DC Favors Joshua Tree National Park, but Leaves Butterfly Hanging

In late February, the Department of Interior reversed its longstanding position in favor of a landfill just outside of Joshua Tree National Park.  For 24 years the Department of Interior supported legal efforts by a company to establish the world's largest landfill just outside of Joshua Tree National Park, where several square miles of canyons would have been filled with 20,000 tons of garbage each day.  The trash, and 24 hour dumping operations would have brought air pollution and subsidized predators that threaten the protected ecosystems that provide peace to many visitors each year.  Over 1.4 million Americans visited Joshua Tree National Park last year, and they came to see beautiful desert vistas, wildlife, and wildflowers, not trash.

The efforts to reverse Department of Interior's position were spearheaded by two citizens concerned about misguided policy in California's deserts--Donna and Larry Charpied.  At issue is the landfill company's proposed land swap, trading private land for the public land near the Park necessary to operate the dump.  A lower court rejected the land swap, but the company appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court.  Until the recent victory, Interior supported the company's appeal.  Without Interior's support, the landfill company's petition before the Supreme Court is weakened, although the Court has yet to rule on the matter.

The iconic namesake of Joshua Tree National Park.
Just this past week, however, Washington DC dealt a blow to Mojave Desert conservation issues when it denied endangered species protection for the rare Mount Charleston blue butterfly, which is found in the mountains just west of Las Vegas, Nevada.  Desert biologists believe the species needs Federal protection or it is likely to go extinct.  The Department of Interior ruled that endangered status is warranted for the butterfly, but because of resource constraints it cannot offer protection.  Placed on the waiting list can doom a rare species, and the Obama administration has been less vigilant about endangered species act compared to either the George W. Bush or Clinton administrations.  Twenty-four species have gone extinct while on the list.

Comments

  1. MorongobillMarch 8, 2011 at 8:20 PM

    No doubt about it, as far as the deserts are concerned, and trust me, it sickens me to say this,the Bush the Younger admministration look like saints, environmentally speaking at least, compared to the Obama crowd.

    In this case the old Texas adage applies to the current administration, as far as the desert environment goes, "they are all hat, and no cattle."

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Many Plants Species in the Desert?

Would you expect that California's desert hosts gives the redwood forest a run for its money when it comes to plant biodiversity?  It's easy to take the desert for granted when all you want to do is zoom through it on the highway and get to your destination. But you are passing by an amazing and biologically diverse ecosystem.  There are at least 2,450 native plant species found in California's desert, according to a great article by Chris Clarke on desert life , posted at KCET. If you want to learn more about our amazing deserts, join Desert Biodiversity, a new organization dedicated to exploring, respecting and defending the deserts.
Read more

Mowing Vegetation as Mitigation: Trump Administration Practice Goes Unchallenged

Image
The Trump administration is again touting the practice of mowing thousands of acres of desert vegetation as environmentally-responsible, despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.  The draft environmental review of the Yellow Pine Solar project in southern Nevada claims that vegetation mowing - as opposed to bulldozing - will yield positive outcomes that are highly doubtful.   This positive framing of the construction practice misleads the public and decisionmakers and ignores decades of scientific research regarding the impacts of mechanized disturbance on desert wildlands.  According to the draft environmental review: "Mowing is becoming the standard on large site-type ROWs to prevent permanent impairment of public lands (as mandated by FLPMA) and in lieu of off-site mitigation... Mowing methods are designed to help preserve soils, biological soil crusts, soil seed banks, native perennial vegetation diversity and structure, and cacti and yucca species, and t...
Read more

Unlikely Allies: Trump Administration Joins Enviros to Plan Solar Project on Prime Tortoise Habitat

Image
The Trump Administration this month released an assessment that concludes that a solar developer can crush and mow vegetation across several square miles of prime desert tortoise habitat, and still consider those lands as viable habitat for the species.  The silence of some national-level environmental groups regarding the unconventional and unscientific conclusion appears to signal their comfort taking risks with a species already facing significant peril, as well as these groups' inability to champion more sustainable locations to generate clean energy in Nevada. The biological opinion released by the Trump Administration constitutes the official position of the Fish and Wildlife Service regarding the impacts of the proposed Gemini Solar project; its curious willingness to declare heavily disturbed lands as viable tortoise habitat was necessary for the project's approval because the project would be built on lands that have been identified as a vital habitat linkage sustai...
Read more