Protecting Tennessee From Mountaintop Coal Mining

As we study the universe, sending telescopes into other solar systems and far off galaxies, one thing has become abundantly clear: perhaps the rarest phenomenon in the universe is organic life.

To date, despite all our intergalactic travel and research, we have established that living organisms exist only in the biosphere surrounding just one planet, our Earth. The biosphere, the very narrow band that contains all the known life in the universe, is tiny, stretching from about three miles up, to the top of the Earth’s atmosphere, to about two miles down, to the depths of the oceans. Yup, that’s it: the biosphere, three miles up, two miles down.  That is the only location we know of in the universe where life exists. If we were to find a life form, even one as tiny as bacteria or a virus, on another planet or moon, it would be front page news. Life is indeed a rare thing. 

Our daunting task in the 21st century is the preservation of the functional integrity of the biosphere, on which all life depends.  And yet, to date, humanity’s chief interest in the biosphere has been to maximize the plunder of its great store of natural resources. Humanity has instigated unprecedented rates of ecological damage at a global scale. And although humanity adds up to a small share of the Earth’s total living matter, we have been responsible for all the damaging changes to all forms of life within the biosphere.

Yesterday, that fact, the extraordinary rarity of life, the urgency to protect every remaining creature that lives within our biosphere, kept running through my chattering mind over and over while I attended two hearings in the Tennessee state legislature.

Both hearings, one in the Tennessee Senate and one in the House, addressed bills designed to limit mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR) in the state, and both hearings brought into sharp relief how hard it is to tackle this ecological and cultural calamity.

The legislation being considered by the Tennessee legislature is simple and modest in scope: Each bill would merely prohibit surface mining on mountain ridgelines in Tennessee above 2,000 feet high. Not all of the mountains in Tennessee at risk of being blown apart for mountaintop removal coal mining (or a linguistic variation of it known as “cross ridge mining”) are higher than 2,000 feet, so the legislation would not entirely end the threat of MTR in Tennessee. But the bills would provide meaningful ecological and public health value, limiting MTR to lower elevations, fewer steep slopes and heights less subject to landslides.

And the bills would protect the Cumberland Plateau from MTR. The Cumberland Plateau is one of the world’s great biological treasures and an NRDC BioGem.

Some of the most important and rare forms of life found in Tennessee’s biologically diverse forests enjoy the higher elevations of the Plateau. For example, the Cerulean Warbler likes those higher elevations on the Northern Plateau. (It munches on insects found on the underside of hardwood leaves, keeping trees healthy.) So does Swainson’s Warbler, the Louisiana Waterthrush, the Worm-Eating Warbler, the Wood Thrush, the Acadian Flycatcher and the Kentucky Warbler.

According the greatest authority on Cerulean Warblers, Melinda Welton, that bird is perhaps the single most threatened songbird in North America. Its population throughout the United States has dropped by 82 percent in the last forty years, 88 percent in Tennessee during that same period. Habitat degradation from deforestation and fragmentation are the principle causes of its decline. Still, the Northern Cumberland Plateau region in Tennessee continues to host the single largest concentration of Cerulean Warblers reported from anywhere within its range. (see http://www.welovebirds.org/)

Unfortunately for the Cerulean Warbler, the region it most depends on for survival is the region in Tennessee most coveted by coal mining companies for mountaintop removal coal mining. The Tennessee Valley Authority alone owns 55,000 acres in the Northern Cumberland Plateau area, on which it could mine coal. MTR coal mining is a prime cause of deforestation and forest fragmentation in Appalachia, precisely the type of threats that are wiping out the Cerulean Warbler and other forms of life in the southeast United States. But perhaps there is room for hope: Some of the Northern Cumberland Plateau area is above 2,000 feet in elevation, and there are two bills in the Tennessee legislature that would prohibit MTR coal mining at those elevations.

Perhaps my thoughts about the uniqueness of life kept wafting through my mind because of a meeting I had earlier yesterday with the Reverend Ryan Bennett. Rev. Bennett, an elder in the United Methodist Church and pastor of the Bethlehem United Methodist Church in Franklin, Tennessee, was also attending the hearings because he belongs to a coalition of religious groups that support the bills to limit MTR in order to do what they can to protect God’s creation.

