January, 15 2015, 02:15pm EDT
Conservationists Take Aim at Flawed New Rule on Mexican Gray Wolf Management
Changes Unjustifiably Cap Wolf Population at 325, Preclude Recovery North of I-40, Loosen Restrictions on Killing Wolves
TUCSON, AZ.
Conservationists say they'll fight provisions in a new federal rule that caps the population of endangered Mexican gray wolves in the Southwest at numbers too low for recovery, bans them from needed recovery habitat, and makes it easier for them to be killed. While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's new rule allows wolves in an expanded area, the other provisions will impede the long-term recovery of these rare animals.
The Service also announced today that it will protect the Mexican wolf under the Endangered Species Act as a subspecies separate from other wolves, which will provide Mexican wolves the right to a long-delayed recovery plan. Both new rules stemmed from petitions and lawsuits filed by the Center for Biological Diversity.
"The Mexican gray wolf recovery program has been hamstrung from the start, and this new management rule doesn't go nearly far enough to fix the problem," said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity. "Capping the population and keeping them out of the Grand Canyon and northern New Mexico will keep the lobo on the brink of extinction."
"The Fish & Wildlife Service's new rule offers some useful reforms, but it ultimately overwhelms them with harmful 'poison-pill' provisions that conflict with prevailing scientific recommendations and that will make it impossible to recover this extremely rare and embattled species," said Heidi McIntosh, Earthjustice managing attorney. "The Mexican wolf's climb back from the brink of extinction is hard enough without placing new obstacles in their way."
As documented in a recently issued report, blocking the wolves at Interstate 40 runs directly counter to the recommendations of the Service's own recovery team and the best available science. That recovery team determined that additional Mexican wolf populations should be established in the Grand Canyon ecosystem and in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado to help increase wolf numbers to at least 750 animals.
The new rule also gives the Service great latitude to issue permits to private individuals and government agents to kill wolves without any safeguards to guarantee that such killing will not remove genetically essential individuals from the Mexican wolf population, which is already under threat of genetic inbreeding.
"Allowing Mexican gray wolves to disperse over a broader area is a positive, but that positive is negated by an unfounded population cap and increased authorized killing -- neither of which is based in the science that says what's best for lobos," said Eva Sargent of Defenders of Wildlife. "The rule is a classic 'one step forward, one or two steps back' and will ultimately hinder the recovery of these iconic and imperiled wolves."
Background
The Mexican gray wolf is one of the most endangered mammals in North America. At last count a year ago, only 83 Mexican wolves survived in the Southwest, including a mere five breeding pairs; another count is ongoing now to determine 2014 numbers. Scientists have shown that inbreeding caused by a lack of wolf releases to the wild, coupled with too many killings and removals of wolves, is causing smaller litter sizes and lower pup-survival rates in the wild population.
The previous rule guiding management of Mexican wolves, issued on Jan. 12, 1998, allowed release of captive-bred wolves into a small area of Arizona but not New Mexico. The new rule will allow release of captive-bred wolves into the Gila and portions of the Cibola (New Mexico), Sitgreaves and Tonto (Arizona) national forests, and will allow wolves to roam from the Mexican border north to I-40 in New Mexico and Arizona, but no farther.
Expanding wolf releases to New Mexico's Gila National Forest, in particular, will enable managers to diversify the population through new releases, as well as diminish inbreeding. The Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledged the need for this change in reviews conducted in 1999, 2001, 2005 and 2010; the American Society of Mammalogists in 2007 likewise urged its enactment.
However, the new rule ultimately negates the benefit of this reform through enactment of measures that:
- Cap the reintroduced population at 325 wolves, a level that scientists have demonstrated to be too low for long-term survival, let alone recovery;
- Bar wolf dispersal north of I-40, where essential recovery habitat for the species is located;
- Expand opportunities for killing wolves without any safeguards in place to prevent the loss of genetically important individuals.
These measures, by themselves and cumulatively, threaten to prevent recovery of the Mexican gray wolf, consigning the species to a perpetual battle for survival.
A 2004 petition for rulemaking by the Center for Biological Diversity, coupled with lawsuits in 2006 and 2012, led to today's rule.
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.
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Outgoing UN Expert Calls for Global Grassroots Movement to Dislodge 'Diesel Mafia'
The growing global recognition of the human right to a clean environment "is up against an even more powerful force in the global economy, a system that is absolutely based on the exploitation of people and nature," said David Boyd.
May 07, 2024
After spending six years traveling the world in his role as the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, Canadian law professor David Boyd said Tuesday that the growing global recognition of the right to a healthy environment gives him hope—but warned that with a world economy based on exploitation, campaigners face major challenges in ensuring environmental justice for all.
In his final interview as the U.N.'s top expert on the subject, Boyd told The Guardian that during his tenure, the international body's Human Rights Council formally recognized that a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a fundamental human right in 2021, and the U.N. General Assembly did the same in 2022.
"These are landmark advances in international human rights," Boyd said in a statement last month.
