Sierra Club Press Release on Border Wall

Today, 27 members of Congress urged Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to instruct U.S. Customs and Border Protection to comply with all laws if she proceeds with the final approximately 40 miles of border wall construction still slated for environmentally sensitive areas in California and Texas.

The REAL ID Act of 2005 gave the Secretary of Homeland Security -- an unelected official - the authority to waive any law in order to fast-track construction of infrastructure along our shared international border with Mexico. Bush administration Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff used this unprecedented authority five times, waiving more than three dozen cultural protection, religious freedom, public safety, and environmental laws.

"Ignoring laws to build walls has caused needless harm to families, communities, and wildlife," said Michael Degnan, Sierra Club's public lands representative. "We are heartened to hear members of Congress call on the administration to reinstate the rule of law to the borderlands, a simple act that would go a long way toward restoring responsibility to our border policy."

In today's letter, the 27 Representatives recognized the impacts of waiving laws at the federal, state and local levels, writing: "We believe damage that has occurred to community relationships and public lands is attributable, at least in part, to the haste with which construction has proceeded, the lack of compliance with laws and regulations, and the lack of consultation with property owners and land managers."

In asking that the Secretary comply with all laws if additional border wall construction takes place, the members of Congress note that more "careful consideration now could save mitigation dollars later, as well as avoiding the type of impacts that will be difficult to mitigate at any cost."

A diverse group of organizations have applauded Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA) and his colleagues for taking a stand and urging action on this critical issue.

"I've seen nothing that even comes close to justify waiving laws in order to fast track border wall construction," said Congressman Bob Filner. "It concerns me that this has taken place in the past and I urge Secretary Napolitano to prevent further damage to our border communities, natural resources, and fragile wildlife habitat."

"We should not sacrifice bedrock democratic principles like 'consent of the governed' and 'representative democracy' at the altar of the border wall," said Reverend John Fanestil of the United Methodist Church. "Kudos to legislators working to restore due process and the rule of law on the U.S.-Mexico border."

Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr., founder and president of Border Ambassadors and executive director of the Rio Grande International Study Center, Laredo Community College, said: "For those of us who live here on the border, we feel like our part of the United States is not recognized as equal to the rest of the country. When over three dozen Congressional acts were waived, we lost the legal protections that the rest of the United States enjoys. Some call our borderlands the 'deconstitutionalized zone.'"

"The controversy over walls and waivers is far from over, despite hundreds of damaging miles of walls already built in disregard of laws meant to safeguard our lands and resources," said Matt Clark, southwest representative for Defenders of Wildlife. "This is the time for President Obama and Secretary Napolitano to make a clear departure from the mistakes of the last administration and comply with the important laws enacted to prevent or minimize negative impacts to our wildlife and environment."

For more information, visit http://arizona.sierraclub.org/border

ACOE Plans to Denude Levees

According to the AP, "the Army Corps of Engineers is on a mission to chop down every tree in the country that grows within 15 feet of a levee - including oaks and sycamores in Louisiana, willows in Oklahoma and cottonwoods in California." The story is available here.

The Roads to Nowhere

Last week I spent an evening in a charming little wine bar fronting on a major thoroughfare in Houston. Anyone who has visited Houston can testify as to the intensity of the traffic. As the din began to make speaking difficult at our table, I began to think about the impacts such masking noise must have on breeding birds. How can a Henslow's Sparrow or Black-and-white Warbler be heard above such a cacophony?

Therefore I decided to see what existed in the literature about the impacts of roads and traffic on wildlife. Interestingly, I found quite a corpus of work that has been completed on this issue. Therefore I have posted links to a few of the many, many articles and papers that I found with a simple web search.

The results seem to be consistent. Yes, the noise from traffic does impact many species of breeding birds, even more significantly than do visual impacts. Therefore when we consider the impacts of roads on birds, we need to look well beyond the direct loss of habitat attributed to road building and the subsequent development that roads provoke. For some species and populations, new road construction may well become roads to nowhere.

