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April 16, 1999
"People who say global warming won't be a problem argue that animals will simply shift to more suitable habitats as change occurs. Alan's results show there are limits to that." -- Michael Lanno, U.S. coordinator of the Declining Amphibian Populations Task Force, on animal extinction and global warming (see story below).
Contents:
TAKE ACTION: SEA TURTLES SAY "FIX THE WTO"
GLOBAL WARMING: EVIDENCE OF WILDLIFE IMPACTS GROWS
IN THE FIELD: TOUR DE SPLASH
TAKE ACTION
SEA TURTLES SAY "FIX THE WTO"
A federal judge ruled last week (April 8) in favor of stronger protections for endangered sea turtles. The Legal Strategies Group, which brought a lawsuit suit on behalf of Earth Island Institute and the Sierra Club against the Clinton Administration, hailed the decision as a victory for sea turtles and a blow to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Last Spring, a WTO dispute panel ruled against a US law that requires nations exporting shrimp to the US to ensure that their shrimp trawls use turtle excluder devices (TEDs). Universal use of TEDs could save 97 percent of the 150,000 sea turtles that drown in shrimp nets every year.
In response to the WTO decision, the Clinton Administration issued new regulations in September 1998 that required TEDs only on individual boats selling shrimp to the US market. The Sierra Club considered the new regulations unenforceable because turtle-deadly shrimp can easily be mixed with turtle-safe shrimp.
The US Court of International Trade in New York agreed, ruling that the boat-by-boat TED regulations failed to meet the requirements of the law.
The Clinton Administration now faces a tough decision. If it restores our strong turtle-safe shrimp regulations, the WTO could force the United States to pay penalties to the nations that brought the complaint. That places the United States in the awkward position of paying a penalty for trying to be a more responsible consumer of the world's resources.
Alternatively, the Administration could ask Congress to knuckle under to the WTO and change the law so that it can apply the weaker boat-by-boat standards. But the Administration would have to be desperate to turn to Congress to get it out of this jam. The last thing US trade officials want is a high-profile legislative battle that exposes the fallacy in their claims that trade rules are environmentally benign.
At the upcoming, WTO Summit in Seattle from Nov. 30 - Dec. 2, the world's trade officials should stop and think: do we need to negotiate a slew of new anti-environmental trade rules, or should we fix the trade rules we've already got? We know what the sea turtles would say. They'd say "fix it first."
TAKE ACTION: SEND A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF YOUR LOCAL PAPER
Please take a few moments to prepare a letter and help educate members of your community and demand action to stop anti-environmental trade rules.
GLOBAL WARMING: EVIDENCE OF WILDLIFE IMPACTS GROWS
Costa Rican Rainforest Becomes Global Warming Laboratory
According to a 4/15 story in the Washington Post, the effects of global warming upon the world's wildlife are growing rapidly. The article profiled the ecologically rich cloud forest of Costa Rica, where massive climate changes are underway. An abrupt, unprecedented climate shift associated with global warming appears to have caused the disappearance of 20 frog species in Costa Rica over the last several decades.
"The frog declines, which included the infamous extinction of the Golden Toad, coincided with a sudden reduction in moisture levels on the continental divide atop Monteverde in Costa Rica's central highlands, according to J. Alan Pounds, of the University of Miami, and his colleagues." (Wash. Post, 4/15/99)
The discovery is evidence that global warming is harming wildlife in previously unrecognized ways, he said. "Biological communities are responding to climate change more quickly than we thought," he said. "We've observed a pattern here and our responsibility is to sound an alarm."
The overall shift in climate has brought 15 new species of birds up into the forest from lower elevations. Meanwhile, two lizards found only at higher elevations began to decline in the late 1980s and had vanished by 1996. These changes took place against the backdrop of a massive frog population decline that began in 1987 and has since wiped out 40 percent of species present.
Michael Lannoo, U.S. coordinator of the Declining Amphibian Populations Task Force, said Pounds has discovered the first animal extinction attributable to global warming. "People who say global warming won't be a problem argue that animals will simply shift to more suitable habitats as change occurs," he said. "Alan's results show there are limits to that."
IN THE FIELD: TOUR DE SPLASH
Sierrans From VA, MD, And DC Join In Media Tour
What's the best way to convince the media and decision makers that sprawl development must be stopped? By showing them the damage it will do firsthand.
