July, 01 2010, 04:10pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Josh Laughlin, Cascadia Wildlands, (541) 434-1463
Noah Greenwald, Center for Biological Diversity, (503) 484-7495
Greg Dyson, Hells Canyon Preservation Council, (541) 963-3950 x 22
Rob Klavins, Oregon Wild, (503) 283-6343 x 210
Lawsuit Filed to Stop Federal, State-Sanctioned Killing of Endangered Wolves
PORTLAND, Ore.
Four conservation groups sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture's
predator control branch, Wildlife Services, today for its role in
killing wolves at the behest of the Oregon Department of
Fish and Wildlife. The state has issued, and now extended, a permit to
Aug. 31 to the federal agency to hunt, track and kill two wolves across
a 70-square-mile area in eastern Oregon. According to the conservation
groups' lawsuit, Wildlife Services never conducted the environmental
analysis required to disclose the impacts of killing a substantial
portion of Oregon's wolves. Cascadia Wildlands, Hells Canyon
Preservation Council, Oregon Wild and the national Center for
Biological Diversity brought the suit, and are also strongly
considering suing the state for its role in authorizing the kill
permits.
"Oregon is big enough for people and wolves," said Greg
Dyson with the La Grande-based group Hells Canyon Preservation Council.
"ODFW is acting too hastily in giving Wildlife Services authority to
shoot these wolves before exhausting other management options. We were
left with no choice but to protect wolves in court."
The kill order stems from recent livestock depredations
by wolves in Wallowa County. In May and early June, six cattle deaths
were confirmed as wolf depredations. For comparison, in 2005 - the year
the wolf plan was created - domestic dogs killed 700 sheep and
cows in Oregon, according to the National Agricultural Statistics
Service. No new wolf depredations on livestock have occurred since June
4.
"Sixty years ago, we completed a sad chapter in our
history by killing the last wolf in Oregon," added Josh Laughlin of
Cascadia Wildlands. "Today, we're fighting in court to ensure that we
do not repeat that history."
According to the groups, Oregon's wildlife agency is
violating the wolf-management plan by issuing the kill permits when
damage is not presently occurring, the wolves are not on the land where
damage is occurring, and multiple carcass dump piles were left on
ranch lands resulting in "unreasonable circumstances" that attract
wolves to the area. Had Wildlife Services conducted the proper
environmental analysis, the agency would have realized that wolves pose
no current depredation threat and killing them is inappropriate. The
state's wildlife department has also failed to document how efforts by
ranchers to avoid depredations through nonlethal means were "deemed
ineffective" or to document unsuccessful attempts to solve the
situation through nonlethal means - both of which are requirements of
the plan.
"Oregon's struggling wolf population cannot sustain
these killings," said Noah Greenwald, endangered species program
director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Issuance of permits
to kill these two wolves by the state of Oregon is exactly why wolves
continue to need protection under the federal Endangered Species Act."
A decision is expected soon in a separate lawsuit
brought by a large coalition of conservation groups - including all the
groups involved in today's suit - seeking to restore federal
protections to wolves under the Endangered Species Act. If protections
are restored, the permits may be invalidated.
To date, Gov. Ted Kulongoski's office has had little to
say about the actions of his state's wildlife agency. The governor's
Natural Resources Policy Director, Mike Carrier, stated publicly that
the governor cannot respond to requests to remove the kill order.
"Is this what Governor Kulongoski wants his wildlife
legacy to be?" asked Rob Klavins with Oregon Wild. "The governor who
signed off on the first state-sanctioned illegal wolf kills in the
state's history?"
Oregon is currently home to a confirmed population of 14
wolves in two packs, both in northeast Oregon. The Imnaha pack of 10
is led by wolf B-300. Another pack of four wolves located in the Wenaha
wildlife unit was caught on film for the first time earlier this
spring. The Oregon wolf plan is currently undergoing a mandated
five-year review process. Since the current population numbers fewer
than 14 confirmed wolves, conservationists are working to fully fund the
wolf plan and empower biologists to make decisions regarding the
state-listed endangered species.
LATEST NEWS
Violent Arrest of Emory Professor Spotlights Brutality of Police Crackdown on Campus Protests
"To sustain this level of blind support for Israel, the U.S. must erode its own democracy," said one foreign policy expert. "And that is what we see happening on U.S. campuses now."
Apr 26, 2024
Emory University economics professor Caroline Fohlin approached several police officers who were holding a student down on the ground on Thursday and demanded an explanation—but by the end of the day videos of her own arrest became some of the most widely circulated images of the rapidly spreading anti-war movement on college campuses across the U.S.
As she knelt down to ask the university officers, "What are you doing?" another law enforcement agent grabbed her arm and pushed her away before repeatedly ordering her to "get on the ground."
"Stop it!" Fohlin yelled before the officer pushed her to the ground and called for more police to help subdue her.
