March 31, 2003
It’s only seven inches in height, but the pygmy owl is making a major impact on the economy in Tucson, Arizona.
Indeed, there are only 18 owls and about 900,000 people in the greater Tucson area.
To protect the owls, an endangered species, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service proposed last November that 1.2 million acres in and around the city be set aside as "critical habitat" for our feathered friend--or about 67,000 acres per owl. The designation, issued under a court order, imposes obstacles to development, so developers in this fast-growing community are fighting back, calling it patently unfair.
Alan Lurie, the executive director of the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association, does not seem to give a hoot. "When you come right down to it, this is about land that would be lying fallow for no particular good reason, other than the environmentalists want it that way," said Lurie.
Fights over endangered species like the owl, a brown-and-cream-coloured bird about seven inches high, are not new; over the last 3 decades, they have become a staple of land-use battles in the West. What is new are the secondary battles like the one in Tucson over "critical habitat", a designation that has always been required under the 1973 Endangered Species Act, but one that the Fish and Wildlife Service has only recently begun to impose in earnest, under orders from the courts.
Out of 1,262 threatened and endangered species listed since 1973 under federal law, the federal government has only designated critical habitats for 261 of them, mostly because the Fish and Wildlife Service itself has always regarded the designations as a lower priority than identifying which species are endangered.
But in the last two years, the pace of such designations has exploded, as the Bush administration has found itself on the losing side of battles in the courts. Although it has been outspoken in calling the critical habitat designations counterproductive, the administration has now designated some 38 million acres of critical habitat for 115 species, more species than any other administration.
"Rationally speaking, the costs of critical habitat designation add virtually nothing to the protection of the species," said Craig Manson, the assistant secretary of the interior in charge of the issue. "It sucks up a lot of the resources of the Fish and Wildlife service, causes a lot of social and economic upheaval, and the benefit to the species is virtually nonexistent, so it just doesn’t make any sense."
For some, giving the land to endangered species seems to have become more fashionable than the move to give the land back to the aboriginals.
Bugging aquatic plants
By Torray Green
In 1998, a group of Vermont biologists stumbled on to a new way to save our fresh water lakes, streams, and canals from dreaded aquatic, exotic plants. These plants, which are responsible for serious obstruction to swimmers and boaters, have also contributed to habitat loss and native species declines in a plethora of lakes across Canada and the United States.
Led by Dr. Sallie Sheldon, the group of biologists who hail from Middlebury College, discovered a way to use the milfoil weevil, (Euhrychiopsis Lecontei in textbook language) a herbivorous aquatic beetle to eradicate the troublesome plant from North American lakes. The milfoil weevils, which are very voracious eaters, make short work of the plants’ long stems and eventually this stops the plants from nourishing its branches and spreading. The beetles also reproduce quickly and breed up to five generations of hungry larva per summer.
Today, Mary Hilovsky, President of EnviroScience, a group of environmental consultants, has taken this discovery and brought it to the forefront of ecological protection. Group members have done this by creating a strategy that involves the calculated release of thousands of weevils into targeted areas in each individual lake. This process repeats itself for several years, with each application typically getting smaller as the plants are eliminated.
The process will be first used in Lac Cayamant in Stow, Ohio this coming summer.
Greens move to block Arctic drilling
Even though the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is described as a "flat, treeless tundra," tree-huggers in the environmentalist industry are "obsessed" with stopping Arctic drilling.
As the option to drill in the ANWR gets closer to reality, environmentalists are increasing their efforts to condemn the oil-drilling project.
"We are talking about the full-scale development inside the heart of a national wildlife refuge," said Dan Lavery, a spokesman for the Sierra Club.
Lavery believes the proposed oil projection in ANWR is not worth the effort.
"It’s a six-month supply of oil that is not going to be available until 10 years from now, so it’s not going to have any impact on the current state of America’s energy needs," Lavery explained.
But Charli Coon, an energy and environmental analyst from the conservative Heritage Foundation, called Lavery’s comments "alarmist."
"I think the alarmists are out in number right now, and are obsessed with never exploring (for oil) anywhere," Coon said.
According to Coon, the proposed drilling area in ANWR is so small that it is the equivalent of "the size of a postage stamp on a football field."
Coon believes it should only take about 5 to 7 years to extract the oil from ANWR.
"The (environmentalist’s) position is extremely short-sighted," she said. "Had Clinton signed the ANWR bill in 1995, we would be getting the oil right now," Coon explained.
Interior Secretary Gale Norton called ANWR drilling the nation’s largest single prospect for future oil production.
"The potential daily production from ANWR’s 1002 area is larger than the current daily onshore oil production of any of the lower 48 states, Norton said.
Instead of exploiting the Arctic Refuge, Lavery believes America’s energy problems can be solved with conservation and more use of fuel-efficient automobiles.
"Rather than look to Alaska, we would like to look to Detroit to see if we can get the technology that is already available to make our cars and trucks go further on a gallon of gas," he said.
Coon countered that "until we find a way to drive without the internal combustion engine, we are going to be needing oil."
Nicole Nobody admonishes Her Majesty
A right royal ruckus still smolders over the Canadian fur helmets worn by Queen Elizabeth’s Household Division.
First came Miss Great Britain, Yana Booth, who posed naked with a cuddly teddy bear to protest the use of bear fur at Buckingham Palace.
Now, Her Grace, the Dowager Duchess of Bedford, like Booth a supporter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), is in on the act. The Duchess, who now lives in Santa Fe, has called on Her Majesty in a letter asking her to replace the bear fur with faux fur, tout de suit.
The Duchess, whose late husband was John Robert Russell, the 13th Duke of Bedford, has a great fondness for bears and is eager to speak out on their behalf. Bears frequent the Duchess’ ranch. For good measure, the Duchess included in her letter to the Queen a snapshot of her husband taken shortly before his death last October. The Duke was standing under apple trees, smiling, and holding a branch the bears had broken as they climbed the trees looking for something sweet to eat.
"It has been brought to my attention that real bear skin is still used for your Guard’s hats," the Duchess admonished the Queen. "What about using fake fur?"
"It takes the entire hide of one bear to make just one Guardsman a headpiece. Most of the bearskins come from Canada, where hunters often shoot bears several times before the animals die. Some bears escape after being shot and face a slow death in the woods as their lifeblood drains out of them. When the bears killed are mothers, orphan cubs who cannot survive are left behind."
The Duke of Bedford inherited the 6,000-acre countryside estate, Woburn Abbey, which is a haven for wildlife. In 1974, the Duchess wrote the fascinating Nicole Nobody the Autobiography of the Duchess of Bedford.
There is no report of what Her Majesty makes of the Duchess’ letter, nor whether the Queen placed a photo of the naked Yana Booth on her mantelpiece.
Guess in the Kyoto emissions barnstead, some animals are more equal than others.