Ted Eubanks

10 June 2009

Please click the following link if you cannot view this e-mail:http://www.cec.org

Latest trinational report presents most complete picture of North American industrial pollution Montreal, 10 June 2009—Ninety percent of the 5.5 billion kilograms of toxic pollutant releases and transfers reported in North America in 2005 can be traced to about 30 substances from 15 industrial sectors across the United States, Canada and Mexico. Taking Stock 2005, released today by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, represents the most complete picture of pollution reporting from North American industrial facilities ever assembled. Beginning this year, the CEC’s annual Taking Stock report provides a broader perspective by expanding its scope to include all data reported in 2005 to the pollutant release and transfer registers (PRTRs) of the United States, Canada and Mexico. Also new this year, the report employs air release data from the US National Emissions Inventory (NEI) for criteria air contaminants—a group of pollutants associated with issues such as smog, acid rain, and respiratory effects—and for petroleum sectors not subject to reporting under the US PRTR program. The United States accounted for about 82 percent of all reporting facilities, Canada 12 percent, and Mexico 6 percent. The year 2005 marks the second consecutive year of mandatory Mexican PRTR reporting. “Taking Stock 2005 presents the clearest view ever of industrial pollution in North America, and confirms the progress in pollution management that we have tracked for the past decade,” said Adrián Vázquez-Gálvez, CEC’s executive director. “However, it also reveals some major blind spots. This information is critical to government, industry, and communities, and highlights issues of comparability and areas for further action on pollution reduction to address potential environmental and human health issues.” The report shows that the principal contributors to pollutant releases and transfers reported in each country were: Oil and gas extraction activities, primary metals and wastewater treatment in Canada; Metal mines, electric utilities and electrical equipment manufacturing in Mexico; and Chemicals manufacturing, primary metals and mines in the United States. An in-depth look at the North American petroleum industry in this year’s report reveals that the industry reported about 1.5 billion kilograms—or one-quarter—of the 5.5 billion kilograms of toxic pollutants reported by all sectors in 2005. The industry was also responsible for 10 percent of the 32 billion kilograms of criteria air contaminants released across North America in 2005. Analysis of 2002–2005 reporting by Canadian and US petroleum refineries and bulk storage terminals discloses that, on average, about 7 million kilograms of carcinogens and developmental or reproductive toxicants were released annually. Most of these pollutants were released to air and water. The perspective of this year’s report remains incomplete, however—a result of national differences in pollutant and industry sector coverage and compliance. Comparing the national petroleum industry profiles also reveals one of the most important such gaps in PRTR reporting across the three countries. Hydrogen sulfide gas, a toxic pollutant having the smell of rotten eggs, is a common byproduct of oil and gas extraction and processing. PRTR regulations in both Canada and Mexico require hydrogen sulfide to be reported. In Canada, hydrogen sulfide from the oil and gas production sector represented over 90 percent of all toxics reported by the Canadian petroleum industry in 2005. In Mexico, however, no data on this substance were reported by the petroleum industry. In the United States, neither this pollutant nor the oil and gas production sector is subject to Toxics Release Inventory reporting requirements. The report also discusses pollutants that were transferred across national borders. The majority of these consisted of metals such as lead, zinc, copper and nickel compounds, mainly sent to recycling facilities. A small number of other chemicals, such as sulfuric acid, phosphorus, and xylenes, were also sent across borders for recycling or other treatment. Taking Stock compiles data from the three pollutant release and transfer registers (PRTRs) in North America: Canada’s National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI), the United States’ Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), and Mexico’s Registro de Emisiones y Transferencia de Contaminantes (RETC). The Taking Stock Online website allows users to further explore PRTR data for North America with customized reports by pollutant, facility, sector or geographic region. Taking Stock Online also provides interactive mapping of data search results using Google Maps, and features a North America-wide map layer displaying point-specific industrial pollutant data in Canada, Mexico and the United States. Using the Google Earth mapping service, the CEC’s map layer displays about 35,000 North American industrial facilities that reported releases and transfers of pollutants in 2005. You can access this information at: http://www.cec.org/takingstock/MappingTool.aspx?varlan=en-US.

Commission for Environmental Cooperation 393, rue St-Jacques Ouest, Bureau 200 Montréal (Québec) Canada H2Y 1N9 Tel: (514) 350-4300; Fax: (514) 350-4314 E-mail: info@cec.org Website: http://www.cec.org To unsubscribe from this news service, send an e-mail to: info@cec.org

The Worst Is Yet To Come?