The Southern Baptist Church, the Catholic Church, the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church have all taken official positions against mountaintop removal coal mining, the most destructive form of coal mining on Earth. Rev. Bennett was at the hearings yesterday with numerous other members of the Lindquist Environmental Appalachian Fellowship, (LEAF) a religious coalition committed to protecting “The Earth…and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.” (Psalm 24:1)  LEAF is the prime backer of the legislation to stop MTR in Tennessee. LEAF’s Legislative Director, a charming church lady named Dawn Coppock, is the person most responsible for the progress of the MTR-limiting legislation in Tennessee.

The work of LEAF resonates strongly in me because my religion teaches that Nature reveals God. According to the Talmud, creation is not merely an act in the past. The processes of Nature represent the unceasing and ongoing creative power of the Divine. “Every hour He makes provision for all who come into the world according to their need. In His Grace He satisfies all creatures.” Every hour. Provision for all creatures. (Everyman’s Talmud, at P. 3.)

And the work of LEAF resonates in me as well because it is rational as well as spiritual, based on scientific fact as well as ethics.

Science is not just another opinion, and science tells us that there is no way to undertake MTR coal mining without causing irreparable harm and even death to many life forms, homo sapiens included.

So, along with church ladies and Reverends, also in attendance at the MTR hearings in Tennessee yesterday were scientists. Dr. Dennis Lemly, one of the world’s great authorities on selenium, testified powerfully about the effects that MTR has in causing selenium pollution: “Selenium from mountaintop removal mining poisons fish. Selenium threatens wildlife as well as fish. It bioaccumulates and threatens the entire food chain. The impacts are pervasive and irreversible.”

Selenium is a naturally occurring element in coal. It leaches from coal, from mining spoils and from valley fills. It leaches through waste rock. According to Dr. Lemly, “There is no way you can do MTR without selenium contamination. Selenium pollution will increase if MTR increases. Tennessee is facing a very serious situation with regard to water pollution and dead fish due to selenium poisoning.”

Last year, Tennessee enacted a law that would keep mines 100 feet from water bodies. According to Dr. Lemly, that was a “token effort” not likely to offer meaningful protection. “Fish are being poisoned from MTR sites as far as 13 miles away from the mine site. MTR sites in Tennessee are ticking time bombs and four have been allowed to explode.”

I remember my first visit to the Zeb Mountain MTR site in northern Tennessee. It was many years ago, when the mine had just begun. First I flew over it, and then visited it by car. Within ten minutes of my arrival at the gate to the mine, where I thought I was alone with my local guide, a local sheriff arrived who made it clear that he didn’t appreciate my effort to view the site. The waters running off the mine were acidic, nothing seemed alive in them. The rocks in the streams were orange and red, with ferrous and other elements leaching out due to the acidic quality of the water. According to Dr. Lemly, “A time bomb has exploded on Zeb Mountain. Selenium pollution has started and it will not stop. Things are in bad shape on Zeb Mountain. There are extremely high levels of selenium pollution that will lead to reproductive failure in fish populations, the situation is grim. Groundwater is also at risk and will affect human health.”

Photo of Zeb Mountain, United Mountain Defense

Other pollutants besides selenium that are released because of MTR coal mining include mercury, lead, arsenic, nickel, copper, and zinc.

The good news for Tennessee is that information from mining in other states provides a useful toxicological data base that can be used to protect against repeating the same mistakes in Tennessee. Says Dr. Lemly, “The information about mining in other areas is there. Look at West Virginia, at Kentucky. Don’t ignore that. The poisoning from MTR is inevitable and inescapable. Water quality will be gone and it will not come back. Out west selenium is still discharging from closed mines that were started 100 years ago. It doesn’t stop. I don’t know how we can ignore the science.”

According to Dr. Lemly, the selenium levels at Zeb Mountain are 40 times higher than the tolerable toxicity threshold in fish. “And I don’t mean fish no one cares about, I’m talking about the major fish species, largemouth bass, blue gills, the kind you and I like to fish for.” Selenium pollution of water resources near Zeb Mountain are 20 times higher than the level at which we expect to see reproductive failure, and 8 times higher than the toxicity level at which we would expect to see the collapse of the entire fish population. According to Dr. Lemly: “I think there is a high probability that the homes around Zeb Mountain have water quality problems.”

Another professor, Dr. Orie Louks, testified at the hearings about the effects of MTR on forest productivity. According to Dr. Louks, “Forest productivity collapses post-MTR. It is very difficult to reestablish trees post MTR. Trying to do so, to restore the land, would put coal operators out of business.” Scientists estimate that post MTR forests will not recover for 10,000 years.

