hall.
So this forced the media to come out and report on us. They wanted to portray a lot of negative stuff about us. Talk about my background as a revolutionary. Talk about my wife’s background in the Black Panther Party. Talk about the fact that I was a political prisoner; this that and the other. But the fact that they had to report on people protesting really shook them up. It allowed people to see that there are people who are willing to fight police brutality in this city. And we are going to build a statewide movement. And we are having an event on October 20th to raise the case of Justin Thompson, the 15 year old kid who was killed, and all of those who have died at the hands of the police. What we want to do is publicize these cases enough so that they will get the same kind of attention as Trayvon Martin. We want to eventually get a national march against police brutality.
It’s really important for people who’ve had loved ones die, whether that was last week or years ago, that they don’t give up the fight. A woman that I used to work with came to the event from Chattanooga and had somebody pushing her around in a wheelchair. But she wanted to be a part of it because she believes in this campaign. Her father was murdered by the police in 1983 and she founded the Concerned Citizens for Justice that I became president of. The CCJ led a 15 year campaign against police terrorism. And we had, at one stage, one of the most advanced political formations against police brutality in the country. ‘Cause our thing was grassroots organizing and protest as opposed to lobbying politicians and celebrity so-called leaders. We’re trying to build a grassroots movement from the bottom up.
JG: I first became aware of your work when I came across something you wrote about building a Poor Peoples Survival Movement and the need for autonomous communities to become self sufficient and eventually create bioregional federations. How does that connect to the work you’re doing now?
LKE: Well, you know, we’ve always taken the position of grassroots community organizing. So the logical next step is to then talk about how we build a community or series of communities that are not beholden to the existing government. How do we turn neighborhoods and communities into self governing communes? Right now there’s widespread disaffection with representative government. So the Idea is that on the local level people would start to build their own neighborhood institutions.
They’d even start to deal with community control of the police and building their own militias or self defense forces to deal with our own social issues. So the city and all these racist vigilantes calling themselves police officers wouldn’t be in the community to kill people. But you have to talk about how do you take a community that is extremely impoverished and create some kind of economic base where people can be given jobs and can build housing and infrastructure for themselves.
Urban food production is something that we’ve always recognized as a survival program. And we’ve been doing urban farming in other cities that we’ve been in and trying to understand the skills and link all these things together. We’ve got to deal with massive unemployment, police brutality and all of the things that are killing us.
Memphis has the highest number of infant mortality cases among black infants of any big city in the U.S. It’s the city with the highest rates of cancer among black women. And it’s the poorest big city in the country. And there’s all these social disparities because of long years of economic segregation and also years of police terrorism. All these things linked together. So when you build this, you can’t just concentrate on growing food. You have to organize around issues of people being disempowered by institutions that exist now. You gotta build a whole synthesis instead of just single issue organizing.
Even though at this stage we’re dealing with police terrorism, we came into existence actually to deal with a number of issues. One of them is the mass imprisonment of black youth. One of them is to deal with massive unemployment and poverty. And really this whole issue that we’re dealing with now is the one thing that no other groups wanted to deal with. But they were stacking up bodies so quick that we couldn’t ignore that.
To the question of a bioregional area as opposed to just a city: We cannot be limited to what the state says is the territorial limitation of an area. We need to be able to take land from corporations and use that to grow. Even in Chicago we started to do that. Because in the city of Chicago there’s all these plots of land. Buildings have been torn down and nobody’s using it for anything. So we started to just take it over. First they said, “Well we’re gonna give you permission,” and we said, “You don’t have to give us permission.” But it’s a fight. It really is a fight. And it’s not always dramatic. A lot of times people don’t even hear about it. We didn’t get any massive publicity for most of the stuff we did. And like I said, every city we’ve organized in has been different. And the expectations of people have been different.
JG: So is the strategy of the Black Autonomy Federation to help organize communities, share knowledge and skills, and then spread that to other areas?
