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  • Audio file (If file doesn’t begin playing immediately, right-click to download it and then listen) USGS links Assessment of undiscovered oil resources in the Bakken and Three Forks Formations, Williston Basin Province, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota, 2013 Input-form data for the U.S. Geological Survey assessment of the Devonian and Mississippian Bakken and Devonian Three [...]

  • Other links Pesticide report leaves tough questions unanswered (Defenders of Wildlife) Feds Are Failing to Protect Endangered Species From Pesticides (Center for Biological Diversity) Press release from National Research Council (4/30/2013) Federal Agencies Should Use a Common Approach to Evaluate Risks That Pesticides Pose to Endangered and Threatened Species WASHINGTON — When determining the potential effects [...]

  • “W.Va. members of Congress promise action against EPA” is the headline in the West Virginia Record, whose article noted that 80 percent of the state’s congressional delegation had posted press releases criticizing the D.C. Circuit’s decision that said EPA had the authority to partially revoke a permit for the Spruce Mine. (Only Jay Rockefeller appears [...]

  • The National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council will release a report next week evaluating the effects of pesticides on threatened and endangered species. Here’s the statement from NAS: Evaluating Risks That Pesticides Pose to Endangered, Threatened Species – New Report A new report from the National Research Council examines how the U.S. Environmental Protection [...]

  • U.S. District Court Judge Joseph C. Spero dismissed an ESA citizen suit seeking to force consultation under the ESA “regarding the effects of 382 registered pesticides on endangered and threatened species” (Center for Biological Diversity v. EPA, 11-293-JCS, N.D. Cal.). “Plaintiffs have not pled sufficient facts to show that the EPA was required to reinitiate [...]

  • The D.C. Circuit reversed and remanded a lower court decision that had scolded EPA for revoking a Clean Water Act permit that already had been approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Mingo Logan Coal Co. v. U.S. EPA, 12-5150, 4/23/13). Wrong, the appeals court said. “[W]e reverse the district court insofar as it [...]

  • Daily Digest (April 19, 2013): Asian elephant shot, loggerhead sea turtle egg snatcher sentenced, DOI budget proposed

    Catching up on the Fish and Wildlife Service: The service’s main page features the following news releases: FWS is investigating the shooting of an Asian elephant traveling with Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in Tupelo, Miss. “The incident occurred in the early morning of April 9, 2013, outside the Bancorp South Arena,” the [...]

  • Daily Digest (April 17, 2013)

    The American Bird Conservancy is touting a study that concludes feral cats are killing endangered Hawaiian petrels. The proof is in the pictures, ABC said. For the first time, videos were taken showing cats preying on petrels. In one, a feral cat “wait[ed] near the entrance of a burrow for over one hour.  When the [...]

  • Link to the full document The Obama Administration today released its National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, which the service said “provides a roadmap of key steps needed over the next five years to reduce the current and expected impacts of climate change on our natural resources, which include: changing species distributions and [...]

  • Audubon writer Ted Williams suspended, pulled from masthead, for Orlando Sentinel column on feral cats

    Update, 3/25/13: The media are starting to take note of Williams’ suspension. See the article and the list of links below for more coverage of this story. Veteran conservation journalist Ted Williams, who for years has penned the Incite column for Audubon magazine, has been suspended and had his name removed from the publication’s masthead, [...]

Catching up (somewhat): Gamesa won’t go forward with wind farm in Indiana bat habitat; timber thinning project nixed by judge who finds elimination of lynx analysis units should have been analyzed under NEPA; shovelnose sturgeon listing upheld on “similarity of appearance” grounds

 Posted by on June 15, 2012  BiOps, Court calls, Daily Links, ESA, FWS, Listings, NEPA
Jun 152012
 

The law firm that has been threatening to sue over a planned wind farm in Pennsylvania has gotten its wish: The energy company that wanted to build the project has withdrawn it.

In a blog post June 13, Meyer Glitzenstein & Crystal said that Gamesa decided not to move forward “after years of controversy,” no doubt engendered in part by the numerous notice letters sent by MG&C on behalf of its environmental clients.

Here’s the item in full from the law firm’s Wildlife and Environment Blog:

Indiana bat

Company Pulls The Plug On Industrial Wind Farm In Critical Indiana Bat Habitat

by Meyer Glitzenstein & Crystal

After years of controversy, energy company Gamesa has withdrawn its plans to build an industrial wind power facility near Shaffer Mountain, Pennsylvania.  The project would have been placed in an important migratory corridor for Golden eagles and in the midst of a maternity colony of critically endangered Indiana bats.  This would have been the first time that a wind project – which according to leading experts would have killed and harmed Indiana bats due to turbine collisions and a pressurizing condition called barotrauma – would be sited in such a sensitive location for an endangered species.  On behalf of several conservation organizations and community members, we submitted multiple notice letters and comments to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers detailing various violations of the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and National Environmental Policy Act, which inevitably influenced the company’s decision to withdraw from this project in lieu of more sustainable project locations elsewhere that will better allow for clean, renewable energy without sacrificing our nation’s important natural resources.

