For Immediate Release, April 13, 2009
Center for Biological Diversity: Agency to Axe Habitat for Endangered Peninsular Bighorn Sheep
Contacts:
Lisa Belenky, Center for Biological Diversity, (415) 436-9682, ext. 307
Joan Taylor, Sierra Club, (760) 408-2488
Terry Weiner, Desert Protective Council, (619) 342-5524
Agency to Axe Habitat for Endangered Peninsular Bighorn Sheep
LOS ANGELES— The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a proposal today that would substantially reduce critical habitat protections for the endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep. The proposal designates just 376,938 acres, which is a 55-percent reduction from a 2001 designation of 844,897 acres. The reduction appears to have been made to accommodate urban sprawl.
“Today’s designation is a blueprint for extinction, not recovery,” said Lisa Belenky, senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.“ This plan eliminates connectivity between ewe groups and strips protections in habitat essential for recovery, including many areas of essential alluvial fan and canyon bottom habitat.”
The new proposal abandons protections for migration corridors, steep slopes, and intervening alluvial terraces and canyon bottoms — all critical for the bighorn’s survival and recovery. Protections would be vastly reduced in the San Jacinto Mountains and on private and tribal lands in and around the Coachella Valley, where much of the alluvial fan and canyon bottom land would be removed despite the agency’s admission that these areas are critical to the survival of endangered Peninsular bighorn.
“This habitat reduction is a huge blow to Peninsular bighorn recovery,” said Joan Taylor, conservation chair for the local Sierra Club group in the Coachella Valley. The group has long been embroiled in the controversy surrounding hillside development in the mountains and canyons around Palm Springs. “Nothing is different about bighorn biology since the original 2001 critical habitat determination, but the politics have changed. The Fish and Wildlife Service has caved to special-development interests, and the bighorn have gotten the shaft in the process.”
The re-designation was compelled by a lawsuit brought by the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians and industry groups that challenged the 2001 critical habitat designation. The Service eliminated all tribal lands from the final critical habitat designation.
The Fish and Wildlife Service recovery plan for Peninsular bighorn sheep, approved in 2000, says that access to the rich forage in canyon areas provides bighorn ewes with nutrients needed for nursing their lambs at a crucial time in the baby sheep’s development. Canyon areas also are important for bighorn movement. The proposed reduction in critical habitat would severely fragment habitat needed for endangered bighorn survival and recovery.
“The bighorn is an icon of the Peninsular ranges. People from all over the world travel to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park to spot the sheep browsing on cliffs and mountaintops above water sources,” said Terry Weiner, conservation coordinator for the Desert Protective Council. “This proposal to remove the washes and alluvial fans of the bighorn’s summer habitat ranges from protection thereby promotes the demise of this fragile, beloved bighorn.”
Peninsular bighorn are known for both the characteristic large, spiral horns of the males and the species’ ability to survive in the dry, rugged mountains dividing the desert and coastal regions of California. The Peninsular Ranges population of desert bighorn inhabits the rugged desert mountains running from the San Gorgonio Pass south into Baja California. Once the most numerous of desert bighorn, the U.S. population of Peninsular bighorn plummeted from 1,171 sheep in 1974 to a mere 276 by 1996. The species gained state status as rare and threatened in 1971, but was not listed by the federal government as an endangered population until 1998. In 2001, in response to efforts by the Center for Biological Diversity and Desert Survivors, the Fish and Wildlife Service designated more than 840,000 acres of mountainous and canyon habitat as critical habitat. In the decade since being listed as an endangered species, the population has increased to 800, which still represents only a fraction of the historic population. Known as the “bighorn of the inverted mountain ranges,” Peninsular bighorn are restricted to lower slopes due to the dense chaparral that grows at higher elevations in these mountains, which forces the species to live near urban areas in the Coachella Valley.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national nonprofit conservation organization with more than 200,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
The Sierra Club is a nonprofit conservation organization of over 732,000 members dedicated to exploring, enjoying, and protecting the wild places of the earth. The local Tahquitz Group represents over a thousand Sierra Club members in eastern Riverside County and the Morongo Basin of San Bernardino County.
The Desert Protective Council (DPC) is a nonprofit membership organization whose mission is to preserve the unique cultural, biological, scenic, spiritual and recreational resources of the southwest deserts through advocacy, land stewardship and education.