Sometimes, enacting environmental regulations can challenge an industry. But in this case putting MTR coal operators out of business would be a good thing for the economy. According to Dr. Louks: “MTR takes away forest-based jobs and takes away underground mining jobs.” In Tennessee, there are less than 400 jobs in the surface mining industry. By contrast, tourism produces $14 billion worth of economic activity in the state and tens of thousands of jobs.

As I sat in the Tennessee Legislature’s hearing room, I thought of the diverse interests aligned that day against MTR: evangelical and other religious groups, scientists, and those interested in protecting the much more lucrative—and clean--tourism industry from the ravages of MTR coal mining. Religious groups, scientists, business interests, all aligned against MTR.

And yet, as I met after the hearings with a senior Tennessee government official, I was told there was probably no way that the bills under consideration to limit MTR coal mining in Tennessee would pass. “The coal companies own them. They finance their campaigns.” was what I was told, in reference to the Tennessee state legislators unmoved by the compelling ethics, the peer-reviewed science and the community economics aligned against MTR coal mining.

One might reasonably think that a pro-business coalition of religious groups and scientists might prevail in limiting MTR in Tennessee to “only” those mountains lower than 2,000 feet. And yet, I’m told the odds are slim for passage. We’ll see. The story isn’t over, not yet. After all, only God should move mountains, and sometimes, He does.

Idaho and Montana step up their efforts to reduce wolves

Although wolf hunting season is not yet closed in certain areas of the west, both Idaho and Montana are setting their sights on new ways to reduce their wolf populations.  Last week, Matt pointed to a resolution by Idaho’s legislature to declare a state emergency allowing for the reduction of wolves.  Over the weekend two more articles came out that highlight the states’ ability to reduce wolf numbers through a variety of means.

An article in the Helena Independent Record reports that Montana is making it easier to kill wolves through the use of Wildlife Services – a federal agency that already has wide discretion to kill wolves and other predators for the benefit of the livestock industry.  Wildlife Services will no longer need to receive permission from Montana’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks division to kill wolves in the vicinity of confirmed livestock depredation sites.  Montana’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks director also said he expects hunting quotas to increase next season as another way to lower the wolf population.

The Idaho Statesman is similarly reporting that Idaho plans on increasing their “management tools” to reduce their state’s number of wolves.  Unsatisfied with the results of this year’s hunt, Idaho’s Fish and Game director is proposing to increase harvest limits, issue multiple tags and allow trapping of wolves. 

These news stories aren’t exactly a surprise to us.  Central to our concerns over delisting is the latitude that the states have to reduce their wolf populations to well below current levels – levels that don’t get us to a recovered population.  As we have pointed out, due to outdated recovery plans that call for only around 300 wolves in the three state region of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, these states have little motivation to maintain more than a couple hundred of wolves – far fewer than the thousands of wolves that more recent science says is necessary for a viable population in the long term. 

In fact, these stories help illustrate exactly why we are in court to challenge the removal of endangered species protections from these wolves.  This season’s hunts stopped the wolf population from growing for the first time since reintroduction.  And as the hunts come to a close later this month, it is all too clear that this was just the beginning of the states' plans for wolves in the Rocky Mountains.

Image: Gray wolf in Yellowstone National Park, shared by SigmaEye via Flickr.

Crude Awakening: Audubon Magazine Tells the Tale of Tar Sands and Bird Habitat

Last summer, Audubon Magazine reporter Barry Yeoman travelled north to the open pit mines in Alberta, Canada where a dense form of oil is dug from the earth like coal. He saw the devastation caused by these tar sands mines first hand and has written about them and the surrounding Boreal forests and wetlands in a well-crafted article just published this month. The story includes striking photographs by Jon Lowenstein.  The article tells the story of the high price of an oil addiction that leads oil companies to go after ever more costly and destructive forms of fuel for our cars and trucks. The Peace-Athabasca Delta, downstream from the tar sands mines, is critical bird habitat and nesting area for many of America’s migrating birds. Water use and water and air pollution from the tar sands are helping to kill it – not to mention the fears that local communities have for their health.

Barry describes the Delta aptly in this way:

The boat glides between banks lined with cattails and bulrushes that bow as we pass. The only houses along some stretches were built by beavers. A dozen kingfishers keep pace with us, and we spot pelicans and pileated woodpeckers. Marcel points to a distant flash of movement: a bald eagle. This avian display, he says, is nothing. “Some days in the springtime, when the birds are migrating north—oh, man! For days on end there are flocks in the thousands.” The delta, part of North America’s 1.5-billion-acre boreal forest, serves as the convergence point for all four major North American flyways. Some 215 species—including the endangered whooping crane and neotropical migrants like the olive-sided flycatcher and the American wigeon—use its freshwater wetlands for breeding, nesting, or stopping over.