But with top fossil fuel producers including the United States arguing that the U.N. resolution is not legally binding, and refusing to join 161 other countries in enshrining the right to a healthy environment for their own citizens, Boyd said his experience as special rapporteur has shown him that "this powerful human right is up against an even more powerful force in the global economy, a system that is absolutely based on the exploitation of people and nature."
"I started out six years ago talking about the right to a healthy environment having the capacity to bring about systemic and transformative changes," Boyd told The Guardian. "And unless we change that fundamental [economic] system, then we're just re-shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic."
The environmental law expert said the failure of world leaders to universally agree to a "human rights-based approach" to the climate, biodiversity, and air pollution crises "has absolutely been the Achilles' heel" of international treaties like the Paris climate agreement, with no mechanisms forcing countries to rapidly draw down their greenhouse gas emissions to help avoid planetary heating above 1.5°C.
"It has driven me crazy in the past six years that governments are just oblivious to history. We know that the tobacco industry lied through their teeth for decades. The lead industry did the same. The asbestos industry did the same."
Governments pledged to phase out "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies in 2021, but last year subsidies for the industry had risen by $2 million, hitting $7 trillion.
Fossil fuel and other industry lobbyists are still being welcomed to global summits on plastic pollution and the climate, Boyd pointed out.
"It just absolutely boggles my mind that anybody thinks they have a legitimate seat at the table," said Boyd. "It has driven me crazy in the past six years that governments are just oblivious to history. We know that the tobacco industry lied through their teeth for decades. The lead industry did the same. The asbestos industry did the same. The plastics industry has done the same. The pesticide industry has done the same."
Boyd's criticism "hits the nail on the head," said Mark Dummett, deputy program director of Amnesty International.
Boyd said a global grassroots movement is needed to dislodge "the diesel mafia," his term for "powerful interconnected business and political elites" who "are still becoming wealthy from the existing system."
Organizers must continue using "tools like human rights and public protest and every other tool in the arsenal of change-makers," he advised.
Boyd spent his time as special rapporteur traveling to countries including Portugal, the Maldives, Chile, and Fiji, where he spoke to people directly affected by plastic waste, rising sea levels, air pollution, extreme heat, and other climate impacts.
He went on his final mission to the Maldives, the world's lowest lying country, in April, finding "numerous atolls submerged under water, according to The Guardian.
"These islands are just like jewels scattered across the Indian Ocean, and yet for anyone who understands the science of climate change, it's just a heartbreaking place to visit because of sea level rise, storm surges, coastal erosion, acidification, rising ocean temperatures, and heatwaves," Boyd said of the Maldives, 80% of which scientists have said could be uninhabitable by 2050. "The future is really daunting for people in the Maldives... The climate emergency is an existential threat that overshadows all the other issues."
If people in the Maldives and around the world "don't have a living, healthy planet Earth, then all the other rights are just words on paper," said Boyd.
The outgoing rapporteur said environmental legal groups will likely increasingly file lawsuits against governments that aren't doing their part to mitigate the climate crisis—a tactic that the U.N. Environment Program said last year could be a key driver of change in climate policies.
"I expect in the next three or four years, we will see court cases being brought challenging fossil fuel subsidies in some petro-states," said Boyd. "These countries have said time and time again at the G7, at the G20, that they're phasing out fossil fuel subsidies. It's time to hold them to their commitment. And I believe that human rights law is the vehicle that can do that."
Last month, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Swiss government violated the human rights of senior citizens by refusing to abide by scientists' warnings and swiftly phase out fossil fuel production.
Environmental law expert Astrid Puentes Riaño stepped into Boyd's former role this month, saying she will prioritize "the implementation of the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment," following the U.N.'s formal recognition of the right.
The implementation of the right provides "a vital opportunity for greater understanding of the obligations of states to respect, protect, and fulfill this right, as well as the role of non-state actors," she said. "This will be my main task as rapporteur to be implemented through the reports, visits, communications, events and other activities to develop."
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'Obscene': BP Has Paid Out $27 Billion to Shareholders Since Russia Invaded Ukraine
"Instead of helping to rebuild Ukraine, ease the burden of high bills, or support countries suffering from the climate crisis, BP is making the rich richer," one campaigner said.
May 07, 2024
Oil major BP has paid out $27.4 billion to shareholders since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Global Witness found in an analysis published Tuesday.
The environmental justice group released its calculations one day after BP announced its profits for the first quarter of 2024: The company made a total of $2.7 billion and spent $1.75 billion—more than half that amount—on share buybacks.
"It's obscene that anyone would profit from the Ukraine war, the energy crisis, or the climate crisis, but that's what's happening," Alice Harrison, head of fossil fuel campaigns at Global Witness, said in a statement. "With the biggest spoils going to one of the richest, most destructive industries in the world—the fossil fuel industry."
"Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, [oil companies] are seen as providing countries with energy security rather than being terrible companies polluting the world—and they have used that to their advantage."
BP's first-quarter profit announcement came one day after the Financial Timesreported that shareholders expected the company to relax its plans to reduce oil and gas production. The company is currently the only major player in the industry that has committed to actually curbing production, with a reduction target of 25% of 2019 levels by 2030. That target, set in 2023, was already a scaling back of its 2020 goal to cut production by 40% by the end of the decade.