LKE: This is essentially what we’ve been doing. We’ve been in a number of different cities. When we first got started in the mid nineties, we were in ten cities. The whole idea of creating a national movement without creating local movement first is that it’s unsustainable. When people see that you’ve got a sustainable movement wherever you started at, it can spread. People will emulate it. And that’s essentially what happened with the Black Panther Party. They didn’t try to build a national movement. They started in the Bay area and it just spread. It was popularized through media and different things but it wasn’t planned. That’s why we’re concentrating on Memphis. I’m not saying that we won’t help someone start up somewhere else, but our objective right now is to worry about Memphis.
What we try to do is develop people so that they can take on leadership roles within the community. And that’s really important otherwise you’ve just got a cult. Everybody follows one guy or two people and nobody else can say anything or do anything and nobody’s being trained to do anything.
JG: You’ve written before about the importance of supporting people of color in dismantling white supremacist institutions. Unfortunately for most of the American white Left, the struggles of working class POC are either unknown or not considered a priority. What would you say to those on the Left who pay lip service to anti-racism or ending oppressive systems but seem dismayed at the prospect of making actual connections with communities of color?
LKE: First of all those groups and individuals have to be challenged by people of color organized in their own autonomous movements even if it’s within another organization. They have to organize in numbers enough to challenge these people and change the direction of the movement. You’re fighting for the heart and soul of the movement is what it is.
Generally if you take a broad analysis you would have to say that they are corrupt and their efforts won’t result in a revolution especially one that benefits people of color. I’ve criticized the Occupy movement because it’s predominantly a white middle class movement whose only concerns have always been predominantly for the white middle class. Some would say “Well, there’s black people in this”. That doesn’t mean anything.
What does matter is whether they have a voice or any power to create policy. And if they don’t have that, if they’re just a puppet organization or group of people that they can trot out and say, “Here’s our blacks.” We call that a Progressive Plantation. And that is a very dangerous and dispiriting development for people who are in those groups. And it’s very disempowering. This is how the white Left has generally operated over the years. They bring in a few people of color might even put them up front to be visible but they don’t have any power whatsoever. They’re puppets and they are not respected in communities of color. This is why the white left has rarely made any serious connections with communities of color.
What is really important right now is that people have to understand that racism is not going to go away on its own. It has to be challenged. And I don’t care what some white radicals, we used to call them “mother country radicals”, claim they stand for. They have privileges. Even the ones who claim to be broke. They have privileges vis-à-vis people of color and they will often use that to try to neutralize or weaken any criticism of them. They were happy when the Black Panther Party was attacked and destroyed and they didn’t try to help. Their whole strategy was to profit from the death of the Black Panther Party by attempting to absorb all of their cadre and community supporters into their own movements.
In the 1960’s what you really saw was an autonomous movement of working class black people that was able to challenge white supremacy in the South. And later when Black Power came in, it was able to challenge white supremacy and corporate capitalism throughout the country. It’s really important to understand that and compare the fight against racism in that period to what’s happening now. You’ve got so called anti-racist movements made up of white people who want to talk about right-wingers but don’t want to talk about their own internal white supremacy and how it is related to the state.
What people of color movements have to do is to understand this whole thing about decolonization which is an important concept but it has to be taken further than just trying to get the white folks to stop being racists or getting them to accept Indian claims. It has to be understood that we’re trying to dismantle this entire society. This entire capitalist system and the whole system of white supremacy worldwide.
JG: Tokenism and exceptionalism have been common tactics used by the media to make people believe that we’re living in a “post racial” or “post patriarchal” society. Do you think this has played a role in neutralizing resistance within communities of color?
LKE: Well, I think that’s it’s been effective for quite some time. We like to call it “black faces in high places”. And essentially what that is, is a form of neocolonialism where they put a person of color in an alleged position of authority to be administrators within this system.
In the 1970’s when the Black Power movement was being defeated, the leadership wasn’t just killed or imprisoned. They actually went after the minds of the people too because they wanted the people to think that we had now reached the state where we’d arrived and were now enjoying the benefits of the civil rights movement. And what we really saw was a kind of entrenchment of black middle class forces going into the institutions and corporations or going into the government.
We went from seeing something like forty black officials nationwide to several thousand people of color inhabiting political positions. The white power structure was asking themselves, “How can we deal with Black Power? How can we deal with all these mass movements of people of color?” So what they decided to do was to neutralize them with their own people and to do the same kind of neocolonialism that they’ve done in Africa, Latin America, and other parts of the world.
