As we get closer to winning this year's legislative fight on the Endangered Species Act, we expect to see the Bush Administration turn its attention to attacking the Act by weakening the regulations that govern its implementation.  Late last week, the Administration suffered a serious setback to this "if we can't gut the law itself then we'll just gut the regulations" strategy when a federal court threw out its new rules regarding pesticides and endangered species.

“Pesticides are driving America’s wildlife toward extinction, and this administration wants to remove the checks and balances that hold them accountable,” Earthjustice attorney Patti Goldman told the L.A. Times in an August 25 story.  “It’s time for them to stop trying to sidestep the law, and start addressing this problem in a serious and systematic way.”

The court found that the Bush Administration "plainly violated" the Endangered Species Act by eliminating reviews by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for new pesticides.

Here at Center for Native Ecosystems we’ve been thinking about how we as an organization can do a better job reducing our carbon emissions (and hence our contribution to global climate change).  The Denver Regional Council of Governments is sponsoring a program that allows businesses to pledge to encouraging their staff to use alternate transportation at least once a week.  This week we took the RideSmart Pledge.  As it turns out, most of our staff commutes by bus or bike most days of the week, so it’s an easy pledge to make, but we all think it’s important for organizations like ours to make these commitments in public and formal ways, so we did.

Mark Rey, the former logging lobbyist who ostensibly serves now as a guardian of the nation’s National Forests, occasionally gets pushback from surprising places.  For instance, he thought he could persuade some North Carolina sixth graders that giving away public land to logging companies was good for the country.  They not only had none of it, but the press didn’t much care for his ploy either.

Closer to home, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel ran an editorial today describing a conference call between Mr. Rey and the Sentinel’s editorial board.  Mr. Rey was apparently displeased that the Sentinel had criticized the Bush Administration for pulling the draft management plan for the GMUG National Forest at the last minute, reportedly because it didn’t quite open up enough of the forest to oil and gas drilling.  The Sentinel didn’t buy any of Mr. Rey’s explanations, and continues to stand by its criticism.  The Sentinel also had this to say about Colorado’s two Senators and their response to the Bush Administration’s last minute maneuvering:

Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar, who last week appealed to the secretary of agriculture and secretary of interior to forgo issuing any new mineral leases amid the state’s inventoried roadless acreage until the state’s Roadless Areas Review Task Force makes a policy recommendation to Gov. Bill Owens next month, demanded answers from Rey about the draft document’s shelving during a congressional committee meeting.

In sharp contrast to Salazar, Republican Sen. Wayne Allard demanded to know who authorized the $16,000 printing of a draft document that wouldn’t be released to the public and all but said someone’s head in the GMUG’s Delta offices should roll.

Amid it all, an underpaid and overworked GMUG National Forest staff got back to rewriting the draft plan to Washington’s liking. It’s impossible not to feel for them.

Although the number of new kittens is down this year, the exceptionally good news is that one of our Colorado-born kittens (born to a translocated cat) gave birth to her own kittens this year.  This marks another critical milestone in our lynx recovery effort (lynx babies growing up and having their own lynx babies).  Colorado Division of Wildlife reports a total of eleven known lynx kittens this year, down from 50, 39, and 16 in the previous three years.  The biologists don’t know why the numbers dropped so much this year, but Tanya Shenk – the lead CDOW researcher – told the Associated Press about one possible explanation: the more recent releases of adult cats might be disrupting the population’s social structure.

We saw pretty good news coverage of the story, including a good article in the Denver Post, another in the Grand Junction Sentinel, and Associated Press wire story that ran in the Washington Post and elsewhere (including, curiously enough, the Malaysia Star).  As we pointed out to the Denver Post, in addition to whatever factors might have led to the decline in reproduction this year, it is also very clear that we must also protect important lynx habitat if we really hope to recover this magnificent native cat.  To date, federal agencies have adamantly refused to take key steps.  The Forest Service is now years behind in adopting its promised lynx conservation plan for the region, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has essentially promised that they will not designate any critical lynx habitat in the Southern Rockies.

Welcome to our revamped web site!  We still have some work to do, but we think you'll find the new site much improved.  We welcome your thoughts and comments (and appreciate your letting us know about any problems you come across).