Via the Center for Biological Diversity:

Get the Lead Out for California Condors!

Thanks to pressure from our Get The Lead Out campaign, the California Fish and Game Commission began a review of state game-hunting regulations in February to address ongoing lead poisoning of California condors. Condors are being poisoned from eating carrion contaminated by lead fragments from hunters’ ammunition. Tejon Ranch, the largest private landowner in the state, recently announced that non-lead ammunition will be required for all hunting and predator control on their 270,000-acre ranch starting this fall to protect condors. If Tejon can go lead-free, the rest of California should be able to follow suit.

The Department of Fish and Game proposed four alternatives to the Commission for amendments to state hunting regulations to reduce lead poisoning of condors. The Department’s preferred alternative would end the use of lead ammunition for hunting big game and non-game birds and mammals within the current condor range in California. Other alternatives include increasing the area of the regulations to include the historic condor range, requiring non-lead ammunition for hunting statewide, and no regulatory action. See www.dfg.ca.gov/html/pubnotice.html for information about the proposed regulations.

This is your opportunity to help protect a range of rare birds from lead poisoning — not only condors but also other avian scavengers such as bald and golden eagles and turkey vultures. Please help us send a strong message to the Commission to immediately end the use of lead ammunition for hunting activities in the condor range for which safe, reliable bullets and shot are readily available, and to phase out the use of all lead ammunition for hunting statewide.

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare environment environmental environmentalism environmentalist action alerts Center for Biological Diversity wildlife conservation hunting lead lead ammunition condors Tejon Ranch California bald eagles golden eagles eagles

Via the Center for Biological Diversity:

Restore Crucial Endangered Species Funding!

One of the biggest obstacles to protecting endangered species has been inadequate funding for the Fish and Wildlife Service’s endangered species program. Poor funding under the Bush administration has hobbled the agency’s ability to fulfill its responsibilities under the Endangered Species Act. Congress has an opportunity to restore adequate funding to these programs through the appropriations process.

Please ask your senator to support current Senate efforts to give federal agency programs the funds they need to protect and recover endangered species and their habitats.

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare environment environmental environmentalism environmentalist action alerts center for biological diversity esa endangered species act endangered species wildlife conservation funding

Via the Center for Biological Diversity:

Protect Mountain Caribou Habitat in British Columbia

One of the most endangered mammals in North America, the mountain caribou has been reduced to under 1,900 animals by a combination of logging of old-growth forest habitats, road building, and motorized recreation. Primarily found in the mountains of British Columbia, a small number of animals still cross the border into parts of Idaho, eastern Washington and Montana, where they are protected as an endangered species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. In Canada, the British Columbia government is currently deciding how much old-growth forest habitat it will protect for caribou. Your comments are needed to ensure this globally unique animal receives the protection it deserves.

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Tagged: environment environmental environmentalism environmentalist action alerts Center for Biological Diversity British Columbia habitat loss conservation mountain caribou caribou logging

UPDATE, 2/9/07, via the Center for Biological Diversity:

Under fire from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and American Indian groups, the Salt River Project announced on Feb. 7 it is abandoning plans to reopen the Mohave Generating Station, which would have revived the notorious Black Mesa coal mine in Arizona and its 273-mile pipeline to Nevada. Black Mesa was one of the largest strip-mining operations in the country. The project threatened to deplete aquifers linked to the Navajo and Hopi’s sacred springs, using pristine, high-quality groundwater to pump coal slurry across the arid desert.

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UPDATE, 2/1/07:

The Center for Biological Diversity also sent out an action alert on this issue:

Help Keep the Notorious Black Mesa Mine Closed!

The Black Mesa strip mine is one of the most infamous strip-mining operations in North America. The mine is owned by Peabody Coal Company and is operated on long-term leases from the Office of Surface Management and the Navajo and Hopi Nations. The indigenous people on the two reservations have protested these mines for decades because of the relocations, water withdrawals, and damage to local springs the mining has caused.

Mining stopped two years ago because of environmental violations at the coal-fired Mohave power plant that’s operated with coal from the Black Mesa mines. But now the Office of Surface Management wants to re-open the mine and re-open the power plant to fuel suburban growth in Phoenix.

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Via the Natural Resources Defense Council:

Speak out to protect Native American sacred springs from destructive coal mining

The Interior Department is currently accepting comments on a request from the Peabody Western Coal Company to extend its Arizona mining operations, which have removed billions of gallons of precious groundwater from local Hopi and Navajo lands.

Send a message right away urging the agency to consider less destructive alternatives to Peabody Coal’s proposed mining.

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Tagged: environment environmental environmentalism environmentalist action alerts nrdc Natural Resources Defense Council Peabody Western Coal Company Arizona mining groundwater Hopi Navajo center for biological diversity

Via the Center for Biological Diversity:

Save the Grenada Dove From Extinction!

The government of Grenada, a small island in the Caribbean, is poised to privatize a national park to make way for a sprawling, deluxe Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts development. This will annihilate the endangered Grenada dove-the country’s National Bird-of which only about 100 individuals remain in the world. Tell Four Seasons management to keep Mt. Hartman National Park protected so that the embattled dove has a chance for survival.

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare action alerts center for biological diversity environment environmental environmentalism environmentalist conservation Grenada dove Grenada Caribbean

Via the Center for Biological Diversity:

Stop Salvage Logging on the Grand Canyon’s North Rim

The North Kaibab Ranger District has just proposed one of the largest and most destructive logging projects in recent history. It plans to log approximately 85 million board feet from the forests of the north rim of the Grand Canyon. A commercial timber sale of that size would be considered large even in the Pacific Northwest, but on the arid rim of the Grand Canyon, it is vast.

