WWPBlog

A recent article illustrating how Bush’s administration is taking pre-emptive, unilateral action to rewrite history on the environmental legacy of his Interior Department:

Bush Interior Dept. Is Giving Itself A Pat on the Back: 
Environmentalists Take Issue With List of Achievements
by Juliet Eilperin - Washington Post 

I visited the DOI site, and looked at the claimed accomplishments.

The Washington Post article demonstrates a few ’stretched’ accomplishment and the omission of some critical details. 

Closer to home in Idaho, Interior under Dirk Kempthorne has the nerve to claim that the Bush administration was somehow responsible for the dramatic expansion of Craters of the Moon by a Clinton administration National Monument.

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We received official notification today that following an appeal brought by Western Watershed Project’s California Office, the Doublehead Ranger District on Modoc National Forest has opted to withdraw its recent decision to authorize cattle grazing on Tucker allotment. Western Watersheds Project appealed the decision to protect the sage grouse and other at risk species. The 29,226 acre Tucker allotment, adjacent to Clear Lake, provides crucial nesting and brood rearing habitat for the handful of sage grouse that remain on the Modoc National Forest and in Modoc County, California.

Tucker allotment lies within the Clear Lake-Devil’s Garden Sage Grouse Population Management Unit. That once abundant sage grouse population now consists of only 20-30 birds - most of which use habitat on Tucker allotment. These Clear Lake sage grouse are of considerable scientific interest being nonmigratory and isolated from other populations to the east. Their loss would result in a yet another significant range contraction for the species.

Western Watersheds Project will be keeping a careful watch on the Forest to ensure that actions are taken to protect and not to further jeopardize this imperiled population of greater sage grouse.

More compelling science indicating livestock production significantly contributes to climate change.  (Emphasis added) :

 

American Geophysical Union
2008 Fall Meeting

The GHG and Land Demand Consequences
of the US Animal-Based Food Consumption

Martin, P A Dept. of Geophysics, 5734 S. Ellis Ave., Chicago, IL 60637, United States

Eshel, G Bard College, PO Box 5000, Annandale, NY 12504-5000, United States

Abstract: While the environmental burdens exerted by food production are  addressed by several recent publications, the contributions of  animal-based food production, and in particular red meat—by far the most environmentally exacting of all large-scale animal-based foods—are less well quantified. We present several simple calculations that quantify some environmental costs of animal- and cattle-based food production. First, we show that American red meat is, on average, 350% more GHG (greenhouse gas) -intensive per edible calorie than the national food system’s mean. Second, we show that the per calorie land-use efficiencies of fruit and beans are 5 and 3 times that of animal-based foods. That is, an animal-based edible calorie requires the same amounts of land as 5 fruit calories or 3 bean calories. We conclude with highlighting the importance of these results to policy makers by calculating the mass flux into the environment of fertilizer and herbicide that will be averted by reducing or eliminating animal-based foods from the mean US diet. This also enables us to make preliminary quantitative statements about expected changes to the size and probability of Gulf of Mexico anoxic events of a certain O2 depletion levels that are likely to accompany specific dietary shifts.

You can do your part with a New Year’s Resolution to eliminate or significantly reduce your consumption of red meat - it’s not hard, and it’s good for the natural environment.

The New York Times report’s on the EPA’s comment period for a proposed tax on global warming gas emissions which could potentially tax cattle operations for their significant contribution of methane, a gas that warms the atmosphere at 26 times the rate of CO2, to the atmosphere.

Farmers Panic About a ‘Cow Tax’

It’s about time we started moving to demand that agricultural polluters pay when they degrade the environment like every other industry. Instead, the livestock industry and Big Agribusiness have routinely maneuvered for exemption from the rules everyone else plays by - think water quality standards.

The Whetstone Mountains are a large, rugged Sky Island range in southern Arizona on the Coronado National Forest. Largely due to limited access, these mountains have been spared the intense recreational pressure of some of the other areas of the national forest. Unfortunately, they haven’t been spared the adverse effects of livestock grazing.

However, Western Watersheds Project’s Arizona office has now successfully appealed a grazing decision for several allotments that would have entailed ambitious water developments - including well-drilling, spring development, and pipeline construction - throughout the range. We appealed the decision based on a number of issues, but our chief concern was the water developments and the impact of grazing on wildlife habitat in this remote and biologically-rich area. The Forest Service has been issuing a number of decisions for allotments on the Coronado National Forest, and they’ve been failing to provide the requisite site-specific analysis or to comply with the National Forest Management Act.

The new appeal decision remands the District Ranger’s grazing and water development plans for approximately 50,000 acres.

Thanks for WWP attorney Erik Ryberg for this win for wildlife and water.