January, 31 2013, 12:28pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Noah Greenwald, (503) 484-7495
Jeff Juel, (509) 209-2401
Tim Layser, (509) 671-2501
Mike Leahy, (406) 586-3970
Lawsuit Launched Against Elimination of 90 Percent of Protected Habitat for Endangered Mountain Caribou in Idaho, Washington
A coalition of conservation organizations filed a formal notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today over the agency's decision to cut more than 90 percent of protected critical habitat for the endangered mountain caribou -- from a proposed 375,562 acres to a mere 30,010 acres.
BOISE, Idaho
A coalition of conservation organizations filed a formal notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today over the agency's decision to cut more than 90 percent of protected critical habitat for the endangered mountain caribou -- from a proposed 375,562 acres to a mere 30,010 acres. The November decision was a major setback for the animals, which in recent decades have been limited to a small area in northern Idaho and northeastern Washington, where they are threatened by disturbance from snowmobiles, roads and loss of habitat.
"This reduction in protected habitat is a death sentence for mountain caribou in the United States. They will not survive in this country if we don't protect their habitat," said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "The Fish and Wildlife Service's decision ignored the science and caved to political pressure."
Caribou once ranged across much of the northern lower 48 states, including the northern Rocky Mountains, upper Midwest and Northeast. The last remaining population in the northern Rocky Mountains was protected under the Endangered Species Act in 1984. The Fish and Wildlife Service, however, never designated critical habitat for the caribou, and in 2002 the groups filing today's notice petitioned, and eventually litigated, to obtain a designation.
In keeping with a scientific recovery plan for the caribou, the proposed critical habitat issued in 2011 included more than 375,000 acres, which encompassed a majority of the area specified in the scientists' plan as necessary for the animals' recovery. In cutting this proposed acreage by more than 90 percent, the Fish and Wildlife Service appears to have abandoned the goal of recovering caribou in the contiguous United States.
"The Fish and Wildlife Service's cut in critical habitat will greatly increase the caribou's risk of extinction in the lower 48 states," said Jeff Juel, policy director at the Lands Council. "It will be a sad day if we have to tell our children and grandchildren that we once had our own reindeer, but that we allowed them -- like the passenger pigeon, Carolina parakeet and so many others -- to be wiped out."
In 2005 conservation groups sued the Forest Service and obtained a closure to snowmobile use for most of the caribou's critical habitat included in the proposed rule. The final designation, however, only includes a fraction of this area, and the Forest Service is already considering lifting the closure. With new technologies allowing snowmobiles to get ever farther into the backcountry, these machines are a major threat to the shy, easily spooked animals.
"Now is not the time to back away from nearly 30 years of effort to recover the mountain caribou," said Tim Layser, a wildlife biologist with the Selkirk Conservation Alliance. "With adequate protection from snowmobiles and other threats, caribou can once again thrive in the United States."
Mountain caribou are a unique form of woodland caribou adapted to surviving winters of deep snow, with dinner-plate-sized hooves that work like snowshoes and an ability to subsist on nothing but arboreal lichens found on old-growth trees for three to four months. U.S. caribou are part of a population that straddles the border with British Columbia and consists of only 40 to 50 animals.
"To save the last caribou in the lower 48 we must take bold action to protect the forest habitat they need to survive," said Mike Leahy, Rockies and Plains director for Defenders of Wildlife. "Reducing the amount of protected areas by more than 90 percent is clearly a step in the wrong direction that goes against the best available science."
The groups on the notice of intent include the Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Northwest, Selkirk Conservation Alliance, The Lands Council, Idaho Conservation League and Defenders of Wildlife. They are represented by Laurie Rule of Advocates for the West.
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
(520) 623-5252LATEST NEWS
Bernie Sanders Says US Must 'Fundamentally Rethink' Its Foreign Policy
"In this pivotal moment in human history, the United States must lead a new global movement based on human solidarity and the needs of struggling people."
Mar 18, 2024
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday called for a "revolution in American foreign policy" that replaces "greed, militarism, and hypocrisy" with "solidarity, diplomacy, and human rights."
In a lengthy piece published in Foreign Affairs, Sanders (I-Vt.) asserted that "it is long past time to fundamentally reorient American foreign policy," a shift that starts with "acknowledging the failures of the post–World War II bipartisan consensus and charting a new vision that centers human rights, multilateralism, and global solidarity."