More WE-Blog (and other) links

Thinning project doesn’t survive court challenge related to lynx habitat

The Split Creek project, which would involve the precommercial thinning of about 7,000 acres of lodgepole pine in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, cannot proceed because of NEPA and ESA violations, a federal judge ruled June 6 (Native Ecosystems Council v. U.S. Forest Service, 11-212-CWD, D. Idaho).

U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale said the Forest Service should have prepared an Environmental Impact Statement when it issued a revised map in 2005 that eliminated eight Lynx Analysis Units in the forest, lifting restrictions on thinning for about 400,000 acres.

Canada lynx

The Forest Service issued an EA on the project, but Dale said the significance of the project warranted preparation of an EIS. In addition, the service illegally “tiered” the project under NEPA by relying on the 2005 revised map, which itself had not been analyzed under NEPA. Finally, the service should have consulted with the Fish and Wildlife Service over whether the revision of the 2005 map — and with it, the elimination of nearly 400,000 acres of land within the LAUs — would jeopardize lynx or their critical habitat.

Alliance for the Wild Rockies, a co-plaintiff in the case, issued a press release June 7. (Excerpt: “Mike Garrity, Executive Director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies said, “In essence, the Court stopped the project because the Forest Service simply changed a map in 2005 to eliminate protective restrictions for lynx on 400,000 acres of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest without following the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The agency then claimed that it wasn’t lynx habitat and authorized tree cutting on 7,000 acres of lodgepole pine located within the Island Park and Madison-Pitchstone Plateaus Subsections of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest.”)

Here’s the shovelnose sturgeon decision. More on this decision in a bit.

Can you tell them apart?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colorado/New Mexico conservation area moves ahead; Salazar to make announcement today

 Posted by on June 15, 2012  Conservation areas, Daily Links, FWS
Jun 152012
 

Sangre de Cristo Mountains (Photo by Steve Garufi)

Protection of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Colorado will get a big boost today when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announces an agreement with billionaire hedge fund manager and conservationist Louis Bacon. (press release here)

The Denver Post reported this morning that the announcement, to be made at 11 a.m. Mountain Time (1 pm ET), concerns Bacon’s offer of 90,000 acres’ worth of easements on his land in the mountain range.

This morning, Bacon’s name was added to the list of speakers at the Fort Garland Museum, where DOI had already said Salazar would “make a major conservation announcement for Colorado and the nation.” (Later today, ESWR will post an audio file of the subsequent teleconference, scheduled for 11:45 am MT, 1:45 pm ET.)

Louis Bacon

But let’s let Denver Post reporter Bruce Finley tell the story, since he had an interview with Salazar yesterday and appears to have broken the news. Click the link in the second paragraph above for the full text. Incidentally, as you might have guessed, a “fourteener” peak is one that rises more than 14,000 feet above sea level.

90,000 Colorado acres offered for national protected area

By Bruce Finley
The Denver Post

The proposed Sangre de Cristo Conservation Area is advancing today with an unprecedented offer to protect 90,000 acres that includes three fourteener peaks — aimed at encouraging other private landowners to participate.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he will announce an agreement with billionaire New York hedge- fund manager and conservationist Louis Bacon for an easement preventing future development.

This would be one of the largest easements the federal government has secured — and the largest parcel the Obama administration has protected in its campaign to preserve pristine landscapes for wildlife and recreation.

Bacon’s holdings span grasslands, forests and tundra between Great Sand Dunes National Park and La Veta Pass on the east side of the San Luis Valley — including Mount Lindsey and Blanca and Little Bear peaks. The parcel would fill a crucial gap in the emerging 5-million-acre corridor through Colorado and New Mexico.

* * *

The Sangre de Cristo mountains are one of the nation’s last relatively uninterrupted migratory corridors for wildlife including deer, elk, cougars, black bears and bighorn sheep. Federal agencies own significant portions. But Bacon, media mogul Ted Turner in New Mexico and owners of the Taylor Ranch east of San Luis control much of the land extending south from Great Sand Dunes National Park along the mountains and the Rio Grande River toward toward Santa Fe.

 Links