It was Richard Nixon of all people who came up with this idea of holding up the black entrepreneur. His whole idea was that “we’re gonna give ‘em grants. We’ll give ‘em pay-offs and we’ll split them that way. We’ll find the ones who are gonna sell out. The ones who won’t sell out, we’ll put in prison or kill ‘em.” And this is essentially what happened. I was one of those that was put in prison and some of my comrades and other people I knew were hunted down and killed. Now you have people many of whom are still in prison today and have been there for 30 or 40 years.
So now we get to Obama who’s now the president. And the idea of a black president has been used to neutralize any protest in the street or opposition to the government from black people. Everywhere else in the world, people are fighting tooth and nail against austerity measures.
Even the discussion by politicians of implementing austerity measures started mass protest in France, Greece and many other places; just the discussion of it. In the u.s. nobody said anything. They said “Oh, we’ll vote ‘em out”. In the u.s., there’s a mysticism about the electoral system that doesn’t exist in a lot of places. They see right through it. Now people are starting to see through it here. They’re gonna have to see through it more. But there are millions of people that are still brainwashed that Obama’s going to deliver something to them.
JG: Some would say that it’s the lesser of two evils or a gentler form of fascism.
LKE: I do think that there’s a lot of confusion. And I do think there’s anger but a lot of it is internalized so that you don’t see it in the streets. I think that Obama is a pacification agent. He was elected to neutralize the grassroots Left in this country which was becoming larger and they wanted to push people back into the democratic party fold. The democratic party is the liberal reform party. They had to posture with Obama. They needed Obama more than he needed them, really. Big corporate money went into getting him elected. The liberal wing of the capitalist class put him in office.
Now Romney represents what I call, “Raw Money” and he represents the extreme reactionary right wing of capital. Now what these people want is to have the state run directly by corporations. They want a fascist corporate state. The democrats also want to serve the corporations. They just want to serve them in a different way. We need to understand that neither one of these guys represent the interests of working class and poor people. They’re both are agents of corporations.
There’s this inter-capitalist feud where they fight over which policies they’re gonna adopt; policies that are never in the interest of poor people. And they know this and they’ll sit around and laugh about it at some stage, “I beat you that time, Raw Money! You can get the next one.” They know that they’re both serving the same people. And those people are not down in projects. They’re not in college dormitories. They’re not common people. They are the elite. And I do think that it’s great that the Occupy movement started to raise that issue. It’s just that they didn’t go to the logical extent and bring in voices that have never been heard before.
People of color were not part of the discussion. We were not seen as being an important enough base for them to try to recruit. When people do that to you, to me it is the worst kind of bootlicking to go try and beg to be a part of their movement. It’s treachery. So I tried to encourage people of color involved in Occupy to think about forming their own movement because it’s unsustainable. And that’s what I see. Some cities they’re not doing anything. Here in Memphis, it’s just white folks sitting around a camp fire. They’re in bed with the politicians. They didn’t even attack them here and drive them away like they did everywhere else.
Politicians and Corporations are smoking the planet. And they’re doing it in a way that will wipe out a significant section of the population. They’ll kill off the ability to have crops. Much of the things that we’ve been talking about are really survival programs. They’re not popular at this point because people still see supermarkets and that kind of stuff. But at some stage they are going to create a situation that’s so unsustainable that we won’t be able to eat their garbage food. We won’t have access to their capital reserves. Our lives are going to drastically change. We might not even have electricity, who knows.
But we will not have the things that the petro-fueled economy has created for us. As you know, without petroleum this whole thing is gonna collapse anyway. But from the standpoint of people of color, we have to have our own agenda. We have to be autonomous enough to have our own political programs. Even if we work with white movements we have to have our own agenda. We can’t let the white middle class set an agenda for people who have been historically oppressed in a different fashion. That won’t save us at all.
JG: What can people do to support your efforts in Memphis?