"If the goal of foreign policy is to help create a peaceful and prosperous world, the foreign policy establishment needs to fundamentally rethink its assumptions," the democratic socialist senator wrote. "Spending trillions of dollars on endless wars and defense contracts is not going to address the existential threat of climate change or the likelihood of future pandemics. It is not going to feed hungry children, reduce hatred, educate the illiterate, or cure diseases. It is not going to help create a shared global community and diminish the likelihood of war."
"In this pivotal moment in human history, the United States must lead a new global movement based on human solidarity and the needs of struggling people," Sanders argued. "This movement must have the courage to take on the greed of the international oligarchy, in which a few thousand billionaires exercise enormous economic and political power."
Sanders' article examines U.S. foreign policy since World War II, underscoring commonalities between the many wars and acts of aggression perpetrated by Washington over the decades.
"Dating back to the Cold War, politicians in both major parties have used fear and outright lies to entangle the United States in disastrous and unwinnable foreign military conflicts," the senator wrote, noting the U.S.-led war in Southeast Asia in which as many as 3 million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians and more than 58,000 American troops were killed.
Sanders also highlighted the U.S. record of perpetrating or backing coups in Iran, Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Chile, and other countries, "often in support of authoritarian regimes that brutally repressed their own people and exacerbated corruption, violence, and poverty."
"Washington is still dealing with the fallout from such meddling today, confronting deep suspicion and hostility in many of these countries, which complicates U.S. foreign policy and undermines American interests," he wrote.
Sanders then moved on to the 21st century, when the George W. Bush administration responded to the 9/11 attacks by committing "nearly 2 million U.S. troops and over $8 trillion to a 'Global War on Terror' and catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq"—the latter "built on an outright lie."
The senator continued:
The Iraq War was not an aberration. In the name of the Global War on Terror, the United States carried out torture, illegal detention, and "extraordinary renditions," snatching suspects around the world and holding them for long periods at the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba and CIA "black sites" around the world. The U.S. government implemented the Patriot Act, which resulted in mass surveillance domestically and internationally. The two decades of fighting in Afghanistan left thousands of U.S. troops dead or wounded and caused many hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilian casualties. Today, despite all that suffering and expenditure, the Taliban is back in power.
"I wish I could say that the foreign policy establishment in Washington learned its lesson after the failures of the Cold War and the Global War on Terror," Sanders wrote. "But, with a few notable exceptions, it has not."
"In the past decade alone, the United States has been involved in military operations in Afghanistan, Cameroon, Egypt, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen," he noted. "The U.S. military maintains around 750 military bases in 80 countries and is increasing its presence abroad as Washington ramps up tensions with Beijing. Meanwhile, the United States is supplying [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's Israel with billions of dollars in military funding while he annihilates Gaza."
"U.S. policy on China is another illustration of failed foreign policy groupthink, which frames the U.S.-Chinese relationship as a zero-sum struggle," Sanders said. "For many in Washington, China is the new foreign policy bogeyman—an existential threat that justifies higher and higher Pentagon budgets."
Revisiting a major theme from his two Democratic presidential runs, Sanders contended that "economic policy is foreign policy."
"As long as wealthy corporations and billionaires have a stranglehold on our economic and political systems, foreign policy decisions will be guided by their material interests, not those of the vast majority of the world’s population," he said. "That is why the United States must address the moral and economic outrage of unprecedented income and wealth inequality, in which the richest 1% of the planet owns more wealth than the bottom 99%—an inequality that allows some people to own dozens of homes, private airplanes, and even entire islands, while millions of children go hungry or die of easily prevented diseases."
"The benefits of making this shift in foreign policy would far outweigh the costs," Sanders wrote. "The United States must recognize that our greatest strength as a nation comes not from our wealth or our military might but from our values of freedom and democracy."
"The biggest challenges of our times, from climate change to global pandemics, will require cooperation, solidarity, and collective action," he added, "not militarism."
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'We Want to Be Heard': Chattanooga Volkswagen Workers File for Vote to Join UAW
"A reckoning is coming," said a strategist for UAW president Shawn Fain. "Workers are standing up—and they are going to win."
Mar 18, 2024
Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee filed a petition Monday with National Labor Relations Board formally requesting an election to join the United Auto Workers, which is campaigning aggressively to organize nonunion plants in the U.S. South and across the country.
The UAW tried and narrowly failed to organize Volkswagen's Chattanooga plant in 2014 and 2019, but the union's historic strike and contract victories at the Big Three automakers last year emboldened its unionization efforts.
"We want to be heard," Crystal Jenkins, a logistics worker at the Chattanooga plant, says in a video released by the UAW on Monday. "The reason I'm voting yes for the union is to have a voice."
