Obama Administration Denies American Pika Endangered Species Act Protection

By Chris Clarke | Posted on February 4, 2010

Today the Obama administration denied Endangered Species Act protection to the American pika, a small mountain-dwelling mammal that is on the frontlines of global-warming-driven endangerment. The decision, issued by Interior Secretary Salazar, comes in response to a scientific petition submitted in 2007 by the Center for Biological Diversity, represented by Earthjustice.

Stop the NRA’s assault on condors

By Chris Clarke | Posted on November 10, 2009

Photo by Just Chaos

The National Rifle Association is gunning for America’s largest and most endangered bird—the condor.

Calling us “extremists” for trying to stop the poisoning of condors by lead bullets — inside a federal national monument, no less — the NRA is pitting its multimillion-dollar legal team against our lawyers in a showdown that will determine whether condors survive or disappear forever.

Suit Filed Over Bighorn Sheep Habitat

By Chris Clarke | Posted on October 7, 2009

SAN DIEGO, Calif.— Conservation groups today filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for slashing critical habitat protections for the endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep. In April 2009, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reduced its 2001 habitat designation of 844, 897 acres to just 376,938 acres – a more-than 55-percent reduction. The flawed designation is unsupported by the agency’s own science and was made to accommodate urban sprawl. Today’s lawsuit challenging it was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, Desert Protective Council, Desert Survivors, and the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society.

Court Rules That Southern California Forest Plans Violate Federal Environmental Laws

By Chris Clarke | Posted on September 30, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal district court judge ruled late Tuesday that U.S. Forest Service management plans for four Southern California national forests did not adequately protect those forests’ wildest landscapes.

In the ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel agreed with seven environmental groups that the Forest Service failed to assess cumulative damage to those national forests that would be caused by piecemeal road building and other development in most of the forests’ roadless areas, in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.

California’s lucrative wildlife

By Chris Clarke | Posted on July 16, 2009

The US Fish and Wildlife Service released a study this week that examined the benefit to the US economy from birding, indicating that the popular hobby contributes $36 billion annually to the nation’s economy. The report was issued as an addendum to a November 2007 agency study of wildlife-related activities and their economic impact, and reading the coverage of today’s addendum, I became a little curious as to whether the earlier study might shed some light on the continuing issue of whether to cut finding to California’s wildlife-rich state parks.

Upstate Fourth

By Hank Fox | Posted on July 4, 2009

Any creature with experience of guns cowers under shelter tonight. Noses rise to test the air, ears lay flat at the concussive barrage.

In the distance, explosions. Silent sparkles, colored diamonds scattered on a black velvet sky, the fountaining celebratory sparks of a 10-miles-distant Fourth of July fireworks display rises over the treetops. The flashes are distant, but the sound effects are local — the next street over in both directions, more amateur celebrations pop in staccato sneers at local ordinances.

An environmental hero

By Chris Clarke | Posted on May 30, 2009

CNN brings us an inspiring story of a woman who has made a difference for sea turtles, at no small risk to herself.

“Twenty years ago, this was a graveyard,” Suzan Lakhan Baptiste said of the six-mile stretch of beach near her home.

“The stench was horrendous. You could smell it for miles,” she said.

Saddened and frustrated, Baptiste launched a crusade to help end the slaughter of the gentle giants. Today, she and her group are succeeding: What was once a turtle graveyard is now a maternity ward—one of the largest leatherback nesting colonies in the world.

She did so by facing down poachers armed with machetes, and persuading them that a better life for turtles made a better life for the local humans. Video below the fold.

Viva Las Wilderness!

By Chris Clarke | Posted on May 16, 2009

As long as I’m posting videos today — maybe we can make that a Saturday tradition here at The Clade! — here’s a wonderful new promotional piece for the Nevada Wilderness Project. The NWP is fighting to preserve some of the most-threatened landscapes around in one of the most anti-environmental climates around, and they deserve our support.

Even if they didn’t, the video has some great images of places I love. Check it out.

Proposed wind plant could harm federally endangered species

By Dave Bonta | Posted on May 15, 2009

Just in time for Endangered Species Day comes the news that, for the first time, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Army Corps of Engineers will review a wind plant proposal to see whether its impacts on bats and migratory birds would violate the Endangered Species Act. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (whose environmental reporting, by the way, is second to none in Pennsylvania) has the story.

Finding: why wind turbines kill bats

By Dave Bonta | Posted on May 5, 2009

Wind Turbines Give Bats the “Bends,” Study Finds

Half of the dead bats that lie like jetsam
around the tall masts of wind turbines
appear unharmed, wingbones unbroken,
their ears’ stiff calipers still cocked.

Questions About Birds

By Dave Bonta | Posted on May 1, 2009

What made the stork ancestor of New World vultures forsake its obstretrics practice for the morgue?

Where does the wood thrush store its silver bells when it flies south for the winter?

Did the old trout learn how to lurk from studying ospreys?

Is it the excess of sky following a clearcut that gives cerulean warblers the blues?