LKE: You don’t have to live in Memphis to be concerned with what’s going on here just like you don’t have to live in Sanford, Florida to be concerned with what happened with Trayvon Martin. We want people to write to A.C. Wharton the mayor of Memphis and complain about the situation here with police brutality. Especially about Justin Thompson the young man that was just killed. And we’ll have a website up soon. The mayor’s email address is mayor@memphistn.gov. You should bombard that guys mailbox because all he cares about is tourism. And you should let him know that “If I come to Memphis, it’ll be to protest not to give you money.” Wharton’s phone number is 901-576-6000. The cops number is 901-636-3700. And you can make a complaint to the police chief, Tony Armstrong, about his reign of terror and corrupt police force. It’s really a national issue. All of our lives are in danger in this place.
These people are insane. They’re shooting people in the back. There’s people that have survived police shootings as well here and we don’t know the figures on that. There have been widespread rapes by police. We’ve got several officers on trial now for rape. We’ve also got officers on trial for prostitution. Many of the cops are drug dealers. In fact this last killing, we were advised, was the result of this cop being a drug enforcer and pick up man. He killed another young man before he killed this kid in 2009. So he’s a treacherous individual. And this is the kind of stuff that goes on around here. I’m not saying that this type of stuff doesn’t happen in many cities, but in our opinion, this is the most corrupt.
Each year, mining companies dump more than 180 million tonnes of hazardous mine waste into rivers, lakes, and oceans worldwide, threatening vital bodies of water with toxic heavy metals and other chemicals poisonous to humans and wildlife, according to report released on Feb. 28 by two leading mining reform groups.
An investigation by Earthworks and MiningWatch Canada identifies the world’s waters that are suffering the greatest harm or at greatest risk from the dumping of mine waste. The report, Troubled Waters: How Mine Waste Dumping is Poisoning our Oceans, Rivers, and Lakes, also names the leading companies that continue to use this irresponsible method of disposal.
Mine processing wastes, or tailings, can contain as many as three dozen dangerous chemicals including arsenic, lead, mercury, and cyanide. The report found that the mining industry has left mountains of such waste from Alaska and Canada to Norway and Southeast Asia.
“Polluting the world’s waters with mine tailings is unconscionable, and damage it causes is largely irreversible,” said Payal Sampat, international program director for Washington, D.C.-based Earthworks. “Mining companies must stop using our oceans, rivers, and lakes as dumping grounds for their toxic waste.”
The report says some multinational mining companies are guilty of a double standard.
“Some companies dump their mining wastes into the oceans of other countries, even though their home countries have bans or restrictions against it,” said Catherine Coumans, research coordinator for Ottawa-based MiningWatch Canada. “We found that of the world’s largest mining companies, only one has policies against dumping in rivers and oceans, and none against dumping in lakes.”
There are safer methods of disposing of mine tailings, including returning the waste to the emptied mine. In other places, dumping of any kind is too risky. No feasible technology exists to remove and treat mine tailings from oceans; even partial cleanup of tailings dumped into rivers or lakes is prohibitively expensive.
“We are really suffering because of the millions of tons of mine waste that Barrick Gold dumps in and around our river system every year,” said Mark Ekepa, chairman of the Porgera Landowners’ Association. “Our rivers run red, our houses have become unstable, we have lost fresh drinking water and places to put our food gardens, and sometimes children get carried away by the waste.”
A number of nations, including the U.S., Canada, and Australia, have had restrictions on dumping mine tailings in natural bodies of water. Even these national regulations, however, are being eroded by amendments, exemptions, and loopholes that allow destructive dumping in lakes and streams. Even though U.S. law long banned lake dumping, in 2009 the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Coeur D’Alene Mines of Idaho to dump 7 million tonnes of tailings from the Kensington Gold Mine in Alaska into Lower Slate Lake, filling the lake and destroying all life in it.
In Canada, Taseko Mines Ltd. is proposing to reclassify Little Fish Lake and Fish Creek in British Columbia as a tailings impoundment for its proposed Prosperity Gold-Copper Mine. The watershed is home to grizzly bear and highly productive rainbow trout, and is an important cultural area for the Tsilhqot’in People. After being refused environmental approvals for the past 17 years, the company has re-applied with plans to build a tailings impoundment to dispose of 480 million tons of tailings and 240 million tons of waste rock in the basin of the creek and lake, burying the ecosystems under a hundred meters of waste.