That's exactly what activists from the Sierra Club and several other metropolitan Washington DC area environmental groups did yesterday. Their "Tour de Splash" took members of the media and decision makers out onto the Potomac and Anacostia rivers in a crab boat, showing them firsthand what will be lost of environmentally destructive developments go forward.
On the District side of the Potomac, the boat toured Oxon Cove, currently federal parkland and the home of herons, osprey and deer. Congress has approved using the paving over the parkland bad using it for a prison for D.C. inmates that would be run by a private corrections firm.
"Proposing to build a prison on a low-income minority community's parkland is a textbook case of environmental injustice," said Anna El-Eine, coordinator of the D.C. Environmental Network. (Washington Post, 4/16/99)
Other stops included the site of "National Harbor", which is now home to nesting bald eagles and a critical nursery for Chesapeake Bay fish. If plans go forward it will be replaced by a 534 acre, $1 billion resort. Attendees also discussed plans for a massive 12 lane bridge across the Potomac, destroying historic neighborhoods in Virginia and threatening the entire region with more sprawl development and more air pollution.
April 15, 1999
"Old fashioned methods like door-to-door canvassing and community events yield the greatest influence over an audience and present the best opportunity to deliver a full message without getting thrown in the trash or clicked to another channel."--The Eddie Mahe Company Dividing the Universe: Communicating Today, 1999
I. "Tour de Splash" makes waves in D.C. area media
II. Bay Area editorial picks up Sierra Club's "Tri-Valley" Earth Day sprawl focus
ACTION
Save Money: Protect Our Wild Heritage by Ending Logging in National Forests
Representatives Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and Jim Leach (R-IA) and their 46 co-sponsors reintroduced H.R. 1396, the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act (NFPRA) on Tuesday, April 13. The bill would protect America's wild heritage by ending commercial logging in our national forests, a practice that destroys our public forests and wastes billions of dollars of taxpayers' money.
"America's national forests are a rich part of the wild heritage we want to protect and pass on to our children, not squander for someone else's short-term profit," said Sierra Club President Chuck McGrady.
The NFPRA would put America's national forests off-limits to logging companies, saving taxpayers billions of dollars. Americans currently subsidize commercial logging in our national forests, losing $2 billion on the program from 1992 to 1997, according to the General Accounting Office. NFPRA would eliminate the federal logging program, redirecting the money saved to restore forests and help diversify the economies of communities that receive revenues from federal logging activities.
TAKE ACTION
Write a letter or call your representative through the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and urge him or her to co-sponsor H.R. 1396, the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act.
The Honorable Rep. ______ US House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515
Please thank your Member of Congress if they have co-sponsored the bill or urge your Member of Congress to support the bill if they have not. Here's a list of the co-sponsors for H.R. 1396, the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act:
1) Cynthia McKinney (D-GA)
2) Jim Leach (R-IA)
3) Gary Ackerman (D-NY)
4) Robert Andrews (D-NJ)
5) Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
6) Thomas Barrett (D-WI)
7) David Bonior (D-MI)
8) George Brown Jr. (D-CA)
9) Michael Capuano (D-MA)
10) Bill Clay (D-MO)
11) John Conyers (D-MI)
12) Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
13) Julian Dixon (D-CA)
14) Bob Filner (D-CA)
15) Michael Forbes (R-NY)
16) Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN)
17) Barney Frank (D-MA)
18) Bob Franks (R-NJ)
19) Luis Guiterrez (D-IL)
20) Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
21) Rush Holt (D-NJ)
22) Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)
23) Jerry Kleczka (D-WI)
24) Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
25) Tom Lantos (D-CA)
26) John B. Larson (D-CT)
27) Barbara Lee (D-CA)
28) John Lewis (D-GA)
29) Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
30) Bill Luther (D-MN)
31) Edward Markey (D-MA)
32) Matthew Martinez (D-CA)
33) Jim McDermott (D-WA)
34) James McGovern (D-MA)
35) Carrie Meek (D-FL)
36) Gregory Meeks (D-NY)
37) Major Owens (D-NY)
38) William Pascrell (D-NJ)
39) Donald Payne (D-NJ)
40) Lynn Rivers (D-MI)
41) Bobby Rush (D-IL)
42) Pete Stark (D-CA)
43) Edolphus Towns (D-NY)
44) Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH)
45) Maxine Waters (D-CA)
46) Henry Waxman (D-CA)
47) Robert Wexler (D-FL)
48) Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)I. "Tour de Splash" makes waves in D.C. area media
As part of the local release of the Sierra Club's "SPARE America's Wildlands" Earth Day report, the Club's D.C. area "Better Communities, Less Traffic" campaign held a successful press event--the 1999 "Tour de Splash" on the boat "Susquehanna."
