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While You Were Out
I was out on maternity leave August 11-November 5. It’s interesting to be an outsider for a few months and then reenter the inner workings of CNE and endangered species conservation. Here’s my take on the big things that happened.
More Bush Administration Mixed-Bag Decisions
Two big decisions affecting species we’re working on were announced. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed with our argument that Pariette cactus is a separate species, and proposed to treat it as such. Yay! Of course, this was something that they first proposed to do 11 years ago, and the Service authorized tons of oil and gas drilling in its habitat since then, but, hey, better late than never. The Service also agreed that the very drilling that the agency has allowed over the past decade threatens the cactus with extinction, and found that our petition was correct – the cactus needs to be protected as Endangered rather than Threatened. But in usual Bush administration fashion, they refused to actually make the change – that will take yet another lawsuit on our part. Instead, they found that the cactus warranted additional protection but that they were precluded from adding it to the Endangered list now because of higher priority actions. Such as? I guess we’ll need to ask them in court.
And the Service also announced that they have officially decided that the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse is indeed a valid subspecies that warrants continued protection under the Endangered Species Act. Yay! But there’s the usual catch – now they’re claiming that the mouse only warrants protection in Colorado. The mice in Wyoming are on their own. There was a public hearing in Lakewood about this on December 10th, and one in Wheatland on December 12th. Written comments can also be submitted until January 22nd.
More Movement on Making Oil and Gas Leasing Accountable
The Bureau of Land Management in Utah suspended their quarterly oil and gas lease sale in large part because of our successful appeal of previous leasing in black-footed ferret habitat. The Interior Board of Land Appeals agreed with us that the BLM must do additional environmental analysis before signing over drilling rights on public lands, and now it seems like they are scrambling to start actually assessing potential impacts before ceding these areas to industry. This is a straight out yay.
Climate Change Awareness Continues to Mount
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize, which is totally amazing. My husband was a grad student at CU’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research in the late 1990’s, and collected lake sediment cores and ice cores in Greenland and Labrador, and modeled the impacts of volcanic eruptions on past climate. His advisor, Jonathan Overpeck, was one of those honored. CNE has always included the threat of climate change in our Endangered Species Act listing petitions, even though at first our attorneys recommended against doing so. Now acknowledging that climate change may exacerbate other threats to imperiled species is mainstream.
Staff Updates
Three months speeds by, yet some changes were registered. Brian helped sea turtles in Costa Rica. Megan finished the hopefully final draft of her thesis. Melissa oversaw the publication of our first print newsletter. Josh fought off mono while running the office. Jacob ran for mayor of Golden (and won the day after I returned!), and announced that he will be leaving CNE. And I am feeling incredibly lucky because I’m able to do what I love by working at CNE half-time and yet still spend lots of time with our new little boy, Owen.
The only real mention of our work that I remember seeing while I was out was an AP article on the Preble’s decision, so that was a good reminder about how much of what we do goes on behind the scenes. But please know that we are all busy plugging away wrapping up the last deadlines for 2007 and planning for our 2008 campaigns, hoping that all the imperiled critters and plants emerge from their winter slumbers to a more secure future.