I travelled with Barry to the tar sands and the Peace-Athabasca Delta last summer and I saw and felt the truth that his words describe. Read his story and you’ll have a good sense of the beauty and the danger in this remote part of Canada that is so closely connected to us through the birds that we love. Go to NRDC’s BioGems action page for the Peace-Athabasca Delta and you’ll be able to send a letter to the Environment Minister of Canada asking for tar sands oil expansion to stop so that the birds of the Peace-Athabasca Delta can be protected.

Photo by Jon Lowenstein, Noor Images

Visit NRDC and Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s new social networking site: www.welovebirds.org

Four Days on the Baker River - Chapter 3: The Animals and the Land

“One-fourteen p.m.  Five cormorants, flying…  One sixteen p.m.  Eighteen ducks, swimming…”

One of my occasional duties on board the “Bote de Brian” was to identify, count and record the birds we saw on the Baker River.  I had never done much birding before, but it didn’t take long for me to see that the variety and number of species living in this corner of the world is really remarkable. 

We saw cormorants flying and ducks swimming—and lots of each—as well as sparrows dashing through the air, vultures lurking in a tree, ducks swimming, flamingos wading on the shore, herons landing on the banks, parakeets chirping loudly, ducks swimming, condors gliding far overhead, swans coasting along in formation, and – oh, did I mention?—ducks swimming.

We also saw a few animals, mostly the domesticated farm animals kept the houses we passed (cows, horses, sheep and dogs), as well as wild species like guanaco.  I saw a puma’s footprint, though no actual puma.  And several times on the river our silent reveries were interrupted by a jumping salmon – a rare event, according to Brian.

***

The land here supports such a range of animals because it, too, is so varied.  In fact, I was struck at how the landscapes changed as we made our way down the Baker.  The first day we passed through wide river banks, backed by low hills and sparse vegetation, with the snow-capped Andes seemingly distant in the background. 

     Day 1, views from the boat

Yet our campsite that night forecasted the more verdant surroundings that would come:  we camped in the middle of a lush, green forest with vines and moss reaching down everywhere from branches, and mushrooms popping up from the ground. 

Day 1, campsite - mossy trees and mushrooms

The second day the trees grew increasingly thicker together and closer to the river, eventually reaching out over the banks and appearing to grow up from the water.  We stopped just before Gonzalez rapids on a small island that seemed as wet, as green and as thick as any rainforest. 

     Day 2, thick trees and the "Heart of Gonzalez" in the mountainside

The third day’s surroundings were the most striking, as we rowed through the canyons of the once-distant mountains.  For about an hour four condors glided together in a graceful dance high above the steep, sheer cliff walls, which were always patterned with green lines and often interrupted by small waterfalls. 

     Day 3 - side of the canyon wall

The fourth day we approached the delta, and we seemed to have come out on the other side of the mountains as the land flattened out again and we could faintly smell salt water.  All around, the river banks were still green with trees, and tall, thick grass.  And there were still birds to count. 

     Day 4, looking back up the River

Brian counts the birds and records his observations every time he makes this monthly trip because, well, no one else ever has.  And that’s a problem.  Because if nobody knows how many and what kind of animals live here, how will anyone know what would be lost if commercial development were to destroy this amazing habitat?

HidroAysén’s environmental impact assessment, or EIA, and its Addenda have been remarkably deficient in documenting the amazing biodiversity this river supports.  That’s not just my opinion, but also the opinion of several Chilean state agencies, who expressed their desire for better information about the region’s species, marine and terrestrial, in the second ICSARA this past January.  (You can read my explanation of the entire EIA review process here.)  With the resources they have available to them and the time they have had to create and submit their environmental reports, HidroAysén should have been able to document and present good, solid information about Patagonia’s wildlife by now.  That the company hasn’t is an indication of the value they place on this land and its animals.    

Getting good data isn’t hard – just ask Brian.  All you need is a raft, a notebook and a pencil.

While Wolves Continue to Face Opposition in the West, I Think About Aldo Leopold

Gray wolves continue to grace many headlines in the West these days.  And, unfortunately, the news is more often than not bad for the wolves.