Media representatives from two TV stations, and three newspapers including the Washington Post, joined local Sierra Club leaders, staff, and allies for a boat's eye tour of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers.
The tour highlighted two of the "neighborhood treasures" described in the SPARE Report: Oxon Cove and Eagle Cove. The tour was advertised "to showcase the Potomac River's fragile recovery, the need for the restoration of the Anacostia, and current development proposals that will help or hurt the rivers." Activists also announced upcoming Sierra Club Earth Week activities.
II. Bay Area editorial picks up Sierra Club's "Tri-Valley" Earth Day sprawl focus
The Valley Times editorial reads, "There is no question that sprawl is an issue of great community concern, affecting everything from air to traffic to schools to housing to jobs. We welcome the Sierra Club's focus on the Tri-Valley and Tracy and its call for a public discussion."
April 14, 1999
"The real keys to saving America's national and neighborhood wildlands are tenacity, and optimism, and a willingness to take responsibility, to act personally to protect what's left of wild America. " --- Chuck McGrady, Sierra Club President
I. Tell the Speaker of the House to Oppose Anti-Environmental Riders
II. American's are Going Wild! Overwhelming Support for Protecting Wildlands
******TAKE ACTION!!!*******
Tell the Speaker of the House to Oppose Anti-Environmental Riders
Anti-environmentalists in Congress are up to their usual tricks -- attaching damaging environmental provisions or "riders" to unrelated must-pass funding bills. The first funding bill of the year, the Supplemental Appropriations bill, passed through the House and Senate with anti-environmental riders attached. Now, the House and Senate must meet in a conference committee to iron out the differences in their two versions of the spending bill. This is our last opportunity to strip the riders from the bill before final passage.
Popular support for protecting our air and water, our National Forests -- America's environment -- is so strong that a full frontal attack on the laws that protect our environment would be political suicide. That's why some Members of Congress have resorted to burying their attacks deep, often in unrelated bills, as "riders." Three anti-environmental riders are buried in the latest Supplemental Appropriations bill. The anti-environmental riders would:
* Block the National Park Service from protecting the fisheries of Alaska's Glacier Bay National Park during a long period of litigation over commercial fishing.
* Put the breaks on the reform of regulations governing oil industry tax breaks and long-overdue hardrock mining reform.
House Speaker Hastert is the most powerful leader in the House, and has the power to strip the anti-environmental riders from the bill. Rep. Hastert should take the opportunity to make it clear to the new Congress that controversial environmental measures should not be attached to unrelated bills, but debated in the light of day.
Please call Congressman Hastert at 202/225-2976. Tell him to protect our America's environment and strip the riders from the Supplemental Appropriations bill. Urge him to send a strong signal to the 106th Congress that anti-environmental riders will not be tolerated under his leadership. Thank You.
AMERICANS ARE GOING WILD! Sierra Club Report and National Poll Find Overwhelming Public Support for Protecting Wildlands
A national report and poll released today by the Sierra Club find that America is in the midst of a wilderness revival, with a resurgence of interest in protecting wildlands at both the national and neighborhood levels. The poll found such broad-based support for wilderness conservation that a majority of voters support buying and protecting wildlands rather than using the money to increase military spending -- even at a time when our nation is engaged in armed conflict.
"These poll numbers and Sierra Club's 'SPARE America's Wildlands' report formally recognize a growing trend -- Americans are going wild," said Sierra Club President Chuck McGrady. "After nearly two decades of playing defense, Americans are supporting a more ambitious, pro-active wilderness agenda. On both the national and neighborhood levels."
The report, "SPARE America's Wildlands: The Sierra Club Plan to Protect Our National and Neighborhood Wild Places and Open Spaces," examines six national treasures -- the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Northern Rockies, the Maine Woods, the Everglades, Utah's Wilderness and Sequoia National Forest -- along with a threatened wildland in each state. The report proposes an aggressive and comprehensive program to protect these national and local wild places, identified by the acronym "SPARE": Smart growth; Preservation; Acquisition; Restoration; Ending commercial logging in National Forests.
