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March 19, 2001
GLOBAL WARMING THREATENS NWR  Hot on the heels of President Bush's announcement--that he didn't really mean his campaign promise to combat global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions--comes a Reuters report that 7,000 acres of the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Maryland have been lost to the rising sea level as polar icecaps melt. 

March 9, 2001
USFS GETS WISER ON BUD COWS: After decades of foot dragging the USFS
has ordered cows owned by Anheuser-Busch off of sensitive high Sierra meadows "to stop ecological damage" says the San Jose Mercury News 3/5. Although the agency "almost never cancels grazing permits," 15 years of "Budweiser cows" trampling streams, denuding meadows and threatening "California's state fish, the California golden trout with extinction" were enough. Saving "75,000 a year in public subsidies" also helped tip The balance.  -Howard Garrett Orca Conservancy
tokitae@pugetsound.net      www.rockisland.com/~tokitae

March 8, 2001
LOGGERS KILL 22 MILLION MONARCHS?: Mexican environmentalists "believe" that "loggers may have deliberately wiped out some 22 million Monarch butterflies" to regain control of two protected sanctuaries says Reuters 3/7. Last year, to stem further loss of the butterfly's forest habitat, 44% of which has been lost since 1971, the Mexican government created 5 sanctuaries. Five million in compensation and an alternative jobs program were not enough to deter unknown parties from using pesticides to kill the butterflies which have migrated from Canada to the central Michoacan fir forests for 10,000 years. -Endangered Species Coalition

NO ESA HELP FOR IMPERILED ISLAND FOXES: Efforts to save California's
Channel Island foxes have been "hindered" by the USFWS moratorium on new ESA listings says AP 2/2. According to the LA Times 2/6, in the last 6 years the population of Channel Island foxes have dropped 90%, "making the house cat-sized fox one of North America's most imperiled canines." Biologists estimate that the remaining wild population of Channel Island foxes could be under 100 and the situation is so
desperate that they are considering expanding the captive breeding program. Disease and livestock grazing, which has "stripped the islands of shrubbery that protected them from predators, such as the golden eagle" have pushed the foxes to the brink of extinction.

February 9, 2001
BC DECLARES GRIZZLY HUNTING MORATORIUM: British Columbia has imposed a three-year moratorium on the hunting of grizzly bears, says the  Vancouver Sun 2/8. The immediate end to trophy hunting, "hailed by conservationists and wildlife biologists as being in the best interest of the grizzlies and British Columbians," will allow "outside experts" to "establish a definitive count" on the number of grizzlies in the province and is regarded as a "precautionary approach to wildlife
management" given the widely disparate estimates on the number of grizzlies in the province.

January 30, 2001
Iowa's Gov. Tom Vilsack vetoes mourning dove hunt bill.
Hunters were outraged that the governor defeated the bills they had worked hard to get through the state legislature , bills that would have extended sort hunting to include mourning doves.  National hunting organizations  were planning a protest demo and saying the state had the wrong governor..Almost everybody else was delighted with him.

January 30, 2001
HELP PRESERVE BRITISH COLUMBIA GRIZZLIES
Go to http://www.wildcanada.net where you can sign a letter that will be faxed to the premier's office and received a telephone number that
you can call as well.  In 2000, 238 grizzlies were killed by hunters, 108 of them by foreign trophy seekers.  The campaign to stop killing them is appropriately international  The species is further threatened by human development and decimation of wild salmon populations. 
Click here to read about Oweekeno tribe's accommodation to bears.

January 27, 2001
Mountain gorillas surviving human wars.  Rwandan mountain gorillas studied by the late Dian Fossey live on despite the presence of armed troops involved in these conflicts.  One group has grown from 320 to 355 members in spite of 15 deaths and suspensions in poaching patrols. 

January 27, 2001

Florida has agreed to provide more protection for manatees in response to a lawsuit filed by 18 environmental groups.  The agreement is based on protecting the endangered animals from injuries and death from motor boats.  There will probably be some really safe areas from which boats are entirely excluded as well as "low speed" or "no wake" areas.  Public education and better enforcement of speed regulations are also part of the agreement.  Almost 1000 of these gentle, slow-moving animals have been killed by boats in the quarter century.

January 24, 2001
Clinton allows Hopi to snatch and kill eaglets in Wupatki National Monument.  Despite a number of measures to protect habitat for wildlife, Clinton put another blemish on his record by granting  the request of the Hopi Indian tribe to snatch  golden eaglets from their nests in Wupatki National Monument and later kill them in a religious ceremony.   Environmentalists fear this will set a precedent for native American hunting in protected lands such as National Parks which have been havens for wildlife.  Like the Makah justification for killing whales, they can justify their claims by citing tradition.  Traditions like this one are best relegated to the past as we strive for a less violent society.

January 23, 2000
Hunter's resist ruling to ban off-road vehicle use in Florida's Big
Cypress National Preserve.  Decades of vehicle traffic have left "30,000 miles of trails" in this fragile ecosystem, home to the endangered Florida panther and other hard-pressed species.  The hunters plan to go to court to get the ruling overturned.

January 22, 2000
California power crisis bad for endangered salmon.  Power companies are applying to release more water from dams to generate more power.
Problem is the supply is normally used to alleviate dry conditions in
spring and summer when young fish are bound for the sea.  The reserve of held-back water is already lower than usual.  President Bush has stated a policy of not allowing environmental regulation to interfere with maximum power production.  One of his major financial backers, Ken Lay, is a member of the president's group on energy policy.

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