Here are some recent wolf news stories:

• In February, a joint resolution drafted by the Idaho Legislature, HCR043, claims that Idaho’s current wolf population constitutes an emergency and calls for a drastic reduction of Idaho’s wolf population (i.e., killing several hundred wolves).   
• Also in February, the Utah Senate passed a bill making wolves an enemy of the state.  (No, I’m not kidding).  “The proposed legislation would make it state policy to ‘manage’ wolves to prevent any packs from forming in areas where wolves are no longer listed as an endangered species.  In areas where wolves are still protected, the bill would require state officials to request that federal agencies remove wolves from the state.”
• An anomalously uplifting article in High Country News relates how Colorado might just have its first wolf pack in decades.  (And then a couple of weeks later came the requisite polarizing, over-the-top, run-for-your-lives article on the potential return of wolves to Colorado.)
• Northern Rockies wolves are the subject of a NOW on PBS episode that recently aired, and they’re also on the cover of the current issue of National Geographic.
• In a Yellowstone National Park press release issued a few weeks ago came news that Yellowstone’s wolf population declined for the second year in row.
• A man pleaded guilty this week to illegally killing a wolf in Montana in 2008.  He said he killed the wolf because it was approaching him while he was hunting deer, but a forensics investigation later determined that the wolf was shot in its back left side. 
• Finally, an article in yesterday’s Billings Gazette delivered the sad news that Yellowstone’s legendary, historic, beloved Druid wolf pack will likely be gone soon. 

Reading about state governments drafting “let’s kill wolves” legislation and a coward illegally shooting a wolf in the back and then lying about it makes me think about the great environmental writer and thinker Aldo Leopold. 

Leopold has been dead for more than sixty years, but his eloquent wisdom about ecology and conservation still rings true today.  His A Sand County Almanac is one of my all-time favorite books, and I reread it regularly.  (My more-than-a-little-crazy black lab is also named Aldo.)

But the thing about Leopold is that he once advocated for the killing of wolves to benefit game populations.  He later regretted it, and in “Thinking Like a Mountain” he powerfully and poetically described the evolution of his perspective on wolves.

Since trying to follow Leopold with a pen is pointless, I’ll close with his words from “Thinking Like a Mountain”:

A deep chesty bawl echoes from rimrock to rimrock, rolls down the mountain, and fades into the far blackness of the night. It is an outburst of wild defiant sorrow, and of contempt for all the adversities of the world.

Every living thing (and perhaps many a dead one as well) pays heed to that call. To the deer it is a reminder of the way of all flesh, to the pine a forecast of midnight scuffles and of blood upon the snow, to the coyote a promise of gleanings to come, to the cowman a threat of red ink at the bank, to the hunter a challenge of fang against bullet. Yet behind these obvious and immediate hopes and fears there lies a deeper meaning, known only to the mountain itself. Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.

Those unable to decipher the hidden meaning know nevertheless that it is there, for it is felt in all wolf country, and distinguishes that country from all other land. It tingles in the spine of all who hear wolves by night, or who scan their tracks by day. Even without sight or sound of wolf, it is implicit in a hundred small events: the midnight whinny of a pack horse, the rattle of rolling rocks, the bound of a fleeing deer, the way shadows lie under the spruces. Only the ineducable tyro can fail to sense the presence or absence of wolves, or the fact that mountains have a secret opinion about them.

My own conviction on this score dates from the day I saw a wolf die. We were eating lunch on a high rimrock, at the foot of which a turbulent river elbowed its way. We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock.

In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy: how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable slide-rocks.

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes - something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.

Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.

I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades.

So also with cows. The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf's job of trimming the herd to fit the range. He has not learned to think like a mountain. Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea.

We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau's dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.

 (Wolf tracks photo by m d d on Flickr)

(And here is a great op-ed by James William Gibson in the Los Angeles Times on Leopold and wolf-hunting from last December.)

NRDC Celebrates Tenth Anniversary of Major Victory in Laguna San Ignacio

LOS ANGELES (March 4, 2010) – This week marks the tenth anniversary of a monumental victory mobilizing millions of people to protect Laguna San Ignacio – the last undisturbed breeding place for the Pacific gray whale – located on the west coast of Mexico’s Baja California Sur. Caving to public pressure spearheaded by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Mexican government abandoned plans for a massive 116-square mile industrial salt plant proposed near the lagoon on March 2, 2000. The salt project was a joint venture with Mitsubishi Corporation of Japan.

“This remains one of the most significant environmental decisions of our generation – not just for Mexico, but for the world,” says Joel Reynolds, NRDC senior attorney. “The San Ignacio Lagoon is a World Heritage site, a Mexican ‘biosphere reserve,’ a whale sanctuary and a migratory bird refuge. We brought the full force of world opinion and consumer power to bear on Mitsubishi and Mexico to save the gray whale nursery. It would have been the worst place on the planet for industrial development.”

