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Swim for your lives

2008-08-22T15:57:23Z

Today’s AP reports that aerial surveys conducted by the Minerals Management Service on August 16 recorded 9 polar bears swimming far from shore or any pack ice. As Arctic sea ice disappears, recording incidents of such long-distance swimming is becoming increasingly common.

Steven Amstrup, senior polar bear scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage, said the bears could have been on a patch of ice that broke up northwest of Alaska's coast.
"The bears that had been on that last bit of ice that remained over shallow shelf waters, are now swimming either toward land or toward the rest of the sea ice, which is a considerable distance north," he said in an e-mail response to questions.
It probably is not a big deal for a polar bear in good condition to swim 10 or 15 miles, Amstrup said, but swims of 50 to 100 miles could be exhausting.
"We have some observations of bears swimming into shore when the sea ice was not visible on the horizon," he said. "In some of these cases, the bears arrive so spent energetically, that they literally don't move for a couple days after hitting shore."

The risk of increased polar bear drownings is one of many affects of global warming and receding Arctic sea ice on polar bears about which biologists have long been concerned. These concerns first surfaced after a mass polar bear drowning off the coast of Alaska, where up to twenty-seven polar bears may have perished during a single storm. Writing about this (and other) incidents in its decision to list the polar bear as a threatened species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife noted that

This suggests that drowning related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of recession of pack ice with longer open-water periods continues.

What is the Bush Administration’s response? Why, new proposed regulations that attempt to foreclose any avenue to address global warming pollution through the Endangered Species Act, of course! Speaking of which, yesterday NRDC and over 100 other conservation groups, representing millions of Americans, requested that the Department of the Interior extend its comment period on the proposed regulations and hold public hearings on its proposed regulation. Let’s hope they listen.

"More protection, less red tape" . . . yeah, right.

2008-08-21T16:03:01Z

Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne has a wildly misleading op-ed in USA Today about his proposed regulatory changes to the Endangered Species Act. The Secretary makes it sound like his sole concern when proposing these changes was preventing the Endangered Species Act from being used to address greenhouse gas emissions (more about that later). He writes:

Congress, however, never intended this law to be the solution to global climate change. The law is already a complex source of red tape and litigation. The possibility of it becoming a tool for greenhouse-gas oversight — as a consequence of the polar bear listing in May — threatened to overwhelm agency experts and do more harm than good to the cause of conservation.
So the Interior Department recently proposed common-sense regulations that would prevent the law's consultation process from becoming a back-door mechanism to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

This is simply wrong. More than that, it is deliberately wrong.

As I’ve discussed before, the core of the new regulations is a provision that allows federal agencies to determine for themselves if their contemplated activities may negatively affect protected wildlife. And if they decide “no”? Well, then the agency can proceed with its plan without any outside review. These “self-consultations” would replace existing rules that require federal agencies to first consult with independent scientists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service if they conclude that any of their projects “may affect” a protected animal or plant.

Here’s the point: self-consultation is an idea that has been rattling around Washington, D.C. (promoted by industry groups) for years, certainly long before the polar bear ever shambled its way onto the list of endangered and threatened species. In fact, variations of self-consultation has been tried (often unsuccessfully) on the EPA’s regulation of pesticides and on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management projects, such as logging and prescribed burns—none of which has thing one to do with global warming. If adopted, the self-consultation rule will apply to all federal agencies and to all listed species. Everything from road construction to off-road-vehicle use to dredging rivers will be impacted. Using the polar bear’s listing as an excuse for such mischief is like blaming a hospital patient for the high cost of healthcare.

USA Today understands the broader implications of such a massive abdication in oversight. In a parallel editorial that also ran today it writes:

But the plan to remove automatic review by fish and wildlife experts is truly alarming. It's one of several regulations the lame-duck Bush administration is trying to push through to reward its backers and tie the hands of its successors.

In this case, it's ludicrous to expect that federal agencies that build dams and roads will seriously search out impediments to their projects. Even small children can cite the fox-and-henhouse parable.