A new study from Texas A&M researchers details the impacts of stronger hurricanes and rising seas from a variety of global warming scenarios. “Flooding and damage from major hurricanes will be more severe,” said Jennifer Irish, the study’s lead author. “And the worse global warming gets, the more severe the consequences for the Texas coast.” The report is available on line from Texas A&M. Thanks to our old friend Bill Dawson and Texas Climate News for alerting us about this report.

Ted Eubanks
9 June 2009

Significant ESA Ruling

CNAH ANNOUNCEMENT

The Center for North American Herpetology Lawrence, Kansas http://www.cnah.org

9 June 2009

Defenders of Wildlife

The Center for Biological Diversity

COURT ORDERS ENDANGERED SPECIES PROTECTION FOR FLAT-TAILED HORNED LIZARD -- FOR THE THIRD TIME U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must review decision to deny protections

San Francisco – In response to a lawsuit brought by The Center for Biological Diversity and a number of other groups, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to deny the Flat-tailed Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma mcallii) protection under the Endangered Species Act was illegal and again ordered the agency to consider protection for the lizard.

"The Flat-tailed Horned Lizard is severely threatened by urban and agricultural sprawl and needs protection as an endangered species to survive," said Noah Greenwald, biodiversity program director at The Center for Biological Diversity. "With today’s court decision, we hope the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has finally gotten the message that it can not legally deny this imperiled species protection."

Significantly, the decision rejected a Bush administration policy developed by the solicitor of the Department of the Interior in 2007 that required the Fish and Wildlife Service to ignore loss of historic range when determining if species warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act. The decision observes that "the Secretary clings to his argument that lost historical habitat is largely irrelevant to the recovery of the species, and thus the ESA does not require him to consider it," and then roundly rejects this position, concluding that past court decisions require "the Secretary to analyze lost historical range."

"This decision goes beyond the Flat-tailed Horned Lizard by seriously undermining the Bush administration’s position that loss of historic range is not a basis for protecting species under the Endangered Species Act," said Greenwald. "The courts have determined today that the Bush administration’s emergency room approach to species protection – in which only species that are on the brink of extinction everywhere are protected – is plainly illegal."

The Flat-tailed Horned Lizard inhabits portions of southern California (Riverside, Imperial and San Diego counties), Arizona (Yuma county), and northwestern Mexico (Sonora, Baja Calif. N). It is severely threatened by habitat destruction caused by urban and agricultural sprawl, off-road vehicles, and other threats.

"This is the third time in the fifteen years since the Flat-tailed Horned Lizard was proposed for listing that a court has told the Fish and Wildlife Service to go back and review its refusal to protect the flat tailed horned lizard under the Endangered Species Act," said Kara Gillon, senior staff attorney with Defenders of Wildlife. "These lizards need these protections now more than ever, if we are to avoid the loss of this species and the dwindling wild places that form its last refuge. We're hoping that the third time's the charm; these lizards are running out of time."

The Flat-tailed Horned Lizard was first proposed for listing in 1993. The proposal has since been withdrawn three times with conservation groups successfully challenging each withdrawal in court. The groups involved in the latest court challenge include the Tucson Herpetological Society, Defenders of Wildlife, Center for Biological Diversity, Horned Lizard Conservation Society, and Sierra Club, who were represented by attorneys Neil Levine, a private attorney, and Bill Snape, senior counsel with the Center for Biological Diversity.

As the common name suggests, the species is recognized by its broad, flattened tail but also has long, sharp horns on its head, two rows of fringe scales along its abdomen, a dark stripe along its backbone, and concealed external ear openings. Adults of this species range in size between 2.5 and 4.3 inches long, excluding the tail.

Defenders of Wildlife is dedicated to the protection of all native animals and plants in their natural communities. With more than 1 million members and activists, Defenders of Wildlife is a leading advocate for innovative solutions to safeguard our wildlife heritage for generations to come. For more information, visit www.defenders.org

Contact(s)

Kara Gillon, Defenders of Wildlife, (505) 715-3898 Noah Greenwald, Center for Biological Diversity, (503) 484-7495