Save LBI Sues U.S. Agencies and Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, Challenging Federal Approvals Greenlighting Marine Ecosystem Devastation, Including Risks to Critically Endangered Whales
LONG BEACH ISLAND (LBI), NEW JERSEY, January 13, 2025 – Save LBI, an organization that has been actively litigating issues surrounding marine mammal, human health, economic and other impacts connected to offshore wind industrialization off New Jersey since 2022, has filed suit against the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Marine Fisheries Service, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, U.S. Department of Interior, and the Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind project for violations of a number of federal environmental statutes.
“This lawsuit serves as the first of its kind, launching a wide-ranging challenge against Atlantic Shores’ federal approvals, based on violations of environmental statutes such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, and the Clean Air Act,” said Thomas Stavola, Jr., Esq., the attorney representing Save LBI. “We believe we have organized a compelling case that will demonstrate that these federal agencies were derelict in their respective duties to take critical information into account, and moreover, made arbitrary assumptions that entirely failed to disclose and consider the injurious impacts of the Atlantic Shores South project.”
Bob Stern, Ph.D., the primary plaintiff and president of Save LBI, further explained, “For example, “the agencies assume, incorrectly, that no North Atlantic right whales will suffer injury or death as a result of the Atlantic Shores South project. The evidence contradicts that assumption. In fact, our review and independent mathematical analyses shows a systemic underestimation of impact, and clearly indicate that the noise caused by pile driving, and, soon after, perpetual operational noise, will injure and kill high numbers of marine mammals — and, yes, injure and kill a number of North Atlantic right whales, a critically endangered animal that cannot afford to suffer any deaths given their numbers are now less than 340 total.”
The lawsuit ultimately seeks to have all federal approvals rescinded and the Atlantic Shores South project halted — stopping construction and preventing devastation to marine mammal life in the NJ/NY Bight regional waters. Eight other co-plaintiffs have joined Save LBI in this action, many of whom will be severely economically impacted due to the egregious harm to the marine ecosystem and the aesthetic, recreational blight imposed on the Jersey Shore via the circa 200 1,000-foot-plus high monstrosities slated to be constructed starting less than 9 miles east of Long Beach Island.
These inexcusable damages by the Atlantic Shores South project are not limited to marine mammal devastation, but also include significant impacts to tourism, shore economies, statewide energy bills, national defense, vessel navigation, and home values — all of which have been swept under the rug by much of the mainstream media, many elected officials, the Atlantic Shores company, and the federal agencies in their inexplicable haste to approve a project still in search of a clear purpose and need.
“We hope this lawsuit will serve as the vehicle to finally illuminate the damage being wrought here and to impose significant pressure on Atlantic Shores to withdraw, as their obfuscation of the project’s true effects are indefensible. The agencies simply cannot objectively argue that their approvals were made in accordance with the best science,” concluded Bob Stern.
This lawsuit was filed in federal court in the United States for the District of New Jersey on January 10, 2025.
About Save LBI
Save Long Beach Island (Save LBI) is an organization of citizens and businesses on and off the Island working together to protect the ocean and Long Beach Island and neighboring communities from the destructive impact of the Atlantic Shores project and potentially other offshore wind projects. As a not-for-profit, non-partisan entity, we do not endorse any political candidates but vigorously pursue policies and actions that protect the Island and New Jersey communities. The organization is led by Beach Haven resident Bob Stern, a Ph.D. engineer with
experience in environmental law who previously managed the U.S. Department of Energy’s office overseeing environment protection related to energy programs and projects.
Save LBI is fighting to stop the ill-conceived Atlantic Shores projects. Please visit SaveLBI.org to join the fight and consider making a donation.
ACK for Whales To File New Suits to Stop Environment-Destroying New England Wind Offshore Turbine Project Grassroots Group Has sent Notices to Federal Government Warning of Litigation Because Government Broke Multiple Federal Laws “We’re not going to stop fighting for the environment.”
NANTUCKET, MA, January 13, 2025 – ACK for Whales, the Nantucket grassroots group (formally known as Nantucket Residents Against Turbines) fighting to protect the environment from the devastation posed by New England Wind’s giant offshore wind project, said today that it has filed two Notices of Intent to sue the Department of Interior and other federal agencies for violating federal laws intended to protect the environment and endangered species.