So what about that global warming argument? There is absolutely no reason that the Endangered Species Act, any more than the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Protection Act, or any of America’s other bedrock environmental laws, shouldn’t be used to control global warming pollution providing, of course, that the situation warrants it and that law applies. If this is an issue that Secretary Kempthorne is truly concerned about, then that’s debate he should have in Congress. What he should not be doing is using the polar bear as an excuse to weaken the Endangered Species Act for all of America’s wildlife.

What’s in a name?

2008-08-18T22:02:59Z

Andrew Sullivan links to a post by Professor Jonathan Adler at The Volokh Conspiracy about a poll that shows people are much less likely to describe themselves as “environmentalists” than they were 20 years ago.

Adler is correct, I think, when he writes: “Does this mean that Americans are less supportive of environmental protection than in the past? I doubt it.” Indeed, if you look at the poll itself, it’s pretty clear that there isn’t a whole lot of data to support that contention. In what strikes me as a bit of wishful thinking, however, Adler then surmises:

One possibility is that an increasing percentage of Americans reject the idea that the environmentalist movement has a monopoly on what it means to be "pro-environment." Americans who support environmental protection may feel uncomfortable with either the tactics or policy prescriptions embraced by establishment environmental groups. If so, it should not be much of a surprise.
A decade or so ago --back in my own activist/think tank days -- I commissioned polling work on what Americans believed it meant to be "pro-environment," finding that many Americans saw "conservative" approaches to environmental protection -- e.g. decentralization, protection of property rights, non-regulatory measures, etc. -- as "pro-environment." (See summaries here and here.)
I believed then -- and believe now -- that this and other polling data suggest that establishment environmentalist groups lack an enforceable monopoly on what it means to be "pro-environment." Insofar as conventional "greens" dominate the field, it is by default. Conservative and libertarian types generally -- and conservative politicians in particular -- have largely ceded the field. They either endorse conventional policies on the cheap, or oppose establishment environmentalist proposals outright without proposing a positive alternative.

As I’ve written about before, the fundamental problem with this line of reasoning is that it mistakes the environmental movement for one that can be easily assigned a place on the conservative-to-liberal spectrum. While that may well have been true at one time, I don’t think it’s nearly as true today as it once was. In fact, “establishment environmental groups” are far more pragmatic than most commentors give them credit for and are more than willing to embrace the kind policy prescriptions that Professor Adler mentions—if they work. Look at the mainstream environmental support for a cap-and-trade mechanism (which is, at its base, a market mechanism) to control global warming pollution. Or the support by some groups for individual fishing quotas (a property-rights approach to the tragedy of the commons).

But—and here’s the crucial difference with many of those who try to create “conservative” environmental agendas—environmental groups in my experience don’t reject or accept solutions to environmental problems based on how they fit into a predetermined ideological spectrum. Do many within the environmental movement have biases and preconceptions? Of course. And do some of those biases make them skeptical of things like “decentralization”? Mine certainly do. But if you have to ask whether an environmental policy is “conservative” or “protects property rights” in order to support it, then I would suggest that your agenda has more to do with something other than protecting the environment.

So why the poll result? As Frank Luntz famously pointed out in his 2003 memo to Republicans about how to communicate about the environment: “‘Environmentalism’ can have the connotation of extremism to many Americans, particularly outside of the Northeast.”

Such things do not happen by accident, of course. Just like the term “liberal” and “religious right” did not spontaneously acquire negative connotations, I believe there has been a concerted effort to brand “environmentalists” as extremists, self-righteous, nature worshippers, etc., by our political opponents. That effort is the more likely explanation for ABC’s poll results than a need for a “conservative” environmentalism.

Profiles of the edge

2008-08-17T19:36:13Z

Like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to the storm tossed cliffs of an angry sea, many plants and animals in Virginia and Maryland, such as the seabed amarath, cling to life as they pull against the swirling drain of extinction. Today the Washington Post begins its profile of 17 of the District of Columbia region’s endangered and threatened species, which will run over the next several weeks. The article starts off by recapping the Bush Administration’s recent proposed regulations to gut the Endangered Species Act’s consultation provisions, but then goes on to place that proposal in the context of specific species. It also includes a nice gallery of artwork. One of the dangers of the Bush Administration’s proposal is that it seems so abstract. But its consequences will be all too real, not just for imperiled wildlife in D.C., but across the United States. Hopefully, the Post’s profiles will remind legislators returning from their summer break what’s really at stake.

