Issues
Texas regulators announce re-write of dunes sagebrush lizard conservation plan. Five years after its implementation, state officials this week announced they plan to scrap the Texas Conservation Plan and write a new one from scratch. “The more we looked at the program, the more we realized there were systemic problems,” said Robert Gulley, Director of Economic Growth and Endangered Species Management for the Texas Comptroller’s office.
In 2012, the Texas Conservation Plan was drafted in an effort to conserve the dunes sagebrush lizard while also ensuring oil and gas companies could continue to operate. Specifically, the plan called upon energy developers in Texas to voluntarily help preserve the species’ habitat. While it was successful enough to keep the lizard from being listed under the Endangered Species Act, the Texas Conservation Plan hasn’t yet been able to achieve the desired populations numbers.
So far, industry representatives in the area have been receptive of Texas’ decision to override the plan. Ben Sheppard, president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, said the organization “recognize[d] the plan needed to be updated.” Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil & Gas Association, spoke with a similar sentiment on behalf of his members, saying they intend to “continue to work closely with the Comptroller’s office on the most effective management of the plan to protect the species.”
Judge rules in favor of administration in border wall suit. A U.S. district court judge ruled in favor of the Trump administration this week, effectively allowing the project to move forward without pausing to obtain various regulatory permits. Judge Gonzalo Curiel ruled against an attempt made by the state of California and several environmental groups to stop construction of the wall until the Trump administration proved it was in compliance with federal environmental standards. Immediately following his decision, activists said they would appeal the ruling.
The lawsuit stems from the Department of Homeland Security waving “a variety of environmental, natural resource and management laws,” including the Endangered Species Act, for portions of a prototype wall that would be built near San Diego and Border Partrol’s El Centro sector.
In the News
Conservation groups ask Zinke to leave Obama-era plans alone. E&E News (Sub req’d). A coalition of conservation groups is asking Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to fully implement Obama-era greater sage grouse conservation plans and avoid “reducing protections” for the bird. The coalition of nine groups, including the Wilderness Society, National Audubon Society and National Wildlife Federation, sent a letter today to Zinke to “express our concerns” about a series of recent moves that the groups say could “jeopardize” the welfare of the bird and the Bureau of Land Management’s “legal commitments and obligations related to management and conservation of habitat” for the grouse. Specifically, the letter points to two recent BLM instruction memorandums (IMs) directing agency field staff on how to manage public lands for sage grouse. The IMs “generally retreat from the protections set out” in previous guidance to field staff in 2016. The first IM, issued in December, reverses Obama-era policy directing BLM field offices to prioritize oil and natural gas leasing and drilling projects outside of the most sensitive sage grouse habitat.
Don’t mess with the birds!. The New Yorker. Catskill, New York—the small Hudson River town where the American painter Thomas Cole lived and worked, from 1825 to 1847—is also home to the RamsHorn-Livingston Sanctuary, which contains four hundred and thirty acres of tidal marsh, upland forest, and fallow farmland, and is presently occupied by common loons, great blue and green herons, wood ducks, mallards, a pair of bald eagles, northern harrier and red-tailed hawks, ruffled grouse, merlin falcons, eastern screech and great horned owls, belted kingfishers, pileated woodpeckers, warblers, scarlet tanagers, blue-gray gnatcatchers, a tiny and nervous-looking thrush known as a veery, and various other species of birds whose names, I will admit, are perilously delightful to type. There is also a beaver. This year marks the centennial of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, a U.S. federal law that prohibits anyone from trying to “take, possess, import, export, transport, sell, purchase, barter, or offer for sale, purchase, or barter, any migratory bird, or the parts, nests, or eggs of such a bird except under the terms of a valid permit issued pursuant to Federal regulations.”
US considers protected status for wild spring Chinook. Associated Press. Federal fisheries officials said Tuesday they will consider putting the Pacific Northwest’s once-flourishing wild spring-run Chinook salmon on the list of threatened or endangered species. The National Marine Fisheries Services plans a 12-month review on whether to give protected status to the salmon in and around the Klamath River. Spring Chinook, historically the first Chinook salmon to return from the ocean each winter, were once one of the most abundant salmon of the Pacific Northwest, important to tribes, fishermen and wildlife. California’s Kuruk tribe, which joined the Salmon River Restoration Council environmental group in petitioning for more protections for the fish, say the species is nearly extinct throughout much of its range in Oregon and Northern California. The tribe blames Klamath River dams for blocking the fish from their spawning grounds.
Migration research reveals key to declines in rare songbirds. Phys.Org. The annual long-distance migration of rare, tiny songbirds that reproduce in the Great Lakes region and Appalachian Mountains is no longer a mystery. By tracking one of the smallest species ever monitored over thousands of miles using cutting-edge technology, a team of ornithologists led by scientists at The University of Toledo found that it is where golden-winged warblers spend the winter in the tropics that determines if a population is declining or stable, not factors associated with the breeding grounds thousands of miles north in the United States and Canada. Over the course of the five-year study, the scientists found that different populations of the birds, which are about the size of a ping-pong ball and weigh less than three pennies, do not mix between their separate northern nesting grounds occupied during the spring and summer and the tropical sites where they spend the winter. Mapped using data from 76 light level geolocators recovered from the birds, each population shows strong migratory connectivity, or geographic segregation, that confirms that populations of the birds stay together in different locations for the seasons throughout the year.