Fohlin then screamed, "Oh my God!" as the police pushed her down and told the police that she was a professor at the university as they held her on the ground.
Fohlin's arrest—after which she was detained for 11 hours and then charged with "battery of a police officer"—came a week after Columbia University suspended more than 100 students for setting up an encampment in solidarity with Gaza, where more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed by the U.S.-backed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) since October, and allowed police to arrest them. The mass arrests only served to galvanize students and faculty at Columbia and at dozens of other schools, with more than 400 peoplebeing detained so far.
The American Association of University Professors called the arrest "antithetical to the mission of higher education."
"Our institutions exist to foster robust exchanges of ideas and open dialogue in service of knowledge and understanding," said the group. "Sometimes that includes open dissent. Peaceful campus protests should never be met with violence."
Foreign policy expert Trita Parsi suggested that Fohlin's arrest was among the on-campus incidents that have strained the Democratic Party's argument that "democracy is on the ballot in November."
"To sustain this level of blind support for Israel, the U.S. must erode its own democracy. And that is what we see happening on U.S. campuses now," said Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, sharing a video of police tasing an Emory student who was already being held down on the ground.
Emil' Keme, a professor of English and Indigenous studies at Emory, toldDemocracy Now! on Friday that the scene on campus resembled "a war zone," especially after university and Atlanta police deployed tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters.
"I started feeling the tear gas, and I held arms with some people," he said. "We were being pushed back out of the encampment. And the student I was holding arms with, she was then arrested and the next thing I knew I was on the floor and I was being arrested."
Writer Abdullah Shihipar said Emory president Gregory Fenves—and all university administrators who have allowed the arrest of students who have peacefully protested, including several who have unilaterally altered school codes in order to ban protests—should resign.
"It has been a disgusting and embarrassing week for higher education," said Shihipar.
The crackdown on Emory students and faculty came a day after Texas state troopers descended on the University of Texas at Austin campus, some on horseback, and clamped down on a student walkout there, arresting more than 50 protesters.
Also on Thursday, students at Indiana University and Ohio State University (OSU)—where more than 30 and a dozen students were arrested, respectively—reported seeing snipers stationed on the rooftops of campus buildings, which an Ohio State representative denied.
The Biden administration has not directly addressed the protests or their demands since Monday, when President Joe Biden suggested the nationwide student uprising is "antisemitic."
"The use of state violence against peaceful protestors is unacceptable," said Sara Haghdoosti, executive director of Win Without War. "Police batons deployed against students calling for peace in Gaza are not a source of safety on campus, nor are they a bulwark against antisemitism. They hurt people, impinge on fundamental liberties, and serve an extreme right-wing agenda that threatens Jews, Muslims, and the right to protest across the country. University leaders and government officials must take steps to protect students exercising their right to protest, not enlist police to attack them."
"Antisemitism and anti-Muslim bigotry are on the rise and serious issues nationwide, including on college campuses," continued Haghdoosti. "The people endangered by these scourges deserve better than to be the targets of cynical political ploys or to be used as excuses for violent repression. No one is made safer by police violence, and politicians who say otherwise are only attempting to sow division for their own reprehensible ends. What we need from our leaders right now is to de-escalate, permit protests, and not allow state violence against people exercising their fundamental rights."
Irene Khan, the United Nations special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, said Thursday that the protests spreading across the U.S. and internationally are a sign that "the Gaza crisis is truly becoming a global crisis of the freedom of expression."
"Legitimate speech must be protected," Khan said Thursday, "but, unfortunately, there is a hysteria that is taking hold in the U.S."
"We must not mix [antisemitism] up with criticism of Israel as a political entity, as a state," she added. "Criticizing Israel is perfectly legitimate under international law."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'We Are Alive, But We Are Not OK': Gaza Doctors Detail Horrific Toll of Israeli Assault
"Our suffering is being live-streamed, but the world watches in silence. We have been failed."
Apr 26, 2024
Healthcare workers in the Gaza Strip have witnessed firsthand the appalling toll of Israel's war, treating badly wounded patients and amputating limbs without anesthesia, delivering babies condemned to starvation by the Israeli blockade, and enduring repeated attacks on overwhelmed medical facilities.
Such horrors have had devastating physical and psychological consequences for doctors living and volunteering in Gaza, including hundreds of staffers for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders.
On Friday, MSF published unnerving testimony from several members of its staff, including Dr. Ruba Suliman, who works at the Indonesian Field Hospital in Rafah, an overcrowded city in southern Gaza that Israeli forces are preparing to invade.
"There is constant noise from the drones, which never leave us. Sometimes it's really hard to sleep," said Suliman, whose family was displaced by Israel's assault. "I have this moral obligation to help people around me and I have this other obligation to save my kids."
"We are alive, but we are not OK," she said. "We are tired. Everybody here is devastated."
MSF also published a video Friday featuring an interview with Dr. Audrey McMahon, a psychiatrist who recently returned from Palestine.