[This post is my entry into the NRDC Bulwer-Lytton © Environmental Blogging Competition]

UPDATE: Comment Period on the Bush Administration’s Proposal to Gut the Endangered Species Act Begins Today

2008-08-15T20:13:11Z

The Bush Administrations’ last-minute proposal to dramatically weaken Endangered Species Act protections for fish, wildlife, and plants has now been officially published in the Federal Register. Because the Fish and Wildlife Service is refusing to accept any comments by e-mail, the NRDC Action Fund will be collecting comments and submitting them directly to the federal government at the close of the comment period.

If you would like to learn more about the regulations or comment on them, click here to do so simply and efficiently. If you would like to submit comments directly to the agency, you can also use the federal government’s web portal, here.

P.S. I'll be debating the proposed regulations with Kaursh Arha, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, on Planet Green's Focus Earth, hosted by ABC's Bob Woodruff this Saturday at 6:00 p.m.

Bush Administration Decides to Suppress Public Comment on Wildlife Regulations

2008-08-13T19:59:09Z

They never cease to amaze. The Bush Administration apparently decided sometime last fall that it will no longer accept any public comments on proposed Endangered Species Act regulations by e-mail or fax. I stumbled on this change when looking at the text of Monday’s proposal by the Administration to gut large sections of Endangered Species Act’s safety net. That proposal reads:

ADDRESSES: Submit your comments or materials concerning this proposed rule in one of the following ways:
(1) Through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov. Follow the instructions on the website for submitting comments.

(2) By U.S. mail or hand-delivery to Public Comment Processing, Attention: 1018-AT50, Division of Policy and Directives Management, US Fish and Wildlife Service, 4401 North Fairfax Drive, Suite 222, Arlington, VA 22203. We will not accept e-mail or faxes. We will post all comments on http://www.regulations.gov. This generally means that we will post any personal information you provide us (see the Public Comments section below for more information).

Now, it is absolutely standard practice for federal agencies to accept comments by electronic mail. I just take a look at today’s Federal Resister and you’ll notice that the Environmental Protection Agency is accepting public comments via e-mail (see here or here, for example). But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service isn't. In fact, it seems the last time they accepted public comments via e-mail on a proposed Endangered Species Act regulation was November 28, 2007 (see here and here). By December 11, 2007, Fish and Wildlife suddenly stopped accepting any comments via fax or e-mail (see here and here).

Now why would that be? As I said, up until November of last year the agency regularly accepts e-mail comments. Accepting comments via e-mail allowed significant number of people to weigh-in on important regulatory actions they might normally not have an ability to participate in. I suspect it has something to do with the over 600,000 comments the Fish and Wildlife Service received concerning the polar bear listing.

Regardless of the reason, one thing is clear to me. The combination of (1) no e-mail comments; (2) a miserly 30-day comment period; and (3) no public hearings signals loud and clear that the Fish and Wildlife Service is not interested in listening to the public—especially about controversial moves like their proposal to fundamentally change the way wildlife is protected under the Endangered Species Act—they are interested in ramming through predetermined results.

UPDATE: The NRDC Action Fund will be collecting comments on the proposed rule to give to the agency. If you wish to comment, go here.

An elephant never forgets…

2008-08-12T21:49:12Z

I just came across this opinion piece touting the benefits of big-game hunting on wildlife conservation generally, and African elephants in particular. The authors write:

It’s counterintuitive, of course, but an elephant well shot is a species well protected. Simply enough, when there is a market value in products derived from any species, people have a strong incentive to preserve and protect that species for its economic worth.

Now, there is undoubtedly something to be said for this argument, which is often repeated by trophy-hunting organizations. But it also misses a crucial point: namely that trophy hunting does not take animals indiscriminately. Large healthy animals are often selectively targeted by hunters, precisely the opposite of what natural predation or mortality patterns would dictate,where the very young, very old, and infirm are generally the first to go. And the selective culling of large healthy animals can have all kinds of unknown consequences .