For Immediate Release October 20 2008 The Desert Protective Council to Hold 54th Annual Meeting in 29 Palms
On Sunday October 26th, the Desert Protective Council (DPC) will hold its 54th Annual Membership meeting and desert friends gathering at the 29 Palms Inn in 29 Palms CA. This meeting is open to all persons interested in enjoying and protecting our southwest deserts.
The non-profit Desert Protective Council began in 1954 around a campfire in Deep Canyon in the Coachella Valley when 100 caring individuals got together to make a plan to protect Joshua Tree National Monument from uranium mining. That effort was successful and over the next 5 decades, the DPC has tackled many other projects to protect our Mojave and other southwest deserts.
TIME AND PLACE: Sunday October 26th, 11AM-3PM, in the Meeting Tent adjacent to the Restaurant at the 29 Palms Inn, off National Park Drive in 29 Palms.
The PROGRAM for the meeting, beginning at 11AM, includes a short DPC annual business meeting. We are honored to have Joshua Tree National Park Superintendent Curt Sauer offer comments on current events and issues in Joshua Tree Park. Coachella Valley author and College of the Desert professor Ruth Nolan will talk about her desert literary journal, Phantom Seed, and read a selection of her poetry. A buffet sandwich lunch will be served.
After lunch our key note speakers, authors Howard Wilshire and Jane Nielson, will do a presentation about the development of their new book: “The American West at Risk- Science, Myths and Politics of Land Abuse and Recovery” published in May, 2008, by Oxford University Press. Their third co-author, Richard Hazlett, will not be present.
Howard Wilshire earned a BS degree from the University of Oklahoma and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in geology. He joined the U.S. Geological Survey as a research geologist after 5 years of teaching geology at Sydney University and research at the Australian National University. In his 35-year USGS career his work included geologic mapping, Apollo astronaut training and lunar research, studies of processes operating in the earth's upper mantle and lower crust, and broad-ranging studies on geologic processes at the land surface. His surface process studies focused on environmental impacts of human activities in arid lands, including off-road vehicular recreation, radioactive waste disposal, energy developments, military activities, utility corridor construction, grazing, mining, road-building, earth art, waste disposal, centralized wind and solar energy developments, and other subjects. Dr. Wilshire is Board Chairman of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a national environmental organization.
Jane Nielson earned three degrees in geology and geochemistry. After receiving her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1974, she taught Environmental Geology and other courses at California State University, Hayward, then worked for the U.S. Geological Survey as a field and research geologist, specializing in many aspects of Mojave Desert geology. After retiring from the USGS in 1997, Dr. Nielson taught geology, petrology, geochemistry and environmental geology courses at Pomona College, Claremont, California, and has lectured on geological and environmental topics in her home area of Sonoma County, California. She is a co-founder of the Sebastopol Water Information Group and serves on the board of directors for the O.W.L. (Open-Space, Water, and Land Conservation) Foundation, which researches and disseminates information on water development and land conservation issues, and advocates for sustainable local, statewide, and national land and water policies.
Richard Hazlett is the Coordinator of the Pomona College Environmental Analysis Program in southern California and a Professor of Geology.
MEETING RSVP REQUIRED: Please email Terry Weiner at "terryweiner AT sbcglobal DOT net" or call (619) 342-5524 before October 23rd.
For Immediate Release Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Contact: Karen Schambach (PEER) (530) 333-2545; Terry Weiner (Desert Protective Council) (619) 342-5524; Chris Kassar (Center for Biological Diversity) (520) 609-7685
OFF-ROAD POLITICS BENDING CALIFORNIA PARK PROTECTIONS
Conservation Groups Warn State to Tread Lightly in State Parks
Sacramento — Several conservation organizations, increasingly dismayed by the growing influence of the small but wealthy and influential off-road lobby, have signed a letter to Ruth Coleman, Director of California Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR), Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Senator Dianne Feinstein, demanding an end to interference by DPR’s Off-Highway Vehicle Division (OHV) in state parks resource decisions.
The letter cites emails obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) under a Public Records Act request, confirming intervention by OHV Division Director Daphne Greene, who blocked adoption of a long-overdue General Plan Amendment for Red Rock Canyon State Park, because off-roaders didn’t like the plan. The letter also cites Greene’s objecting to road closures for resource protection requested by State Parks resources staff, which resulted in continuing damage to a valuable archaeological site.