The video begins with screenshots of a series of text messages McMahon received from an unnamed colleague in Gaza.
"I feel lost," the messages read. "I don't have a home. My home and my city were destroyed... Our suffering is being live-streamed, but the world watches in silence. We have been failed."
McMahon said that while doctors are "trained to see blood" and other things that "would be hard to see for most people," what they've witnessed over the past six months "is extremely distressing and disturbing for any human being who would see it."
"They've been seeing people coming missing one or many limbs, dismembered children, and women and men in acute extreme pain," said McMahon. "In the beginning we had no more supplies, and so some amputations were done without any painkillers or sedation, which is beyond imaginable."
"Some doctors, some medical staff, received their own people—their own family or extended family," she continued. "Having to witness that and treat your own people adds another layer of something potentially very, very traumatic."
More than 480 healthcare workers are among the more than 34,000 people who have been killed by Israel's military assault, which has almost completely destroyed Gaza's healthcare system—a major war crime. Not a single hospital in the territory is fully functional, and mass graves were recently discovered at two of the enclave's largest medical complexes, both of which Israeli forces reduced to ruin.
In a briefing to the United Nations earlier this year, MSF secretary-general Christopher Lockyear said that "there is no health system to speak of left in Gaza."
"Israel's military has dismantled hospital after hospital," said Lockyear. "What remains is so little in the face of such carnage."
Amparo Villasmil, an MSF psychologist who worked in Gaza in February and March, said Friday that "when we say that there is no safe place in Gaza today, we are not just talking about the shelling."
"There isn't even a safe place in people's minds," said Villasmil. "They live in a state of constant alert. They can't sleep, they think that at any moment they are going to die; that if they fall asleep, they won't be able to react quickly and run away, or protect their family."
Villasmil described finding a fellow psychologist in Gaza "leaning his head on his knees" and "on the verge of tears," telling her "how exhausted he was."
"He asked me what he was supposed to do, where he should go, and when this war would stop," said Villasmil. "I had no answers to give him."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Amid Israeli Bombs, Bullets, and Blockade, Gazans Now Face Suffocating Heat
"The tent feels like it's on fire," said one young refugee mother. "It's so hot you can't bear it, especially with young children."
Apr 26, 2024
Just a few months ago, Palestinian children exposed to the elements amid Israel's genocidal assault on of Gaza were dying of hypothermia. Now they're facing potentially deadly heat as temperatures soar to over 100°F in the embattled strip, where hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced people are sweltering in tents and other makeshift shelters.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) warned Friday that "unexpected blistering temperatures across Gaza have added to the daily misery faced by the enclave's people and sparked new fears of disease outbreaks amid a lack of sufficient clean water and waste disposal."
"It is so hard. It's a heat that I can't describe."
Although there was a repsite Friday, temperatures in Gaza have soared as high as 108°F in recent days, and it's not even May yet. During the hotter summer months, the mercury can soar to over 120°F. Even with air conditioning and refrigeration during less trying times, Gazans often struggled with the summertime heat.
Now those luxuries are gone, replaced by suffocating heat, privation, and the ever-present threat of death or injury from Israeli bombs and bullets as the approximately 1.5 million people sheltering in Rafah brace for an impending invasion.
Many refugees are sheltering in structures made from heat-trapping agricultural greenhouses.
"The tent feels like it's on fire," Maryam Arafat, a young mother of three, toldThe New York Times earlier this week as her infant daughter screamed in discomfort. "It's so hot you can't bear it, especially with young children."
Gaza City refugee Mustafa Radwan told U.N. News that "it is like living in a greenhouse, no one can tolerate living inside."
Arafat and Radwan are but two of the approximately 2 million Palestinians forced from their homes by Israel's relentless bombardment and invasion of Gaza following the October 7 attacks.
Day after day, refugees are forced to wait in long lines for water and other necessities. Safe drinking water is particularly hard to find. Ice is nonexistent.
"Everything is a queue, everything is suffering in displacement," lamented Radwan.
Arafat said: "Everything has become difficult in this world. There is no water."
The scorching heat only adds to the misery. So do recent decisions—trees that were chopped down in the cold months for heating and cooking fuel are no longer there to provide shade as spring marches into summer.
Warmer temperatures also bring insects, some of which carry diseases.
"We can't sit outside and we can't sit inside the tent," Fadwa Abu Waqfa, another mother of three living in a tent in Rafah, told the Times. "It is so hard. It's a heat that I can't describe."
Dr. Ahmed Hanouda, director of a pop-up clinic in the Mawasi area of the devastated southern city of Khan Younis, told U.N. Newsthat "with the onset of summer, difficulties increase from water scarcity and overcrowding, leading to the spread of infectious diseases, skin sensitivities, lice, and other illnesses."
"We are, of course, trying to address these problems and provide services to the displaced people under these challenging circumstances based on the available resources," Hanouda added. "We look forward to offering better services and providing better facilities in the coming days."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular