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Washington, DC––With
the Atlantic Canadian offshore seal hunt reopened and up to speed last year, and
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founder Paul Watson in a Dutch jail, possibly
en route to stand trial in Norway for sinking whaling ships, it's two down and
four to go for the wise-use wiseguys in a concerted drive to reverse the
influence of animal rights activism on wildlife use and misuse.
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Click on the image above
for a video clip of elephants courtesy of CNN. You need a multimedia player to
view this 503k QuickTime movie, which takes approximately 2 minutes to download
at 28.8 bps. |
Ahead: a push to
reopen international trade in elephant ivory and rhino horn at the June
triennial conference of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species, to be held in confirmed wise-use wiseguy habitat at Harare, Zimbabwe;
an effort to end the International Whaling Commission moratorium on commercial
whaling, easier for Japan and Norway to do in October if they succeed at Harare
in downlisting minke whales from CITES Appendix I to Appendix II; repealing the
U.S. "dolphin-safe" tuna import standard, with the so-called "dolphin death bill" moving quickly through
the House of Representatives; and gutting the Endangered Species Act.
Amid
the anti-wildlife political maneuvering, the Watson arrest came as a pointed
reminder that both popular direct-action victories and political gains can be
quickly reversed if mass movements lose momentum––as they have, bogged
down for much of the 1990s in efforts to "free" this or that animal
from captivity in a zoo or aquarium to live instead in sanctuary captivity.
As Gandhi warned when imprisoned, and as Watson remembered in a telephone
call to ANIMAL PEOPLE during a delay while changing planes on his way to
Europe, a cause focused on symbolic individuals is easily bought off with
concessions to those individuals, even as the cause itself is lost. Watson
recalled how Gandhi asked Indians to strike not for his freedom, but to free
themselves from British rule.
Challenge
Bill Clark,
CITES advisor to Friends of Animals, calls the CITES triennial "the most
challenging in the 24-year history of the treaty. To start with," Clark
warns, "the venue puts animal protection interests at a very distinct
disadvantage. Zimbabwe is clearly hostile to animal protection, and this
attitude is supported by very generous support from the government of Japan."
Natal Parks Board chief George Hughes told media after an April 16 meeting
of the Wildlife Utilisation Forum of South Africa that there is no governmental
opposition within South Africa to the proposal formally introduced to the CITES
agenda by Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Botswana to resume the elephant ivory traffic––purportedly,
for now, through a single big sale of stockpiled ivory to Japan, pending a
review of the conservation impact two years later. Opposition to the proposal,
Hughes claimed, comes exclusively from animal rights groups.
Other
African nations, trying to save elephants, take a different view, signaled March
8 when Ivory Coast banned ivory trafficking––though ivory remained
readily available at outdoor markets and jewelry stores.
An internal CITES
review of the proposal leaked to media earlier in April agreed that the proposed
deal probably wouldn't harm elephant conservation within the proposing nations.
But the authors added that they were "unable to predict what its
psychological effect on poachers and illegal traders in ivory will be."
They continued that although the Zimbabwean wildlife department, holding
an estimated $32 million worth of ivory, "is clearly in need of every
source of additional revenue available, including the sale of ivory, its lack of
management capability raises doubts as to whether the money raised will be used
effectively." The report noted that after the 1989 ivory trade ban was
imposed, "major illegal ivory dealing was allowed to proceed unchecked for
a period of at least a year."
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| David Barritt,
African director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, reminded media
that the mere rumor last year of an end to the ivory trade ban brought the
massacre of more than 280 elephants in the Congo. |
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"Zimbabwe too
has recently arrested ivory poachers and traders who have resumed their
activities in anticipation of the lifting of the ban," Barritt said.
As
recently as December 1996, Philippine customs inspectors intercepted a major
ivory shipment from South Africa, routed through Malaysia. Friends of Animals
identified possible Zimbabwean collusion.
Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda,
Mozambique, Botswana, and South Africa in March announced the formation of a new
multinational wildlife law enforcement agency, after nearly four years of
negotiation, but the ivory trade ban could be lifted and wholesale poaching
break loose much sooner than the agency could be expected to be effectively
organized against the threat.
FoA is the major conduit of anti-poaching
aid to the impoverished western African nations which are also attempting to
save their elephants––of whom most have only remnant populations. On
February 28, FoA thanked the Republic of China on Taiwan for $70,000 with which
to buy a second "Flying Tiger" patrol plane for use in Ghana. The
first of the specially designed planes has been on duty since mid-1996. They
take their name from the Flying Tiger squadron of American volunteers sponsored
by the Republic of China prior to U.S. entry into World War II.
The
U.S.-funded CAMPFIRE program on April 21 released a report alleging that 60,000
wild elephants threaten the lives and livelihoods of five million of the 11
million human residents of Zimbabwe. But if Zimbabwe actually has 60,000
elephants, that would represent a 20% decline from the 75,000 it claimed to have
in 1991, when it first lobbied to repeal the ivory trade ban. That figure was
widely doubted because Zimbabwe claimed only 43,000 elephants in 1987, and many
experts think that figure was about double the actual number. At that, getting
from 43,000 to 60,000 in 10 years would require the herd to have reproduced
faster than any other group of elephants on record.
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| South Africa, as in
1994, has introduced a proposal to lift the ban on selling southern white rhino
horn. South Africa, the only nation with legal rhino hunting, currently allows
about 50 rhinos a year to be shot on managed game reserves. An obvious problem
is the difficulty of distinguishing South African rhino horn, in processed form,
from horn of any other source. The northern white rhino population is reportedly
down to 31 individuals, residing in war-ravaged Garamba National Park, in
northern Zaire. At least five northern white rhinos were poached last year.
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Click on
the image above for a video clip of rhinoceri courtesy of CNN. You need a
multimedia player to view this 458k QuickTime movie, which takes approximately 2
minutes to download at 28.8 bps. |
Proposals
CITES Appendix I lists
700 species which are allegedly close to extinction due to commerce. These may
be traded only for scientific and conservation purposes. Appendix II lists
species which might become imperiled if trade is not strictly controlled.
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Among species the
U.S. has proposed for addition to Appendix I this year are all seven species of
sawfish shark, jeopardized by the use of their saws by the curio industry, and
the Mexican green-cheeked and yellow-headed parrots, at risk from captures for
the pet trade. Mexico is cosponsoring the parrot listing proposals.
The
U.S. has renewed a proposal, previously rejected at least twice, to add bigleaf
mahogany to Appendix II, cosponsored by Bolivia, which is the second largest
exporter of bigleaf mahogany after Brazil; is cosponsoring a German proposal to
add all currently unlisted sturgeon species to Appendix II, to help protect
Russian sturgeon species from caviar poaching; and has also proposed Appendix II
listings for the woodland herb goldenseal, timber rattlesnakes, alligator
snapping turtles, and all 12 species of map turtle. As ANIMAL PEOPLE
went to press, however, pressure from the pet trade had reportedly caused the
U.S. to amend the map turtle proposal to exclude some of the more common of the
12 map turtles, which were on the list as lookalikes for those believed to be in
potential danger. |
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The Netherlands is
also seeking numerous Appendix II listings: nine for birds, four for frogs. Most
are rainforest species. Finland, Bulgaria, and Jordan propose to list all
Eurasian brown bears on Appendix I, and Thailand wants to add wild water buffalo
and bantengs to Appendix I. |
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"In addition
to the 75 species-specific proposals," Clark adds, "there is a full
agenda of management and administration proposals," including "a
proposal that only scientifically justified quotas be accepted" for
Appendix II traffic, instead of accepting nations' unilaterally set trade quotas
on faith; "a proposal to tighten up the loopholes which are used by
circuses and other traveling activities," sometimes as cover "for
laundering and illegally transporting protected wild animals; a proposal to
expand CITES' law enforcement capabilities, and create a permanent committee
charged with law enforcement oversight; and debate" over the aim of Japan,
Zimbabwe, and allied nations "to reorient CITES toward becoming a pro-trade
agreement."
With 134 member nations, CITES is the most inclusive of
all international wildlife agreements. Most member nations have endangered
species protection laws of some kind, and the European Union as a whole also
supports CITES, having passed a new law to regulate the international wildlife
traffic, adopted December 12, addressing the situations of an estimated 27,000
species.
Debate has raged since CITES was first drafted, however, as to
whether the intent of CITES is "conservation" of species for
commercial use, the interpretation generally favored by governments and the
World Wildlife Fund, or the protection of endangered animals, the interpretation
most popular among animal advocacy groups, whose donors are the largest sector
of the public to express an opinion.
The CITES argument parallels the ongoing debate in the U.S. over the
intent of the Endangered Species Act, but in reverse. Wise-users favor the "conservation"
view of CITES because unlike the ESA, CITES does not protect habitat.
Particularly important habitats may be named World Heritage sites by the United
Nations and IUCN, but the designation carries no legal force.
ESA landmark
By contrast, since
conserving species under the ESA implies legal restrictions on property use, the
wise-use position on the ESA, as recently argued by House Resources Committee
chair Don Young (R-Alaska) is that it only requires protection of individual
members of endangered species. One may, in Young's interpretation, destroy prime
habitat for such an individual without violating the intent of the ESA, if one
doesn't directly and intentionally harm the individual. Young claims this was
his understanding when in 1973, as a Congressional rookie, he voted for the ESA.
But the Supreme Court on February 18 ruled Young was wrong, rejecting the
Pacific Lumber Company contention that U.S. District Judge Louis Charles erred
in 1993 when he banned logging in 137 acres of old growth redwood and Douglas
fir at the coastal edge of the Owl Creek forest in northern California to
protect marbled murrelet nesting habitat. The ruling was consistent with a 1995
Supreme Court verdict which likewise upheld the use of the ESA to protect
critical habitat as well as actual endangered animals and plants.
Anti-ESA
momentum was blunted during the 104th Congress, but most of the same members of
the House and Senate are back pushing similar bills, with Young again as
gatekeeper to the House floor. Taking advantage of public anxiety over severe
late winter flooding to advance dismantling the ESA piecemeal if it can't be
done all in one act, the Resources Committee on April 15 approved a bill by
California Republicans Richard Pombo and Wally Herger to exempt all flood
control-related activity from ESA requirements. The House Appropriations
subcommittee on the same day approved a rider to the Flood Supplemental
Appropriations bill that would waive ESA provisions in relation to "maintenance"
activities to prevent "imminent risk" of flooding, and was to take up
the Pombo/Herger bill on April 15.
"The Army Corps of Engineers' maintenance dredging of the Ma'alaea
Harbor in Hawaii could cause damage to coral reefs and threatened green sea
turtles," objected Defenders of Wildlife, "but it could be exempted
from the ESA under this language."
Both bills on ESA application to
flood control were introduced one day after a California appellate court struck
down a decree by Governor Pete Wilson that suspended the state ESA during floods
and other natural disasters. The California ESA covers 30 animals and 120
plants. The appellate decision had no direct relation to federal ESA
enforcement.
Earlier, on March 12, the House Resources Committee approved
a bill by Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho) to give property owners equal standing in
suing the government over ESA enforcement decisions with individuals and
organizations who sue on behalf of species they consider inadequately protected.
Senator Dirk Kempthorne (R-Idaho), identified by Defenders of Wildlife as "author
of the worst ESA bill introduced in the Senate last Congress," brought
forth a new ESA rewrite in March, omitting a "takings" provision to
compensate landowners for protecting endangered species, but––like the
Chenoweth bill––giving anyone affected by the ESA the ability to sue
the Secretary of the Interior to challenge enforcement decisions. The Kempthorne
bill was unanimously endorsed by Montana Senators Max Baucus (D) and Conrad
Burns (R), plus Montana House member Rick Hill (R).
Arguments for the
Chenoweth and Kempthorne bills were undercut, however, by a March 19 Supreme
Court ruling that superficially favored the wise-use side, reversing previous
rulings by the Federal District Court in Eugene, Oregon, and the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The Supreme Court held unanimously that
southern Oregon ranchers Brad Bennett and Mario Giordano already have the right
to sue the federal government for allegedly doing them economic harm by imposing
overstrict regulations on behalf of an endangered species––in this
case, two fish, the Lost River sucker and the shortnosed sucker. The decision
allows plaintiffs to argue that species may be adequately protected within the
requirements of the ESA by doing less than the USFWS or National Marine
Fisheries Service may demand. The Supreme Court thereby expanded opportunities
for foes of ESA enforcement to seek redress in court, but also provided a safety
valve against pressure to rewrite the ESA, especially over so-called "takings."
Wise-users and environmentalists both cheered the verdict. "This is
the first time in years that the Supreme Court has broadened standing in
environmental cases," Vermont Law School environmental law center director
Patrick Parenteau told Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times.
