November, 01 2021, 06:15pm EDT
![Western Environmental Law Center](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012626/origin.jpg)
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Matthew Bishop, Western Environmental Law Center, bishop@westernlaw.org
Arlene Montgomery, Friends of the Wild Swan, arlene@wildswan.org
Peter Hart, Wilderness Workshop, peter@wildernessworkshop.org
Lindsay Larris, WildEarth Guardians, llarris@wildearthguardians.org
Danielle Moser, Oregon Wild, dm@oregonwild.org
Bethany Cotton, Cascadia Wildlands, Bethany@cascwild.org
Paige Singer, Rocky Mountain Wild, paige@rockymountainwild.org
Wildlife Advocates Convince Feds to Keep Lynx Protections, Write Long-Overdue Recovery Plan
WASHINGTON
Today, a coalition of conservation organizations secured a legal settlement that will aid threatened Canada lynx recovery: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will abandon plans to remove Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for the struggling snow cat in the contiguous U.S. and initiate recovery planning for the species after nearly 20 years of delay. Today's agreement stems from a legal challenge wildlife advocates brought against the Service for its failure to prepare a recovery plan for threatened Canada lynx over this extended period.
The tentative date for a final recovery plan is December 1, 2024.
"This is the right decision," said Matthew Bishop, senior attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center. "It's nice to see the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reverse course, apply the best available climate science, and put its time and energy into recovery planning for the species. The Service now has about three years to finalize a recovery plan. This sets the agency up for success in terms of a legally sound, science-based plan while the Biden administration is still in charge. This is a victory for lynx, science, and for everyone who values healthy ecosystems."
Recovery plans are important tools required by the ESA, often referred to as the "roadmap" for conservation because they spell out what the agency needs to do to recover a species and how best to do it. Recovery plans also include metrics that must be met before the Service may deem a species recovered.
"Lynx require the protections of the Endangered Species Act because threats from massive logging projects and climate change are degrading and fragmenting their habitat," said Arlene Montgomery, program director for Friends of the Wild Swan. "They deserve a recovery plan that contains measurable criteria to address those threats and make sure that their populations increase, not decline to extinction."
"For more than 20 years, we've been waiting for a lynx recovery plan," said Peter Hart of Wilderness Workshop. "It's a huge relief that this administration is finally committing to get one done. Recovery is the goal of the Endangered Species Act, and we're hoping this bodes well for the long-term viability of sensitive lynx populations."
"Lynx are surviving today in Colorado and its surrounding states thanks to the Endangered Species Act protections and efforts of the State of Colorado and countless citizens who care about our native wildlife," said Paige Singer, conservation biologist at Rocky Mountain Wild. "The Fish and Wildlife Service providing clear recovery goals that serve to coordinate conservation among the various state and federal agencies involved in lynx management is critical to their recovery in the lower 48 states."
"Lynx should be in Oregon. They have been in Oregon. It's part of their historic range. The Fish and Wildlife Service returning to the best science and committing to create a recovery plan is essential to lynx recovery in Oregon, and we are happy to see this progress toward that goal," said Danielle Moser, Wildlife Program coordinator for Oregon Wild.
"We're glad to see that the Biden administration is taking steps in the right direction by agreeing to draft a recovery plan that will finally give the Canada lynx a chance at recovery," said Lindsay Larris, Wildlife Program director at WildEarth Guardians. "We are hopeful that this decision is a harbinger of things to come from a Fish and Wildlife Service that will consider how to best protect species in the face of climate change, and will rely on science and not politics in taking bold action to prevent extinction."
"The recent announcement from the Fish and Wildlife Service that 23 species went extinct drives home that listing a species is not enough to prevent their demise: We must use the tools outlined in the law and put resources toward bringing them back from the brink," said Bethany Cotton, conservation director for Cascadia Wildlands. "Today's settlement means the Service will -- at long last -- finally prioritize making lynx resilient in the face of ongoing threats by initiating a science-based recovery planning process and finishing it within a reasonable time."
"Lynx are in more trouble now in the West than ever before," said Bishop. "Due to climate change, related warming, and longer fire seasons, we're seeing significant losses of lynx habitat in the few places that still support lynx. We're also seeing range contraction, increased fragmentation, and decreases in population numbers in Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming," said Bishop. "Lynx were reintroduced into the Southern Rocky Mountains in 1999 -- which is helpful and needed. They appear to be doing okay, but the population remains very small and isolated and, as such, extremely vulnerable. Now is to time to focus on recovery planning and designating critical habitat. Kudos to the Fish and Wildlife Service for reversing course on Canada lynx," Bishop added.
Background:
In 2013, conservation organizations sued the Service for failing to prepare a recovery plan for threatened lynx, following nearly 14 years of delay. The court agreed and directed the agency to prepare a recovery plan by January 2018.
A month before the January 2018 deadline, however, the Service decided to forgo preparing a recovery plan on the theory that lynx are already "recovered" and no longer threatened in the contiguous U.S. The Service said it would therefore focus its time and energy on delisting and removing protections for the species, rather than recovery planning.
Lynx and their habitat are threatened by climate change, wildfires, logging, development, motorized access and trapping, which disturb and fragment the landscape. Lynx rely heavily on snowshoe hare, and like their preferred prey, are specially adapted to living in mature boreal forests with dense cover and deep snowpack. Climate change may also increase hare predation from other species, resulting in increased competition and displacement of lynx.
Since designating Canada lynx as threatened under the Endangered Species Act 20 years ago in 2000, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has gone to extraordinary lengths to deny protections to the big cat. The agency had to be sued to list the species, amend the species' listing status (to cover all of its range in the contiguous United States), prepare a recovery plan, and to designate critical habitat. WELC litigation prompted many of these actions.
The Western Environmental Law Center uses the power of the law to safeguard the public lands, wildlife, and communities of the American West in the face of a changing climate. We envision a thriving, resilient West, abundant with protected public lands and wildlife, powered by clean energy, and defended by communities rooted in an ethic of conservation.
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US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
slammed the bill as a "xenophobic attack" meant to silence "Black voices, brown voices, LBGTQIA+ voices, [and] young voices."
Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
"What we've found is that these measures have a disproportionate impact on voters with disabilities, both Black and white," NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior policy counsel Jared Evans
toldNola.com earlier this week.
"It's clear that their goal is to make it harder to vote, harder for specific communities to vote especially," Evans added. "What they don't realize is that these laws hurt white voters, too."
In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
ordered county election offices to stop registering voters with past felony convictions who have not received official pardons. The move came after the state's unicameral Legislature passed a bill granting voting eligibility to felons immediately after they have completed their sentences instead of waiting two years.
"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
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Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that campaigners linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
"And it mandates oil and gas extraction in our oceans," he continued. "The insignificant crumbs thrown at renewable energy do nothing to address the climate emergency."
"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else," she continued. "It would unleash more drilling on federal lands and waters, unnecessarily rush the review of proposed oil and gas export projects, and lift the Biden administration's pause on new LNG exports."
"We urge Congress to reject this proposal and commit to action that protects frontline communities from the impacts of fossil fuel development and the climate crisis," Rosenbluth added.
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
"We cannot afford to roll back so many of our bedrock environmental and community legal protections and offer a blank check to the oil and gas industry," she stressed. "We need new solutions for permitting if we are going to meet our clean energy potential and address the climate challenge. But this is not it."
"This bill would altogether be a leap backward on climate, health, and justice if passed into law," Adams added. "The Senate should reject it and look toward alternative solutions already being considered."
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'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
The SAF and Sudanese government figures have cast doubt on international experts' claims about famine in the country.
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