However, in January, Murray Auchincloss replaced Bernard Looney as BP's CEO, and shareholders say he has different priorities.
"Murray is saying outwardly that there's no change, but behind the scenes he's being a lot more pragmatic, returns-focused, and hard-nosed about it," one anonymous investor told FT. "We'd all love them to build more in renewables but from a shareholder point of view, returns are not there."
Shareholders also spoke candidly about how Russia's invasion of Ukraine had impacted the industry.
"Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, [oil companies] are seen as providing countries with energy security rather than being terrible companies polluting the world—and they have used that to their advantage," one said.
Another speculated that BP's rumored change in strategy was "partly a response to market pricing" as higher interest rates made renewable energy projects more expensive while the Ukraine war raised oil prices.
In a recent letter to BP's board, activist shareholder Bluebell Capital Partners said that if the company was planning to raise production, as it had suggested privately to shareholders, then that "should be reflected in BP's official communication and targets."
However, a U.S. Senate hearing last week focusing on major oil companies including BP revealed that the industry has a history of saying one thing and doing another when it comes to climate targets. For example, while BP has committed to the Paris climate agreement on its website, in internal emails shared at the hearing, the company admitted that "no one is committed to anything, other than to stay in the game."
In response to BP's quarterly profits, Oxfam argued that oil and gas companies cannot be trusted to regulate themselves.
"With BP's earnings once again in the billions and its oil production higher than the last quarter, we clearly cannot rely on fossil fuel companies to lead us out of the escalating climate crisis," Oxfam Great Britain's senior climate justice policy adviser, Chiara Ligouri, said in a statement. "The buck must stop with the government. Instead of adding fuel to the fire by allowing new oil and gas licenses, they can and should be taxing fossil fuel companies like BP more to ensure they pay their fair share for damage caused by their activities."
"We need faster and fairer action to support people living in poverty—in the U.K. and globally—who did the least to cause the crisis but who are now suffering the most, and fossil fuel companies should foot the bill," Ligouri added.
Harrison of Global Witness also called for a transition to renewable energy.
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U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib said Tuesday that the Israeli government's decision this week to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah was directly connected to American lawmakers' recent approval of billions of dollars in additional military aid.
"It's no coincidence that immediately after our government sent the Israeli apartheid regime over $14 billion with absolutely no conditions on upholding human rights, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu began a ground invasion of Rafah to continue the genocide of Palestinians—with ammunition and bombs paid for by our tax dollars," Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American in the U.S. Congress, said in a statement.
Tlaib was one of 37 House Democrats who voted against the foreign aid package that included military assistance for Israel, which has repeatedly used U.S. weaponry to commit atrocities in Gaza. U.S. President Joe Biden signed the package into law late last month.
Last week, Tlaib joined 56 fellow House Democrats in urging the Biden administration to suspend deliveries of offensive weapons that could be used in an Israeli assault on Rafah, which is currently home to more than half of Gaza's population—including around 600,000 children.
"Many of my colleagues are going to express concern and horror at the crimes against humanity that are about to unfold, even though they just voted to send Netanyahu billions more in weapons," Tlaib said Tuesday. "Do not be misled, they gave their consent for these atrocities, and our country is actively participating in genocide. For months, Netanyahu made his intent to invade Rafah clear, yet the majority of my colleagues and President Biden sent more weapons to enable the massacre."
For months, Netanyahu made his intent to invade Rafah clear, yet the majority of my colleagues and President Biden sent more weapons to enable the massacre.
My statement on the Israeli apartheid regime's ground invasion of Rafah: pic.twitter.com/PbMP1tq3ka
— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) May 7, 2024
Tlaib's statement came after Israeli forces, including ground troops and tanks, seized control of the Gaza side of Rafah's border crossing with Egypt, halting the delivery of critical humanitarian aid as the enclave's population starves.
A day earlier, Israel's military ordered more than 100,000 people in eastern Rafah to evacuate the area, a directive that aid organizations and experts condemned as a grave violation of international law.
Echoing humanitarians' warnings, Tlaib said Tuesday that "there is nowhere safe in Gaza" for displaced people to go and noted that "nearly 80% of the civilian infrastructure has been destroyed."
"There is no feasible evacuation plan, and the Israeli government is only trying to provide a false pretense of safety to try to maintain legal cover at the International Court of Justice," said the Michigan Democrat. "Netanyahu knows that he will only stay in power as long as the fighting continues. It is now more apparent than ever that we must end all U.S. military funding for the Israeli apartheid regime, and demand that President Biden facilitate an immediate, permanent cease-fire that includes a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and the release of all hostages and arbitrarily detained Palestinians."
Tlaib went on to demand that the International Criminal Court (ICC)—which is tasked with investigating individuals for violations of international law—"swiftly issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and senior Israeli officials to finally hold them accountable for this genocide, as is obviously warranted by these well-documented violations of the Genocide Convention under international law."
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