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| The verdict may
also have implications for costly but perhaps ecologically marginal projects
like the million-dollar effort at the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge near
Sesabe, Arizona, to recover the endangered masked bobwhite quail. |
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About 28,000
pen-raised masked bobwhite quail have been released at the refuge over the past
decade, but as few as 300 survive; most are soon eaten by coyotes, falcons, and
bullsnakes. The refuge occupies about 200 square miles formerly leased for
cattle grazing, still coveted by local ranchers even as manager Wayne Shifflett
burns the non-native grass off at frequent intervals to try to restore "the
only Sonoran savanna grasslands left in the U.S." Rancher Richard Bennett
and the Society for Environmental Truth have pushed at the political level to
oust Shifflet and regain grazing rights. Bennett may now be able to contend in
court as well that the quail project has caused him economic loss while failing
to achieve ESA goals.
Critical habitat
Recent
scientific discoveries about the nature of critical habitat may help smooth the
way toward both biologically and politically acceptable resolution of the
ESA-versus-property rights debate, if only by limiting the scope of the issue.
On January 24 Princeton University ecologist Andrew P. Dobson and associates
published in Science findings supporting 1988 and 1990 findings by
British ecologist Norman Myers that just 10 tropical rainforest locales,
amounting to two-tenths of 1% of the earth's surface, host 13% of known plant
biodiversity.
Both the Dobson et al and Myers findings were further reinforced
in mid-February by primatologist Russell Mittermeier, president of
Conservational International, whose team identified 17 international
biodiversity hot spots which occupy under 2% of the terrestrial earth, but
include 40% of all known plants and 25% of all known vertebrate animals.
"The formula for endangered species hot spots," said David
Wilcove of the Environmental Defense Fund, a co-author of the Dobson study, "is
that you have a lot of species with small ranges in areas undergoing intensive
development."
Dobson et al found that only 13 counties in the
entire U.S., making up just 1.33% of the total land mass, contained more than
half of the then 924 U.S. endangered species. The endangered species count has
since increased to 1,051––about 1% of all species known to occur in
the U.S. Of all the species known to occur since European settlement, 110 are
known to be extinct, according to the Nature Conservancy, while 416 are "missing
and feared extinct." Dobson and team discovered that six counties had half
the endangered mollusks; seven counties had half the endangered reptiles and
amphibians; seven counties had half the endangered mammals; nine counties had
half the endangered insects and arthropods; and 14 counties had half the
endangered fish. For no order was the combined area of these counties greater
than 2% of the U.S. land mass.
At the same time, Dobson et al found
that only the habitats of endangered birds and arthropods tend to overlap. Two
exceptions to that finding were in the California counties of San Diego and
Santa Cruz. Some San Diego county habitat includes endangered fish, mammals, and
plants, while some sites in Santa Cruz county include endangered arthropods,
reptiles, amphibians, and plants.
"There's relatively little need to
worry that the entire nation will be awash in endangered species," said
Wilcove. "The difficulty is that protecting endangered species on private
lands has not been very successful. That has been the Achilles heel of the ESA.
Some of these species are living on some pretty pricey real estate."
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| On April 16, the
Oregon Supreme Court ruled that Boise Cascade may seek governmental compensation
for loss of logging rights in protected spotted owl habitat––a victory
for the "takings" legal theory favored by wise-users, which holds that
regulation affecting the economic use of property is in effect a form of
expropriation. Court rulings have gone either way, but in recent years momentum
favoring the "takings" theory seemed to have slowed. The Boise Cascade
victory may now inspire a new rash of "takings" claims. |
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Photograph
courtesy of the World Wildlife Federation Canada |
"If courts come
down on the side that any time you protect a species, you have to pay for it, it
will be very tough on the species," commented USFWS assistant regional
director Kurt Smitch.
Pursuing high-profile amicable settlements of
habitat disputes, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt flew to Seattle for the
January 30 signing of a Habitat Conservation Plan jointly committing USFWS, the
National Marine Fisheries Service, and the Washington Department of Natural
Resources to protecting multiple species on 1.6 million acres of Washington
state property.
"This is the largest HCP we have ever prepared for
forested lands and the first to protect multiple species on state lands
statewide," Babbitt said, promising that "a wealth of fish and
wildlife species may now avoid the last-minute protections of the ESA." He
heralded the deal as "providing certainty and longterm economic opportunity"
for Washington rural residents.
Taking the cue, the Bureau of Land
Management on January 31 authorized Inland Resources Inc. to proceed in
developing 300 new oil and gas wells in the Monument Butte field, near Vernal,
Utah, after the company agreed to take measures to avoid disturbing a pair of
resident ferruginous hawks, several mountain plovers, and specimens of Uintah
Basin hookless cactus. Included in the package, Inland Resources will fund a
$15,000 study of ferruginous hawk population viability.