The announcement comes as the group revealed the United States Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear the group’s petition for certiorari from lower court decisions on a different legal issue and involving a different project.
The new litigation is broader in scope than the suit previously filed against Vineyard Wind and seeks to halt and preclude construction by New England Wind of offshore wind turbines.
“New England Wind is an existential threat to our environment and while we are disappointed by the Court’s decision to not hear our appeal, we’re not going to stop fighting for the environment,” ACK for Whales President Vallorie Oliver said.
The Notices of Intent were sent Monday to the Departments of the Interior and Commerce, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and informed the federal agencies that decisions made to allow New England Wind’s project to build turbines off Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard violate the Endangered Species, Marine Mammal Protection, National Historic Preservation, and Outer Continental Shelf Land Acts.
The letters warn that if the agencies do not reverse their approvals, ACK for Whales will proceed with its suits when the 60 day Notice period expires to prevent “substantial” harm to biological resources, including the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, interference with economic activities in the high seas and territorial seas, including tourism, commercial fishing, and whale watching.
“The government continues to mislead the people of Massachusetts,” Oliver said, “making their usual false claims about offshore wind. The state’s press release claimed building these whale- killing monstrosities will ‘reduce the state’s carbon emissions by the equivalent of taking one million gas-powered cars off the road. Collectively, these projects will create thousands of jobs and generate billions of economic activity.’
“The State made the same false claims about Vineyard Wind and since that project was begun, BOEM has admitted building offshore wind will have no meaningful impact on reducing climate change, Vineyard Wind admits it’s not keeping track of the jobs it allegedly creates in Massachusetts, and its CEO admits that our power bills are going up.
“We can’t figure out why the government keeps giving away the store to foreign energy companies like Avangrid,” Oliver said. “We’re a non-partisan organization, we don’t do politics, but we hope Mr. Trump keeps his word and ends this madness on Day One of his Administration,” Oliver said.
About ACK for Whales
ACK for Whales is a group of Nantucket community members who are concerned about the negative impacts of offshore wind development off the south shores of our beloved Island. The Massachusetts/Rhode Island wind area is bigger than the state of Rhode Island and will ultimately be occupied by 2,400 turbines, each taller than the John Hancock building in Boston, connected by thousands of miles of high voltage cables. There are many unanswered questions, and the permitting of these massive utility projects has happened largely out of the public eye. We provide a community group of neighbors and friends, who all love the same place.
The critically endangered Devils Hole pupfish population has reached a 25-year high of 191 fish, offering hope for the species that lives in the smallest known habitat of any vertebrate.
Above water and SCUBA surveys conducted by scientists twice a year carefully monitor the pupfish population in Death Valley, Nevada, which has fluctuated dangerously in the past, dropping as low as 35 individuals in 2013.
A landmark 1976 Supreme Court decision, informed by environmental science, protected the pupfish by limiting groundwater pumping that threatened its habitat, setting a precedent for science-based conservation policy.
Despite recent success, the pupfish remains threatened by climate change impacts on the delicate desert ecosystem, as well as growing human demand for water resources in the region.
In a glimmer of hope for one of the world’s rarest fish, scientists have counted 191 Devils Hole pupfish this spring in their tiny desert habitat. This number marks the highest spring count for the critically endangered species in more than two decades.
The Devils Hole pupfish (Cyprinodon diabolis) is found only in the upper reaches of a single deep limestone cave in the Mojave Desert in the western U.S. state of Nevada. The entire species lives on a shallow rock shelf measuring 3.3 by 4.8 meters (11 by 16 feet), making this the smallest known range of any vertebrate species on the planet.
Twice a year, biologists from the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Nevada Department of Wildlife peer from scaffolding above the pond and then enter the water with scuba gear to count pupfish in Devils Hole. They methodically comb the entire habitat, from the sunny shallows to depths of more than 30 m (100 ft), looking for the iridescent blue desert dwellers.
