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Successes and Highlights: 2007
Taking a look back, here are some of the highlights of our most effective and successful year so far!
• Protecting the Preble’s Meadow Jumping Mouse and its Front Range Streamside Habitat. Because of our relentless efforts to force the Bush administration to rely on good science in its decision about Endangered Species Act protection, the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse enjoyed more than two years of additional protection across its entire range and will remain fully protected throughout the Colorado portion of its range. As a result of our campaign the Department of the Interior also admitted to political meddling in key Preble’s meadow jumping mouse decisions. This protection is critical, especially in the face of continuing sprawl across Colorado’s Front Range.
• Slowing the Explosion of Oil and Gas Drilling. Our challenges over the past several years have resulted in the adoption by the Bureau of Land Management of key endangered species protections on an estimated 1.4 million acres of Bureau lands in Utah and 300,000 acres in Wyoming. We have also secured withdrawal of nearly 500,000 acres of important habitat from lease sales across Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. Among the many species benefiting from our efforts are Gunnison sage-grouse, Parachute penstemon, white-tailed prairie dog, black-footed ferret, and lynx. Many of these successes are the result of our precedent-setting legal decision late last year in a challenge to oil and gas leasing in Utah. With several coalition partners, we secured another key legal victory in western Colorado’s South Shale Ridge area, and our challenge of a 900-well drilling proposal in eastern Utah halted the project while we are advancing Endangered Species Act protection for the highly endangered Pariette cactus.
• Defending the Endangered Species Act and Improving Conservation of Endangered Species on Private Land. Center for Native Ecosystems is building on our tremendous success last year – with the rest of the conservation community – defending the Endangered Species Act against the fiercest attack in at least a decade. We led the defensive effort in Colorado last year, and while we remain vigilant for signs of renewed attacks we’ve been able to focus instead on advancing Farm Bill provisions and other legislation that improve private land conservation of endangered species. We are simultaneously building on our impressive network of relationships in the farming and ranching communities.
• Celebrating Endangered Species Day. The United States Senate passed a resolution declaring May 18, 2007 as Endangered Species Day, encouraging schools to set aside a few hours for students to learn about what endangered and threatened species live in their state, why they are endangered, and what they can do.
• Growing the Toolbox. In coalition with The Nature Conservancy, Black Canyon Land Trust, and several other partners we completed an effort earlier this year to acquire and protect from development the most important surviving habitat for the clay-loving wild buckwheat, a highly imperiled native Colorado wildflower. We collectively raised $380,000 to purchase the land and fund the conservation management plan for the population. We are also pursuing an expansion of the existing critical habitat designation to include several important but more recently discovered populations.
• Unmatched Legal Prowess. We are currently involved in six lawsuits to protect endangered species, including litigation on behalf of white-tailed prairie dog and Gunnison sage-grouse. When forced to go to court as a last resort, our litigation record is 25-3 – we almost never lose.
• Telling the Important Stories. So far in 2007 we have generated or favorably influenced well over 700 news stories, including articles in the Washington Post, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, Casper Star Tribune, Billings Gazette, Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, Rapid City Journal, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Chicago Sun-Times, Albuquerque Tribune, Craig Daily Press, and Salt Lake Tribune.
• Restoring the Sagebrush Sea. We are leading a coalition of conservation groups in the fight to secure Endangered Species Act protection for the white-tailed prairie dog, one of the most important keystone species of the Sagebrush Sea. Center for Native Ecosystems participated in a relocation effort, helping to move white-tailed prairie dogs out of harm’s way. Earlier in the year we persuaded the Colorado governor’s office to push the BLM for stronger greater sage-grouse protections – another key Sagebrush Sea species – from oil and gas drilling in northwestern Colorado, and the U.S. Department of Interior conceded that their preliminary Endangered Species Act finding for this keystone species should have been positive (instead of negative) and committed to conducting the formal status review. We are also helping to lead a campaign –with several conservation groups and Colorado’s San Miguel County – to protect the Gunnison sage-grouse, reduced to at most a few thousand birds.
• Restoring Scientific Integrity at the Bush Administration. In an exceptional collaboration with Union of Concerned Scientists, Center for Biological Diversity, and other organizations, last year we produced a Washington Post exposé on illegal political interference. We leveraged this story into Congressional hearings, an Interior Inspector General’s report further validating and detailing the illegal political interference by Bush appointees in Endangered Species Act decisions, repeated flushes of news coverage on the issue, the firing of the key administration appointee, demands by key Members of Congress that the administration fix the problems, and Congressional momentum toward improving the barriers between science and politics at the Department of the Interior. The Bush administration is now revisiting a suite of these decisions.
Successes and Highlights in 2007