While Center for Native Ecosystems is hard at work promoting protections for threatened and endangered critters here in the Southern Rockies, I thought I’d highlight the protection efforts taking place across the Western United States and around the globe on behalf of two very distant cousins.

In Taiwan this week, officials began preparations for the seasonal migration of the milkweed butterfly.  The Taiwanese government has spent years tracking the migratory pattern of these creatures and will seal off a section of highway in order to ensure their protection during peak travel times.  Nets and ultraviolet lights will also be set up to guide the butterflies safely across the busy motorway.  A spokesperson for the National Freeway Bureau admitted that the highway closure will most likely cause congestion, but stated that, “Human beings need to coexist with the other species, even if they are tiny butterflies.”

On this side of the globe, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recently took tentative steps toward protecting another endemic butterfly: the Sand Mountain blue butterfly.  The butterfly, existing only in the sand dunes of Nevada, is threatened by the encroachment of off-road recreational vehicles on the delicate dunes.  Just last week, officials closed trails on approximately six square miles of public land after years of petitioning by conservation groups to have the butterfly listed as endangered (a ruling by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials on the butterfly’s endangered status is expected soon).  This stopgap measure is intended to appease both conservationists and off-road vehicle enthusiasts (an estimated 50,000 visitors per year) by closing some, not all, of the trails.  In fact, the BLM’s closures leave the main sand dunes open to motorized use.

While the Sand Mountain blue butterfly will certainly benefit from the limited sand dune closures, the BLM could learn something from the efforts of the Taiwanese government to protect the milkweed butterfly.  Despite the relatively high cost in time, effort and drivers’ frustration, the Taiwan government recognizes that, having already lost one species of milkweed butterfly to extinction, saving these tiny creatures is about valuing all forms of life, large and small.  We can only hope that the BLM, in Nevada and across our region, will begin to take into consideration the future of biodiversity throughout the west and start thinking of more than just the bottom line.

According to the March 14th Denver Post editorial Not quite as endangered now, "The Endangered Species Recovery Act (ESRA) holds much promise for uniting interest groups that have long fought over the 1973 law [Endangered Species Act]." ESRA was introduced in Congress in early March and if passed would provide $2.7 billion in tax incentives over 10 years to landowners who agree to put easements on their property or take other steps to enhance or manage endangered species habitat. This is great news and we at Center for Native Ecosystems feel ESRA's bi-partisan support and the way agriculture and conservation communities worked closely to craft it shows just how much common ground is shared between agriculture and conservation communities.

ESRA is co-sponsored by Senators Salazar and Allard, and Center for Native Ecosystems worked to make ESRA more effective and to encourage Senator Salazar's support this last February. With the majority of endangered plants, animals, and their habitats on private land in the U.S., we feel it's critical to do a better job working with and building long-term relationships with landowners and Colorado ranchers and farmers on endangered species issues.

In the last year, Center for Native Ecosystems has been doing just that, reaching out to Colorado ranchers, farmers, and landowners on the Endangered Species Act and U.S. Department of Agriculture conservation incentive programs.  We are actively working on ways to improve these popular programs for landowners and endangered species.  We held a summit last October between Colorado conservation and agriculture groups that included Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, American Farmland Trust, Colorado Environmental Coalition and  Environment Colorado.  Based on what we heard from this summit and individual outreach to Colorado landowners, conservation and agriculture groups we crafted a position paper for improving conservation incentive programs.  In the coming months we hope to collaborate with Colorado agriculture and conservation communities to see proactive changes to these important programs are implemented in the 2007 Farm Bill.  With more than $38.6 billion going to conservation incentive programs in the last farm bill in 2002 and funding for conservation increasing by more than 80 percent, the 2002 Farm Bill was the greenest ever passed.  That’s a trend that many Colorado farmers, ranchers and conservationists would like to see continue.

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), well known for his view that "global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," ended up worse for the wear after a Congressional hearing sparring match with the former Vice President and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), the chair of the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee (and thanks to Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action for the link).  Political theater aside, Senator Inhofe is increasingly lonely in his belief that the climate isn't changing quickly and that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions aren't the primary culprit.  The consequences of climate change for our native biological diversity are enormous, and it may pose the single largest threat to the ability of native plants and wildlife to survive the coming decades.

A 2003 Convention on Biological Diversity study outlined some of the major biodiversity threats posed by global warming.  Climate change will force many species in the United States to move northward whether that's an option or not.  Many of our most endangered plants, for example, will not have the option of shifting, especially those that are entirely dependent on specific, rare soil types.  Graham's penstemon, for instance, requires a very specific type of shale substrate and can't simply shift northward through different soil types to follow the shifting climate.  Similarly, mountain top species can't simply migrate downhill in order to start moving northward.  Species with restricted ranges - which includes the vast majority of endangered species here in our region - will be even more vulnerable to extinction than they are already.  Changes in the frequency, intensity, extent, and locations of erratic or extreme weather events will further heighten the risk.  Many suspect Colorado's prolonged drought is simply a precursor for what are likely to be longer and even more intense droughts in the coming years.  There are some potential links between the explosion of beetle-killed trees across the Rocky Mountain West and climate change.  The species most likely to do well are those that are already in great shape, and will almost certainly include a small number of weedy species, many non-native, that thrive in unstable environments.