Case in point: the African elephant. As Andrew Revkin noted at Dot Earth today, a recent study just found that when older female elephants are killed by poachers the health of an entire elephant family group can suffer.

The scientists, led by Charles Foley of the conservation society, focused on a terrible drought in 1993 and the fates of three family groups, two of which — led by older females — left the park, found water, and had a higher survival rate for calves than a group whose older females were killed by poachers seeking their tusks.

Scientists believe that the older females had memories of distant watering holes that their younger counterparts lacked.

Another example is the practice of selectively hunting large mature males. As I’ve written about before, some studies now indicate that the selective harvest of male polar bears by hunters in Canada has thrown off the male-to-female ratio in some polar bear populations, making them vulnerable to sudden population collapse.

My point is this: the use of market forces is a powerful thing; like all powerful things, its use can have powerful (and often unpredictable) consequences. Let’s be damned sure we know what those consequences will be before we unleash them.

A giant step backwards for wildlife

2008-08-11T22:55:22Z

Ahhh, the Bush Administration. Today the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service announced that they are going to propose new regulatory changes to the Endangered Species Act that will dramatically weaken provisions of the law that apply to federal agencies.

Right now, federal agencies are required to check in with either the Wildlife Service or the Fisheries Service (depending on the species involved) if they want to take any action that “may affect” protected species. For example, let’s say that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is asked to issue a permit to allow the destruction of 100 acres of wetlands on which an animal protected by the Endangered Species Act may be living. Under today’s rules, the Corps must first consult with the federal wildlife agencies before it can issue this permit. Under the new rules, the Corps could skip this step if—and here’s the crucial part—the Corps decides entirely on its own that the permit at issue would not have any adverse effect on the protected species.

Informally known as “self-consultation,” this policy is designed to vitiate the checks-and-balances that have made the Endangered Species Act so successful and it’s long been pushed by opponents of the Act. The insidiousness of self-consultation is especially plain once you consider that many federal agencies are deeply committed to either certain kinds of projects (the Bureau of Reclamation likes to build dams; the Department of Transportation likes highways) or are entirely sympathetic to particular industries (the Office of Surface Mining, for example). It’s a cliche, but today’s proposal is as clear a case of letting the fox guard the henhouse as you’re ever likely to see.

And these aren’t the only changes that are being proposed. There are other items in the proposed regulation that are just as worrisome. We should see a copy of the full regulatory proposal in the next few days.

UPDATE: You can read the Fish and Wildlife Service's news release announcing the changes here.

UPDATE II: The NRDC Action Fund will be collecting comments on the proposed rule to give to the agency. If you wish to comment, go here.

Planet Gore Replies

2008-08-08T22:05:33Z

Greg Pollowitz has posted a reply to my critique of his post on the discovery of 125,000 western lowland gorillas in the Republic of Congo. In his original post, Pollowitz seemed to argue that this discovery should undermine our confidence in predictions of declining polar bear populations due to sea ice loss. Expanding on what was some pretty thin gruel, he now writes:

I'm saying that up until a few days ago, the settled science was that there were only 50,000 gorillas left in the world. I'm saying that millions of dollars have been spent in a way that might have gone to better use, for both the gorillas, and more importantly, for the humans that live in Africa. I'm saying that the WCS, when helping to look for polar bears "studied 28 years of satellite images of sea ice and contributed key data to a study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) that helped inform the USFWS decision." I'm saying that maybe the WCS should stop looking at their computers and, like they did in Africa, actually try to count the polar bears with something other than a 50-year ice model.

But look, this is still an incredibly weak argument. The gorilla discovery (just like the discovery of vast antelope herds in the Sudan that Pollowitz also cites) is fundamentally a situation in which a new population of wildlife was discovered in suitable habitat that hadn’t been surveyed by biologists. In the case of polar bears, it’s the habitat itself that’s vanishing. The listing of polar bears is based on a pretty simple syllogism—Arctic sea ice is disappearing and will likely be entirely gone by the end of the century; polar bears need sea ice to survive; therefore, polar bears are endangered. Make no mistake, there are mountains of evidence to support this conclusion, but the logic is not hard to understand.

Lummi, the Orca, R.I.P.