Babbitt took a
personal role again on March 17, praising the San Diego city council for
approving the designation of 172,000 acres of San Diego County as a biological
preserve for 86 endangered or protected species, including 57,000 acres within
the city limits. About half the land already belongs to federal, state, or local
governments; the county is to buy another 27,000 acres over the next 30 years.
Seven thousand affected private landowners are allowed to develop 25% of their
holdings, leaving 75% to nature. The agreement shaves up to seven years off the
permitting process for site development.
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Strong suits
Despite Babbitt's
effort to defuse conflict, new fights are still erupting and old ones resuming––as
on March 7, when the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity sued the Central
Arizona Project, alleging that endangered species protections it promised as
part of a 1994 settlement of a previous suit have still not been fulfilled.
Known for aggressive legal action, the Southwest Center two weeks later
filed a formal complaint against deputy Interior Secretary John Garamendi for
allegedly improperly allowing dam operators to flood Lake Isabella in January
1996 for the benefit of irrigators, coinciding with a decline of endangered
southwestern willow flycatchers from 34 nesting pairs near the lake to 29. About
a third of their habitat was submerged.
Explained Associated Press writer
Richard Cole, "USFWS district supervisor Dale Hall, according to a January
23, 1996 memo, said Garamendi had told him he planned to announce the dam would
be filled, and demanded an opinion to support it. USFWS refused to rush the
opinion, but Garamendi went ahead anyway." Further memos, Cole wrote,
indicate Garamendi was anxious to avoid giving the influential farm lobby a
cause celebre against the ESA during the 1996 election campaign.
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Responding to
another Southwest Center lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Roger Strand ruled on
March 26 in Phoenix that the southwestern willow flycatcher should receive
critical habitat protection. Two days earlier, Strand issued similar rulings on
behalf of jaguars, the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl, the Sonora tiger
salamander, and the Huacha water umbel, a rare plant. |
Photograph
courtesy of the Feline Conservation Center |
Interior Secretary
Babbitt objected to no avail that Congress has not given the USFWS enough
funding to designate critical habitat. Responded Strand, demanding the
designations within 120 days, "Agencies do not have carte blanche to decide
not to carry out their duties under the guise of resource allocation. Congress,
not the courts, is the proper body to provide funding relief."
The Strand rulings may inspire the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund to sue
soon on behalf of the Santa Ana sucker. The SCLDF nominated the sucker for an
ESA listing in 1994, after discovering that it had declined from common to
occupying just four known habitats in only 20 years. "It's our conclusion
that we should propose it for listing," USFWS biologist Paul Barrett said
on April 2, responding to the SCLDF petition under a court order to do so, "but
we have such a large workload that it's not the highest priority."
The
SCLDF on March 19 sued Montana lumber baron Tom Blixeth and the city of Rancho
Mirage, California, alleging that Blixeth got approval to build an 18-hole golf
course on critical habitat for bighorn sheep by using a 10-year-old impact
report that was written for a 530-house subdivision. The SCLDF objection is that
the golf course may draw the 95 remaining members of the Santa Rosa Mountains
bighorn herd into dangerous proximity to humans. The herd count was 325 when the
impact report was written.
Backlog
After a
year-long moratorium on adding species to the federal endangered and threatened
lists during the 104th Congress, the USFWS is working on the backlog. Ninety
species were listed within 12 months after the moratorium ended, most of them
native Hawaiian plants. The Quino checkerspot and Laguna Mountains skipper
became the ninth and tenth southern California butterflies to receive ESA
protection on January 17. About 225 of the 700 North American butterfly species
are found in southern California. Most are suffering from habitat loss, perhaps
none more than the Quino, among the most common species 30 years ago but now
found only at six California sites and one in Mexico.
Responding to a
Biodiversity Legal Defense Foundation petition filed in 1995, the USFWS proposed
the Preble's meadow jumping mouse for an endangered listing on March 25. Native
to Colorado and Wyoming, the mouse may be most plentiful on the grounds of the
U.S. Air Force Academy, where about 100 live along stream banks.
The USFWS
in mid-April downlisted the Dismal Swamp shrew, native to the Virginian coastal
plain, after colonies were discovered in a much broader range than was
previously suspected. In the interim, Portsmouth spent $300,000 to restore shrew
habitat destroyed by installing a water main, and Virginia Beach held up
building a bridge for a year while seeking shrew-safe construction alternatives.
––Merritt Clifton
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