“It was really encouraging to see such a large number of young fish during these spring dives,” said Brandon Senger, supervising fisheries biologist for the Nevada Department of Wildlife, who has been conducting scuba counts at Devils Hole since 2014. “Conditions within Devils Hole looked healthy, so we have hopes of high recruitment over the coming months that will lead to a large population in the fall.”
Nearly the entire natural range of the species is visible in this photo. The equipment is used to monitor the water level. Photo courtesy of Pacific Southwest Region USFWS (CC BY 2.0).
The Devils Hole pupfish is a marvel of adaptation. It has evolved to withstand the harsh conditions of its desert habitat, including water temperatures that can reach 34° Celsius (93° Fahrenheit) and extremely low oxygen levels. The pupfish has a unique metabolic rate that allows it to survive on minimal food resources, primarily feeding on the algae that grow on the shallow rock shelf. Its small size and rapid life cycle of just 12 to 14 months enable the species to maintain a population in the confines of its tiny habitat.
Despite these remarkable adaptations, the pupfish has faced numerous threats over the years. The history of conservation efforts for the Devils Hole pupfish is a case study in the interplay between environmental science and policy. In 1952, then-president Harry Truman added Devils Hole to Death Valley National Monument. In the late 1960s, the pupfish faced its first major threat when groundwater pumping by local farms began to lower the water level in Devils Hole, exposing the critical shallow shelf.
In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had a right to protect the water level in Devils Hole, limiting groundwater pumping in the region. The ruling was based on the scientific understanding that the pupfish depended on a stable water level to survive. This case set a precedent for using environmental science to guide policy and legal decisions.
Despite this victory, the pupfish population continued to fluctuate dangerously. In 2013, scientists counted just 35 pupfish, leading to fears that the species could wink out of existence. Careful conservation efforts, including supplemental feedings with special food pellets, have helped bolster their numbers.
A natural disaster may have also contributed to the recent population rebound. Last summer, the remnants of Hurricane Hilary inundated Death Valley National Park, damaging roads and infrastructure. But the silt and clay swept into Devil’s Hole by the floodwaters benefited the pupfish by providing nutrients for algae growth.
“It’s exciting to see an increasing trend, especially in this highly variable population,” said Michael Schwemm, senior fish biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
However, the future of the Devils Hole pupfish remains uncertain. Climate change is disrupting the delicate desert ecosystem with increasing temperatures and erratic weather events. In recent years, Death Valley has experienced record-breaking heat waves and intense flash flooding.
“As the climate changes, as world temperatures get hotter, Death Valley will get hotter,” Nichole Andler, chief of interpretation for Death Valley National Park, said in an interview. She pointed out that seven of the park’s hottest summers have occurred in the last decade.
Increasing urbanization, recreational use and industrial activities like mining also place greater demands on the aquifer that feeds Devils Hole. Even minor changes in water level can expose critical habitat, imperiling the fish.
Further complicating conservation efforts, the Devil’s Hole pupfish population is highly inbred due to its isolation and small population size, which has led to reduced genetic diversity. Low genetic variation can make the species more vulnerable to disease, environmental changes and developmental abnormalities, posing significant challenges for the pupfish’s long-term survival and recovery.
To safeguard the species, captive-breeding programs are underway to establish a backup population in case of a catastrophic event in the wild. But ultimately, the fate of the Devils Hole pupfish is tied to the health of its unique desert habitat.
“The pupfish is an indicator of the health of the larger ecosystem,” Kevin Wilson, an ecologist with the National Park Service, said in an interview. “By protecting this tiny fish, we’re protecting the aquifer and the entire web of life that depends on it.”
Banner image A group of critically endangered Devils Hole pupfish(Cyprinodon diabolis) photographed in the Devil’s Hole, Nevada. Photo courtesy of Olin Feuerbacher/ USFWS (CC BY 2.0)
Liz Kimbrough is a staff writer for Mongabay and holds a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Tulane University, where she studied the microbiomes of trees.
Citation:
Langhammer, P. F., Bull, J. W., Bicknell, J. E., Oakley, J. L., Brown, M. H., Bruford, M. W., … & Brooks, T. M. (2024). The positive impact of conservation action. Science, 384(6694), 453-458. doi:10.1126/science.adj6598