The decision was a victory of historic proportions for the NRDC-led coalition of environmentalists, fishermen, scientists and consumers – as well as the threatened gray whales and other marine species who call the lagoon home. More than a million people sent petitions, letters and emails to Mitsubishi and Mexico demanding that they give up their plans to industrialize Laguna San Ignacio. Still others made their wishes known by refusing to buy Mitsubishi products and telling the company why.

“Were are not only celebrating the defeat of the plans for a massive saltworks at Laguna San Ignacio, but also a decade of efforts to provide permanent protection for this true biological gem,” adds NRDC Senior Attorney Jacob Scherr. We have made great progress working with local communities and our environmental partners to block a revival of the saltworks scheme and to assure a sustainable future for the people living there.”

Following the victory over Mitsubishi, NRDC provided support and encouragement for a number of projects to provide local communities with sustainable economic alternatives, including assisting to expand and improve the school near the lagoon. Five years ago, we helped to launch the Laguna San Ignacio Conservation Alliance. With strong support from NRDC members and other donors, the Alliance purchased conservation easements on more than 125,000 acres of land around the lagoon and increased protections on another 100,000 acres.

Laguna San Ignacio, one of the best wildlife-viewing areas on the planet, is the last pristine breeding ground of the Pacific gray whale. Each year, hundreds of gray whales swim thousands of miles southward from the Arctic to mate, give birth and nurse their young in the warm waters of this vibrant lagoon.

The Saltworks Project

Had the saltworks project progressed, the lagoon would have faced clattering diesel engines pumping 6,000 gallons of sea water out of the lagoon each second, sending it into 116-square miles of evaporation ponds diked and dug out of the surrounding terrain by fleets of bulldozers. A mile-long concrete pier cutting right across the whale’s migratory path would have transported the finished salt to an offshore loading area to more than 120 salt tankers a year. Every three months a giant diesel tanker would pump its fuel onshore, increasing the risks of oil spills and other accidents.

The Coalition to Save Laguna San Ignacio

NRDC’s work to preserve Laguna San Ignacio dates back to 1996, when an international campaign was launched to stop Mitsubishi and the Mexican government from building a massive industrial saltworks on the banks of the lagoon. NRDC and its local partner organizations brought world opinion and consumer power to bear, and in 2000, Mexico and Mitsubishi agreed to abandon the destructive plan. The success of this citizen-propelled effort inspired the creation of NRDC's BioGems Initiative, which works to defend the most endangered wild places in the Americas.

In 1994, Mitsubishi submitted its first application to the Mexican Environment Ministry to build the salt plant. It was rejected by the Environment Ministry as “incompatible with the conservation objectives” of the El Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve, which was created by the Mexican government in 1988 as the largest protected natural area in Latin America. In 1994, the reserve was declared a United Nations World Heritage Site. The $100-million facility would have been the largest salt plant in the world, covering 62,000 acres of the reserve – about three times the size of the District of Columbia.

The Coalition to Save Laguna San Ignacio, comprising 50 environmental groups in Mexico and the United States, worked for five years to stop the project. In 1999, the coalition’s efforts were bolstered by the endorsement of 34 world-renowned scientists, including nine Nobel Laureates, who urged Mitsubishi to abandon its plan and concluded that the salt plant would pose “an unacceptable risk” to wildlife and the environment.

The Crude in Syncrude: ugliness at the tar sands duck trial

You want to know just how tone-deaf the tar sands industry and their Big Oil backers are? Yesterday, in a trial over the death of 1600+ ducks that had landed in a toxic mining runoff lake, lawyers for the Canadian tar sands company Syncrude lambasted wildlife officials for shooting ducks with a camera instead of a shotgun.

The high profile trial revisits the shameful 2008 incident when the water birds drowned in the company’s tailings pond. Apparently, horrific images of oiled and incapacitated birds (like the one above) abound in the trial and that seems to have Syncrude’s lawyers particularly worked up. Rather than owning up to their own responsibility for creating the situation (they plead not guilty and say they couldn’t have predicted it), the company’s lawyers took exception with the photos being taken in the first place. According to the Globe and Mail:

One particularly poignant sequence of images showed a duck being circled by a raven, then attacked and eventually eaten. A second raven then joins in. The pictures, taken by a senior Alberta wildlife biologist, are disturbing.