2008-08-07T20:52:24Z

Sad news today that Lummi, the great-great-grandmother of a family of killer whales in Puget Sound known as the “K-Pod,” has gone missing and is presumed dead. She was believed to have been born in around 1910. When I read the story I was reminded of how incredibly ancient many of the world's whales are. In fact, Orcas are relatively short-lived. Scientists believe that bowhead whales can live 200 years. Just last year, scientists discovered a 130 year-old harpoon point buried in the blubber of one bowhead. When you think about that fact that there may be whales alive today who were frolicking calves during America’s civil war, it makes the persistence of commercial whaling all the harder to understand.

Planet Idiot

2008-08-05T20:58:27Z

I normally ignore the folks at Planet Gore (The National Review’s “environmental” blog). Well, ignore them is probably the wrong word. I read Planet Gore, but I just don’t bother responding to the sophomoric dialogue that passes for commentary on the site because who has the time? But today we have been treated to such a gem of idiocy and buffoonery that it cannot go unanswered.

As you may have heard, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) just announced that one of their survey teams has identified a large population of heretofore unknown western lowland gorillas—up to 125,000, in fact. To put that number in some perspective, the entire population of western lowland gorillas was recently assumed to be about 50,000. Cause for celebration, right? Not to folks at Planet Gore. Writing this morning about WCS’s find, Greg Pollowitz snarks: “It looks like ‘scientists’ have totally botched the count of the number of gorillas left in the world.” Then he says that “This is the same WCS that helped count polar bears to list them as threatened...Maybe a visit to the Arctic to actually count the polar bears should be in order.”

Now, as should be apparent to even a causal observer, estimating the population of any two organisms, much less large mammals as different as jungle-living gorillas and ice-dwelling polar bears is a vastly different exercise and one has very little do to with the other. But even that’s somewhat besides the point. Pollowtiz isn’t even making a coherent argument. It was WCS that found the additional gorillas, so the fact that they contributed data which informed the polar bear population estimate should, if anything, bolster it’s credibility not subtract from it. And besides, what is the larger point Pollowitz is trying to make here? That the biologists who did the original gorilla estimates weren’t real “scientists” because there turns out to have been an undiscovered population? That population estimates of wildlife are never to be trusted? In that case no endangered wildlife populations could ever be protected…oh, well maybe that’s his point after all.

Alaska Joins the Polar Bear Fray

2008-08-05T15:37:37Z

Yesterday the State of Alaska announced that they had filed a long-anticipated lawsuit challenging the polar bear’s Endangered Species Act protection in federal court in Washington, D.C.. Alaska’s case joins an earlier case, filed by the Safari Club and a notice of intent to sue letter filed last week by the Pacific Legal Foundation, also challenging polar bear protections.

The crux of these cases will presumably be to question the scientific evidence that supports protecting the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act. That’s going to be a tall order. There is a mountain of scientific evidence pointing to exactly the opposite: the overwhelming indications are not only that polar bears deserve to be protected by the Endangered Species Act. Indeed, in NRDC’s view they should have been given a higher classification, that of an “endangered” species. For a flavor of the sheer amount of evidence we’re talking about, you can look at my testimony earlier this year before the Senate’s Environment and Public Work’s Committee here. Another indication of the weight of the evidence is the fact that, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sent out their proposed listing for peer review, 13 out of 14 scientists with whom they consulted supported Endangered Species Act protections for the polar bear. (See the Final Listing Rule for details)

Even Professor Jonathan Adler, a long-time critic of the Endangered Species Act and—I think it’s fair to say—a sympathetic ear for both Pacific Legal Foundation and Alaska—thinks that the polar bear’s protections are here to stay. As with the Pacific Legal Foundation’s case and the Safari Club case, NRDC and our allies at the Center for Biological Diversity and Greenpeace will make sure that we weigh in to preserve and strengthen the protections that the polar bear deserves and desperately needs.

Exxon Posts Record Profits; Group Funded by Exxon Attacks Polar Bears

2008-07-31T18:48:49Z

Today Exxon Mobil announced record quarterly profits of $11.7 billion (this is not just a record for Exxon, mind you, but for all of United States corporate history).