Volkswagen is one of more than a dozen nonunion automakers that the UAW is targeting as part of what's been described as "the largest organizing drive in modern American history."
"A reckoning is coming," Chris Brooks, a strategist for UAW president Shawn Fain, wrote on social media. "Workers are standing up—and they are going to win.
The UAW said Monday that "a supermajority" of the more than 1,000 workers at the Chattanooga plant—Volkswagen's only assembly facility in the U.S.—signed union cards in just 100 days, a sign of broad support for the organizing effort.
"I come from a UAW family, so I've seen how having our union enables us to make life better on the job and off," said Yolanda Peoples, a production team member in assembly. "We are a positive force in the plant. When we win our union, we'll be able to bargain for a safer workplace, so people can stay on the job and the company can benefit from our experience. When my father retired as a UAW member, he had something to fall back on. VW workers deserve the same."
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Congressional Progressives to Fed: Cut Rates to 'End This Squeeze' on Workers
Lawmakers warned Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that keeping interest rates high "needlessly worsens housing market imbalances" and "could threaten" workers' jobs and wages.
Mar 18, 2024
Progressive lawmakers in the House and Senate urged the Federal Reserve on Monday to begin slashing interest rates in the near future, warning that the increasingly tight monetary conditions the central bank has imposed over the past two years risk imperiling strong post-pandemic job and
wage growth.
In a
letter to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined 19 House Democrats in calling for a "prompt timeline for future rate reductions," noting that the central bank has hiked rates 11 times since March 2022 and that inflation has nearly fallen "into line with the Federal Reserve's target."
"Today's excessively contractionary monetary policy needlessly worsens housing market imbalances and the unaffordability of home ownership, creates risks for banking stability, and could threaten the achievements of strong employment and wage growth and its attendant reductions in economic and racial inequalities," reads the letter, which was sent a day ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMC) March 19-20 meeting.
If the Fed waits too long to begin cutting rates, the lawmakers cautioned, overly restrictive monetary policy could "reduce employment and real wage growth."
"We worry that higher unemployment and a harmful economic slowdown could result from a lagged effect of the prior 11 interest rate hikes since March 2022," the lawmakers added. "We believe it is critical for the FOMC to present the public with a clear and rapid timetable for reducing interest rates, ideally beginning at the May FOMC meeting in order to ensure a strong labor market and full employment for working Americans."
The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates 11 times in the last 2 years, keeping working people from being able to get a raise, a mortgage, or car.
Today, @SenSanders, @SenWarren, and House progressives call on the Fed to finally lower interest rates.https://t.co/VvFNPwZ8lS
— Progressive Caucus (@USProgressives) March 18, 2024
Since the Fed started raising interest rates for the first time since 2018 just over two years ago, progressive lawmakers, advocates, and economists have been arguing that jacking up borrowing was not the solution to inflation fueled in large part by pandemic-related supply chain disruptions and corporate price gouging. According to one recent study by the Groundwork Collaborative, corporate profiteering drove more than half of inflation between April and September 2023.
Last month, following a strong jobs report, Groundwork's Bilal Baydoun called for rate cuts, arguing that "the data is very clear that we never had to sacrifice jobs for lower prices."
"High interest rates will only slow our clean energy transition and put families in more debt," said Baydoun. "Chair Powell must change his tune and cut rates in March."
But the Fed is not expected to announce rate cuts following the two-day FOMC meeting that begins on Tuesday. The Associated Pressreported Monday that "Powell and his fellow Fed officials are expected to play it safe when they meet his week, keeping their rate unchanged for a fifth straight time and signaling that they still need further evidence that inflation is returning sustainably to their 2% target."
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released last week showed that overall inflation was 3.2% year-over-year—a slight uptick from January's reading but far below the 9.1% peak in 2022.
Hiring, meanwhile, has remained strong even as Powell has explicitly targeted the jobs market and workers' wages. Employers added 275,000 jobs last month, according to the U.S. Labor Department, and unemployment stayed low at 3.9%.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement Monday that "the American economy recovered from Covid because congressional Democrats and President Biden partnered to invest in workers over corporations and created paths to economic security for people who had been locked out before."
"Unnecessarily high rates put all that at risk," Jayapal added. "They will only punish everyday Americans: exacerbating the housing crisis, hindering the deployment of clean energy, and throwing the future of the Biden recovery into uncertainty, while threatening the wages and jobs that our communities depend on. It's past time for the Fed to end this squeeze on working- and middle-class families."
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