But Syncrude lawyer Robert White attacked the biologist, Todd Powell, for taking photos of the attack rather than shooting the distressed duck.

“What was more important to these people? Horrifying us with pictures of these ravens eating that poor duck? Why not put that poor thing out of its misery and shoot it?” he said. “They were far more interested in bringing photographs of that poor thing being eaten alive, which makes me sick to my stomach … than they were looking after the suffering of that animal.”

Hmmm. Sick to his stomach from the horrible death of birds incapacitated by merely coming into contact with the toxic slop that Syncrude created? Sick to his stomach to see WATER BIRDS drowning after coming into contact with their improperly managed waste? (The article notes that the wildlife folks were indeed forced to gun down dozens of birds.)

The lawyer complained that wildlife officials were using the suffering birds like props in a play, but let’s not forget that Syncrude created the whole drama. And sadly, it’s a drama that is likely playing out regularly. Surely not 1600 birds at a time, but last year’s Danger in the Nursery report illustrated a very ugly toll being taken in one of the most important regions of the world for migratory birds.

The death of these birds is hardly the worst or most ugly aspect of the tar sands industry’s woeful environmental record. The impact that they are having on the region’s water (Susan Casey-Lefkowitz has some ugly data on that aspect of Syncrude's operations in her recent post), the health concerns from nearby communities, the insanely high carbon emissions associated with the extraction and processing of this goo, and the moonscapes stretching to the horizon of the Boreal forest are all arguably much worse sins. But the images of tarred birds are undeniable.

And blaming the folks who brought them to the world’s attention? Well, that’s just crude...

Tar sands oil trial underway – Charge: the death of 1,600 ducks

Yesterday in Canada, one of the tar sands oil giants went to court to defend itself. The charge: killing 1,600 ducks. The oil company: the aptly named Syncrude a joint venture whose owners include ConcoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Murphy Oil. Their defense: not guilty, they claim. The birds did die in the waste lagoon, but we are above the law. Trial: throughout March and April.

I reported on the start of this case a year ago here. As shown in NRDC’s report on the impact of tar sands on migratory birds, tailings ponds may cause the deaths of 8,000 to 100,000 birds every year, most of which go unreported. The glittering waters of tar sands open waste dams already span 50 square miles of what used to be Alberta’s Boreal forest and wetlands.

These ducks were flying to nesting grounds in spring 2008 when they landed and died in Syncrude’s tar sands waste dam.  I flew over the tar sands most recently last summer. The Syncrude tailings ponds stretch out for miles in the sun. I can imagine for a duck, it would be like the siren’s call: attractive, but deadly. Each spring more than half of America’s birds flock to the Canadian Boreal forest to nest. The Boreal forests and wetlands provide safe nesting habitat for songbirds and waterfowl. Yet almost all the biggest oil companies strip-mine these critical forests and wetlands . They are literally scraping away the trees and gouging out the wetlands to reach a tarry substance called bitumen. With a high cost in water and natural gas, bitumen can be turned into synthetic crude oil and from there into gasoline and diesel. Athabasca River water is heated and used to separate the bitumen from the sand after it is dug up and the water waste – now contaminated with bitumen and other contaminants sits for years behind open dams of waste.

Bird watchers in the United States say no to tar sands oil, when they learn that the United States is on the brink of helping expansion of the tar sands mines and operations that destroy and fragment bird nesting habitat. Oil companies try to make tar sands sound attractive, clean and safe. But it is impossible to make the abrupt death of 1,600 ducks sound like anything but what it is: the sign of an industry whose destructiveness is not worth it.

If convicted, Syncrude faces fines of nearly $800,000. Oil industry profits mean that companies can likely pay a fine of this level without pain. Since the 1,600 ducks died nearly two years ago, new requirements for industry to deal with its wastewater are in place. Yet, most companies are not taking even these new and weak requirements seriously. Syncrude has accumulated more liquid tailings than the whole of the industry put together – about 132 billion  gallons of the total 221 billion gallons in 2010. And yet, true to form, Syncrude has submitted tailings management plans that will not comply with these new requirements, and has some of the weakest plans of any tar sands oil operator.

Clearly, we need more. Oil companies need to clean up the tailings waste ponds. They need to be held accountable for their pollution so that it does not harm bird habitat, forests, wetlands, rivers, and the public health of downstream communities.

Tar sands expansion will continue along its destructive path until its main market – the United States – says no to more bird deaths, no to new pipelines, no to expansion of refineries, and yes to clean energy solutions for our transportation needs.