The Bush administration's proposal to protect the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act has helped highlight what is a widespread and potentially devastating challenge, and for that we can thank the President (as well as our colleagues at Center for Biological Diversity, NRDC, and Greenpeace for forcing the issue).  At Center for Native Ecosystems, we will continue our efforts to protect key habitat for our most imperiled species, with a special eye toward also protecting the habitat they may need to shift with the shifting climate.  We are also taking a hard look at our own daily practices, assessing our energy use, committing to a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and challenging all of our neighbors in the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado building to do the same.  Stay tuned for more on our climate change initiative.

Late last week the Bush administration posted on a government web site a memorandum detailing its latest attempt to weaken the Endangered Species Act and protections for our most imperiled plants and wildlife.  In a practice sometimes called "taking out the trash," referring to Friday afternoon decisions designed to avoid notice by reporters, the document didn't appear on the Department of Interior web site until late Friday afternoon and the Bush administration didn't bother to announce its release.  It describes a new legal interpretation of the Endangered Species Act that would decimate protections for imperiled plants and wildlife across the United States.  It's a sophisticated legal maneuver but boils down to an utterly nonsensical interpretation of the Act:  when deciding whether a species is endangered, they will now only look at the habitat it currently occupies and not how much the species has declined over time.  In other words, if a species has been wiped out across 99% of its range but is doing ok in the remaining 1%, the Bush administration would refuse to protect it because it will only consider its status in those few places where it still survives.  If that weren't enough to gut the Act, it goes even further, insisting that all surviving populations of a species be headed toward extinction whether or not the species as a whole is at risk.

Of course many of the species we work to protect - the Deseret milkvetch, found in a single population along a highway south of Salt Lake City, comes to mind - have been reduced to only one or a few populations.  Even if those few populations are doing well, the species are still highly endangered because of their susceptibility to random events - like mud slides, a single bad storm, a careless bulldozer operator - that wipe out those populations.  Others, like the beautiful Graham's penstemon, are endangered in nearly but perhaps not quite all surviving populations, and thus wouldn't presumably qualify for protection.

If upheld by the courts, the new policy would eliminate critical protections for an estimated 80% of the imperiled plants and wildlife currently protected under the Act.  Even worse, it would create an incredible incentive for developers, oil and gas companies, and others to actively destroy habitat for imperiled species, since once that habitat is destroyed it won't count in the analysis of how endangered the species is.  As our colleague Kieran Suckling told the Associated Press, "this policy will do more to promote the purposeful killing of imperiled species than anything else this administration has ever done."  In fact, had this policy been in effect when the bald eagle, gray wolf, or grizzly bear were listed, they probably would not have been granted the protection of the Endangered Species Act.  The idea so completely defies common sense and ignores the law that the courts have rejected it in nearly every instance that the Bush administration has tried to use it, but the repeated rejection of a legal theory by the courts is no deterrent to an administration intent on gutting every one of our legacy conservation laws.

Recent research indicates that there is an ongoing Uranium boom in the American West.   The Environmental Working Group recently reported that Interior Department records show a sharp increase in mining claims on Western public lands since 2002, driven by a seven-fold increase in the price of Uranium.  According to these records, mining interests staked just 300 claims for uranium in Colorado in fiscal year 2004, but in the two years since uranium interests have staked almost 3,500 claims in the state. 

A large number of these new claims are within the uranium rich Dolores River Basin.  Uranium mining on public land has the potential to degrade the native ecosystems and further threaten imperiled species in the Dolores River Basin.  We working to protect this special place from threats posed by Uranium mining. 

In a remarkably schizophrenic gesture, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service apparently ordered its scientists not to discuss polar bears, sea ice, and climate change even as it concedes that polar bears indeed might be threatened by global warming and the loss of sea ice.

As the New York Times, Greenwire, and dozens of other papers reported today, this "new requirement" prohibits U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists or other employees traveling in the Arctic from discussing the three issues unless they are designated as an official "spokesman" and verify that they understand the "administration's position" on them.

Recall that the Bush administration issued a formal proposal to protect the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act, admitting that climate change and the loss of sea ice is a major factor in the polar bear's demise. 

Our colleague Kieran Suckling of Center for Biological Diversity (one of the groups that petitioned for polar bear protection) offers a characteristically astute assessment:  "This is positively Orwellian.  Only the worst cynic could admit the polar bear is being driven extinct by global warming, then issue a gag order to stop government scientists from talking about it."