Yesterday, the Pacific Legal Foundation, a property-rights law firm, filed a letter on behalf of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and other groups announcing their intention to challenge the listing of the polar bear as a “threatened species” under the Endangered Species Act in federal court. CORE is an organization deeply committed to opposing efforts to control global warming pollution.

The connection? Exxon is a major funder of CORE. Greenpeace has confirmed large contributions to CORE by Exxon Mobil or its corporate foundation as recently as 2005, and statement’s by Niger Innis, CORE’s National Spokesperson, certainly seem to indicate that contributions have flowed to the organization more recently than that (it’s unclear from the transcript exactly where they were directed):

Monica Trauzzi: OK. Are your climate change outreach efforts supported by Exxon Mobil?
Niger Innis: No, they are not. Our climate change outreach, our organization is, I mean, we're a nonprofit organization and you may know the business of being a nonprofit organization, if you're in the business of being a nonprofit organization you need to support from as many different corners and quarters, corporate as well as membership, as you can get. Exxon Mobil is one of many different supporters of the Congress of Racial Equality.

This is, of course, a very nice deal for Exxon. They get to indirectly bankroll a lawsuit that may undo federal protections for polar bears; protections that, not coincidentally, threaten their drilling exploration activities, all while avoiding any blowback.

NRDC and our allies will be monitoring this case closely, and when it’s filed we’ll be there to protect and defend the polar bear.

Fish Ebola Poised to Hit the Mississippi

2008-07-21T23:15:48Z

The Washington Post reports that viral hemorrhagic septicemia, a disease often described as “fish ebola,” has been discovered in southern Lake Michigan and a reservoir in Ohio. Hemorrhagic septicemia is an invasive species, most likely brought into the great lakes in the ballast water of ships transporting cargo from the Atlantic. Like many invasives, it has spread rapidly, taking advantage of an ecosystem that never evolved the capacity to deal with it. Now the virus stands, literally, on the doorstep of the Mississippi, potentially providing it access to a whole new ecosystem in which to wreak havoc.

As I’ve blogged about before, the spread of invasives like hemorrhagic septicemia is one of the main reasons we need to get serious about controlling invasive species and, especially, ballast water pollution. The House of Representatives is taking up a bill (H.R. 2830) that contains provisions which would set rigorous standards for ballast water treatment and disposal. Unfortunately, the bill puts off implementation of these standards for years, preempts virtually all state laws addressing ballast water pollution, and could even be read as preempting the Clean Water Act itself, one of our bedrock environmental laws. In our view, that’s an unwise tradeoff, especially considering the agency that will be implementing the new federal standard will be the U.S. Coast Guard, which doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to protecting the environment.

Wolves win! (At least for now)

2008-07-19T01:01:44Z

This case, like a cloud larger than a man’s hand, will hang over the northwest states of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming until there has been a final determination of the complex issues presented.

Thus begins Federal District Judge Donald Molloy’s much anticipated ruling, issued just this evening, on the Bush Administration’s decision to strip Endangered Species Act protections from the Northern Rocky Mountain population of gray wolves. In a near-complete victory for NRDC and our allies, Judge Malloy granted a preliminary injunction restoring Endangered Species Act protections to the wolves.

Here’s the key passage:

Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the majority of the claims relied upon in their request for a preliminary injunction. In particular, (1) the Fish & Wildlife Service acted arbitrarily in delisting the wolf despite a lack of evidence of genetic exchange between subpopulations; and (2) it acted arbitrarily and capriciously when it approved Wyoming’s 2007 plan despite the State’s failure to commit to managing for 15 breeding pairs and the plan’s malleable trophy game area.

There’s much work still to be done to secure this victory and see the case to its final conclusion, but for now, at least, the wolves are much safer than they were just this morning. Huge kudos goes to NRDC’s wolf team, including Louisa Willcox and Sylvia Fallon and to the lawyers in Earthjustice’s Bozeman Montana office and, especially, Doug Honnold, all of whom worked tirelessly to secure the recovery of these magnificent creatures in one of America’s best-known and best-loved places.

UPDATE: A copy of Judge Molloy's Order is available here; a copy of NRDC's statement on the decision can be found here.