For more on the duck trial, see the blog from our colleagues at the Pembina Institute.

Wildlife Roundup: the Good News

February’s summary of all the reasons to have a little hope about wildlife conservation.

• If it pans out, this month’s best news of all has got to have been the return of wolves to Colorado.  High Country News and other outlets are reporting that a pack of wolves (with pups!) is suspected to be present on the High Lonesome Ranch, a 300 square mile property in the State’s northwest.  Wolves, and what may be wolf scat, has been repeatedly sighted and collected by experienced biologists, but officials are awaiting the result of DNA tests before officially welcoming wolves back to the Centennial State.



• The lesser horseshoe bat is making a comeback in east Oxfordshire, England.  The bat used to be common there but had retreated into western England and Wales.  Now scientists believe that the bats are slowly expanding their territory east again.  It’s nice to hear some good news about bats, given how grim the news has been of late here in the U.S.
• Steelhead trout in California (rainbow trout who migrate between fresh water and the ocean, much like salmon) are returning to fish hatcheries along Mokelumne River in record numbers.  Steelhead are protected throughout California under the federal Endangered Species Act.

• The Canadian Provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador have committed to the creation of a new national park in the Mealy Mountains.  When complete, the park is expected to encompass over 10,000 square kilometers (over 4,000 square miles), making it the largest national park in eastern Canada.
• The Conservation Fund secured an easement in a 2,400 acre Wyoming Ranch that will preserve the second-longest pronghorn antelope migration route in North America.  The antelope use the route to move between their winter range, in Wyoming’s Green River Basin, and their summer range in Idaho’s Grand Teton Mountains.

• Plains bison (or, in Cree, mistah' moostoos) were released into a large enclosure within Grassland’s National Park in Saskatchewan, Canada.  The release is part of a plan to return the ecologically important herbivore to the Park, where they have been absent for 120 years.
• Fourteen Key Largo wood rats were released in Florida's Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge this month.  Only 90 of the wood rats are thought to remain in the Key Largo area.  The reintroduction is the result of a successful captive breeding program by the Lowry Park Zoo and Disney’s Animal Kingdom. 
• The Sundaland clouded leopard, which lives in Borneo and was only classified as a separate subspecies a few years ago, has been captured on film for the first time; hopefully the publicity will lead to strong conservation measures for the big cat. Increased photo-capture of other rare cats in India is also being hailed as an “encouraging sign” for felines in the region. Check out the Sundaland clouded leopard below:

The Feds Drag Their Feet, and Whitebark Pine Continues To Go Bye-Bye

NRDC Senior Wildlife Advocate Louisa Willcox and leading Canadian author Andrew Nikiforuk hiking above dying and dead whitebark pines in the Gallatin Mountains in Montana last summer. 

Whitebark pine trees anchor the high country of the Northern Rockies.  They are beautiful, funky, wild trees that eke out a living in a harsh environment (think Montana, 9,000 feet, January).  And they’re critically important to the ecological health of the Northern Rockies, particularly the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, where Yellowstone grizzlies fatten up before their winter slumber on the whitebark pine’s big, high-calorie, nutritious seeds. 

Enter climate change. 

With warmer winter temperatures, mountain pine beetles are surviving at higher elevations because the requisite prolonged cold snaps needed to kill the beetles are not occurring.  And the beetles are feasting on – and decimating – whitebark pine trees.

A non-native fungus, white pine blister rust, is also having its way with whitebark.

The loss of whitebark pine seeds as a food source for Yellowstone grizzlies will be catastrophic for the iconic bears.  Without whitebark pine seeds, the bears won’t be prowling the high country to gorge on whitebark pine seeds in the late summer and fall.  They’ll be forced to search for replacement foods at lower elevations, where they’ll be more likely to bump into two-legged critters – and thus more likely to get killed.

Because whitebark pines are dying at a mind-blowingly fast rate, we submitted a petition in December 2008 to list the whitebark pine as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act.

Over a year has passed since we filed our petition, yet, in contravention of the law, we’ve heard nothing from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  As such, we filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the Service for failing to make a ninety-day finding on our petition.

Time is running out, and the stakes are too high for whitebark pine and the Yellowstone grizz.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must protect whitebark pine under the Endangered Species Act.

Tomorrow.

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(To see my photo essay on whitebark country, click here.  To see more of my photos and learn more about whitebark pine and grizzlies, click here, here, and here.  And to see blog posts by my NRDC colleagues on whitebark pine, click here.)