The Forest Service proposes to tractor-log about 10,000 acres of forestland that have already been impaired by forest fire. Tractor logging, though cheap, is the most destructive form of logging because it entails driving heavy machinery over fragile forest soils and dragging trees out over the ground; it causes huge impacts to soil and water quality and opens pathways for non-native species like thistles and cheatgrass. Cheatgrass has already saturated the western side of the North Kaibab Ranger District and is currently working its way down Kanab Creek into the national park.

Click here to read more and take action.

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare action alerts center for biological diversity environment environmental environmentalism environmentalist logging salvage logging Grand Canyon North Rim tractor logging conservation

Via the Center for Biological Diversity:

Protect Polar Bears From Global Warming

In response to the Center for Biological Diversity’s petition and lawsuit, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to list the polar bear as a threatened species. Polar bears are threatened with extinction as global warming literally melts away their Arctic sea-ice habitat.

Please let the Bush administration know that you support the proposal to list the polar bear, and that we must reduce greenhouse gas pollution immediately to slow global warming and save the polar bear from extinction.

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Tagged: animals animal+rights animal+welfare environment environmental environmentalism environmentalist action+alerts center+for+biological+diversity endangered+species polar+bears esa global+warming climate+change conservation

Via the Center for Biological Diversity:

Stop the war against the Mexican Wolf!

Fewer than 10 years ago, the federal government reintroduced Mexican Gray Wolves into Arizona and New Mexico: progeny of the few wolves that survived the government’s six-decade extermination program and that were trapped for captive breeding. The reintroduction was meant to recover and restore to the wild Mexican Wolves after their near extinction from an extermination campaign that included poisoning, trapping, shooting, and den-excavating.

But now the government is again killing Mexican Wolves: locating them by radio collars and shooting them from the air, digging up wolf pups that then don’t survive captivity, trapping wolves and splitting up family packs.

Why is the government doing this? Because the livestock industry successfully pushed for rules and protocols that require such aggressive predator control of wolves in the Southwest, far beyond government violence carried out against wolves or other endangered animals elsewhere. […]

Last month the Center for Biological Diversity sued the Fish and Wildlife Service to save the Mexican Wolf. The lobo also needs your direct help. Please request congressional hearings into this mismanaged program in order to apply added pressure on the Bush administration to stop the war against the Mexican Gray Wolf.

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Tagged: animals animal+rights animal+welfare action+alerts center+for+biological+diversity mexican+gray+wolves wolves extermination aerial+gunning livestock animal+agriculture

Via the Center for Biological Diversity:

Act now to protect America’s eagles!

On Feb.16, 2007, the bald eagle will likely be formally removed from the list of Endangered Species Act protections. This is good news, as the bald eagle population has rebounded throughout much of the United States. (The Center for Biological Diversity is currently working to secure separate Endangered Species Act protections for the highly imperiled Arizona population of bald eagles).

Even after being removed from the endangered species list, the bald eagle will continue to be protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act which prohibits actions that disturb bald eagles, including actions that harass and cause stress to bald eagles. However, the Bush administration has proposed changing the definition of the term “disturb” to mean only those actions that cause eagles to be killed, injured, or to abandon their nests. Not only does this fly in the face of the conventional and dictionary definitions of the word “disturb,” but actions short of causing immediate injury or death would be permitted.

A better definition of the term “disturb” is Option #2[1] in the administration’s proposal. This better reflects the Act’s intent to protect eagles from actions that significantly disrupt the bird’s normal behavior. Option #2 recognizes that eagles can be seriously harmed by activities that do not cause visible physical injury, death, or nest abandonment.

Please tell the Bush administration today that Option #3 does not adequately protect bald eagles! Ask them to adopt Option #2. Comments must be received by the end of the day Thursday, Jan. 11, 2007, so please send comments via email today.

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Tagged: animals animal+rights animal+welfare action+alerts center+for+biological+diversity eagles bald+eagles esa Endangered+Species+Act environment environmental environmentalism environmentalist

Via the Center for Biological Diversity:

Protect Furnace Creek from Off-Road Vehicle Abuse

Furnace Creek is a rare and delicate desert creek ecosystem located on the east side of the White Mountains near the California-Nevada border.

Furnace Creek provides riparian habitat used by the endangered Southwestern Willow Flycatcher during migration and provides breeding habitat for Costa’s Hummingbird and eight other species of conservation concern.

In 2001, as a result of a lawsuit brought by the Center, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) agreed to close Furnace Creek Canyon to stop ongoing off-road vehicle abuse. In reality, the BLM finally closed the area in 2003, putting an end to ORVs riding in the creek bed. The closure helped end damage to fragile riparian vegetation in the creek and illegal road proliferation onto Tres Plumas Flats in the Inyo National Forest. Since the closure, the riparian area has recovered significantly, and use of the canyon by many rare and imperiled species has increased.

Now the BLM has issued a new Environmental Assessment and seeks to amend the California Desert Conservation Area Plan to determine whether Furnace Creek Canyon should remain closed to motorized vehicles. Only if this precious area remains closed will the riparian habitat continue its remarkable recovery. The Environmental Assessment includes alternatives that would allow ORV use again in Furnace Creek Canyon. […]

Tell the Bureau of Land Management you support the continued closure of Furnace Creek to destructive use by off-road vehicles (ORVs). Your comments are needed by Monday, January 15th, 2007.

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Tagged: environment environmental environmentalism environmentalist action+alerts center+for+biological+diversity furnace+creek blm orv off-road+vehicles furnace+creek+canyon conservation