Senator Feinstein’s Desert Protection Act transferred Red Rock Canyon’s Last Chance Addition from the Bureau of Land Management to DPR in 1994, primarily to ensure protection of its vast cultural resources from off-road vehicles. State Parks initiated a General Plan Amendment for management of the area, but a stakeholder plan, which was to go to the Parks and Recreation Commission in December 2005, was held up when off-roaders complained to Greene about road closures. The General Plan process was allowed to wither, and with it the management of Red Rock Canyon’s spectacular geologic formations, rare desert riparian areas, and rich cultural resources. The net result has been absence of a management plan 13 years after state park acquisition and the gradual transformaton of this unique landscape into an off-road Mecca.
Pressure from conservationists over the past two years resulted in a promise by DPR for a new General Plan process. The groups do not want a repeat of the Off Highway Division’s historic interference.
Karen Schambach, California Director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) points out, “It is absolutely outrageous that the Director would allow OHV interests to undermine the recommendations of Department resource specialists. With three off-road open areas and over 800 miles of roads surrounding Red Rock Canyon State Park, the desires of one California recreation community should not take precedence over the needs and interests of all others. California State Parks should honor the Congressional vision that these lands should be managed “to provide maximum protection for the area’s scenic and scientific values.”
The OHV Division has an annual budget of $55 million, primarily from transfers from the state’s fuel tax. That budget will increase dramatically if the legislature passes SB742 this session.
“Apparently money really does talk. In this instance it spoke more loudly than the agency's duty to protect important resources and public lands for the majority,” said Chris Kassar, a wildlife biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The previous effort to provide timely and essential protection for this special place was hijacked by wealthy off-road interests and we are committed to ensuring this doesn't happen a second time.”
Desert Protective Council Conservation Coordinator Terry Weiner observed, “Surveys conducted by State Parks document that only 15% or so of California’s recreating public indicate that they indulge in ORV recreation as their favorite recreation and that 85% instead head to California state parks and other public lands to bird-watch, hike, camp, fish and hunt. They deserve to be able to visit Red Rock Canyon State Park and experience the unique desert formations and tranquility for which the park was established. We expect our State Park managers to protect the irreplaceable resources entrusted to their care.”
Contact:
Ileene Anderson, Biologist, Center for Biological Diversity, (323) 654-5943
Terry Weiner, Imperial County Projects and Conservation Coordinator, Desert Protective Council, (619) 342-5524
Taking the Wreck Out of Recreation:
State Park’s Off-road Vehicle Division Agrees to Resource Protection and Management in Cahuilla
BORREGO SPRINGS, Calif.— A settlement agreement has been reached between the Center for Biological Diversity, the Desert Protective Council and the State of California Department of Parks and Recreation and Department of General Services over management of the almost 15,000-acre Desert Cahuilla area.
Desert bighorn sheep, just one of many species at risk from reckless management of the Desert Cahuilla area. Photo by Brian Tower
Located north of County Road S22 and west of State Route 86, east of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and north of Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area in Imperial County, the 14,727 acres of checkerboard public and private lands contain ancient cultural resources, rare plants, and animals. Most of the area is designated as critical habitat for the Peninsular bighorn sheep. In the past, these lands have been subject to extensive, unauthorized off-road vehicle use, resulting in significant impacts to the wildlife and resources. In 2006, 4,000 acres of private land were acquired by State Parks and Recreation Department. Conservation organizations had filed a lawsuit against the state claiming that State Parks had failed to adequately comply with the California Environmental Quality Act before acquiring the property.
After negotiations between the parties, State Parks has now agreed to initiate review under the Act for a comprehensive management-plan process by December 15, 2007, to process any applications for “special events” such as off-road vehicle gatherings, as the law requires, at least 45 days in advance of the events, and to implement interim measures to protect rare and sensitive cultural and biological resources from degradation.
“This agreement jump-starts the process that will identify the management needed to protect the rare and sensitive plants and animals that call the Desert Cahuilla area home,” said Ileene Anderson, biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity.
“Interim protection of the irreplaceable cultural and biological resources along with a timeline for a balanced management plan is a step in the right direction,” added Terry Weiner of the Desert Protective Council. “We are looking forward to engaging in the public land-management planning process for the Desert Cahuilla Prehistoric Area. We are dedicated to helping craft a management plan that will enable recovery of some of the damaged areas and protection of these fragile and beautiful lands for future generations.”
“A recent flyover of this area opened my eyes to the ongoing impacts off-road vehicles are having on this special place,” said Chris Kassar, a Center for Biological Diversity biologist specializing in the ecological impacts of off-road vehicle use. “This settlement agreement moves our goals forward, and we will continue to press for even greater protections in the future.”