A national poll conducted April 8 to 11 asked 861 registered voters, "How would you rather see $2 billion of the surplus spent -- to buy and protect wildlands and other natural places or increase military defense spending?" The polling firm Lake Snell Perry & Associates found respondents solidly favor environmental protection over defense spending, 50 percent to 34 percent.
In a March 23-25 national survey of 1000 voters, which was also released today, more than three-quarters of those polled said they support the bi-partisan, billion-dollar Lands Legacy initiative to protect America's natural and historic sites, farmlands and urban parks. Support for the Lands Legacy initiative was overwhelming and across the board; in addition to its 78-percent overall support, at least two-thirds of voters in every demographic subgroup favored the bill.
"The real keys to saving America's national and neighborhood wildlands are tenacity, and optimism, and a willingness to take responsibility, to act personally to protect what's left of wild America. By acting now, by harnessing the power and energy of the wilderness resurgence sweeping our country, we can protect America's wildlands, for our families and for our future," McGrady concluded.
The report is available on the web at www.sierraclub.org/wilderness/report_1999/
"Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of the pine trees...if people can be gotten to the woods..all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish" --John Muir
I. Trees
II. Bugs
III. People
******TAKE ACTION!!!!******
HELP OBTAIN FUNDING FOR THE LAND AND WATER CONSERVATION FUND -- URGE YOUR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO SIGN ON TO APPROPRIATIONS LETTER.
Several initiatives are being considered in Congress that would do just that, including legislation introduced by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Representative George Miller (D-CA) called "Resources 2000." This legislation would enhance the protection of our National Parks, Forests, and Refuges by revitalizing the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which provides funds for both state and federal land acquisition. The Fund is supposed to receive revenues from off-shore oil and gas drilling -- $900 million out of a total $4 billion annually.
However, only a fraction of the $900 million promised under the law has ever made it into the Fund's yearly budget, as funding has been siphoned off to mask the federal budget deficit. The result is a huge backlog in the federal acquisition of valuable wildlands. State conservation programs suffer as well. For the last several years, Congress has provided zero funding for the stateside portion of the LWCF, depriving state and local governments of a crucial tool in efforts to provide Americans green, open spaces and outdoor recreation opportunities. Resources 2000 would guarantee that funds promised for the LWCF would be dedicated to the protection of our wildlands.
The next critical step to ensure the extraordinary conservation goals of Resources 2000 are realized is to obtain full funding for the LWCF in the Fiscal Year 2000 appropriations process. Rep. Ralph Regula is the chairman of the subcommittee that writes the bill for LWCF funding. The letter being circulated by Rep. McGovern and others urges him to include $900 million (the authorized funding level) for the LWCF in the FY 2000 spending bill. The more Members that are signed on to that letter, the more pressure Chairman Regula and the rest of the subcommittee will feel to allocate that money.
Please call your Member of Congress right away and ask him or her to sign on to this letter. You can get the phone number for you Representative by calling the House switchboard number given at the end of this message. Just call your Representative's office and tell them you want your Member to sign on to Rep. McGovern's letter to Chairman Regula requesting full funding for the LWCF. He or she can do this by contacting Giles Giovinazzi in Rep. McGovern's office, Doug Tansey in Rep. Franks' office, or Dave Goldston in Rep. Boehlert's office. The deadline for signing on is the end of the day this Wednesday, April 14.
Thanks for your help!
I. How Many Trees Must a Man Cut Down.....
None!! After over a year of talking, the US Forest Service finally implemented a moratorium on road building in our National Forests. While this is a good first step, it is just that; one step. The roads moratorium should become permanent. The Sierra Club hopes with the brave leadership of a few Congressman we will no longer see a single new road built in our Forests.
A Congressional sign-on letter asking the President to protect our Forests in now underway. Call your Congressman and urge them to sign on the Hinchey -Horn Roadless Area Protection Letter. Let's make sure that the only new things in the Forests are the baby trees and animals.....
II. Stowaway Insects May Pose Threat to U.S. Forests
Insects and fungi capable of felling the biggest trees are making their way into the country virtually undetected. Last September, the U.S. Department of Agriculture declared a state of emergency after an outbreak of the Asian long-horned beetle in the Midwest.
The insect, which probably arrived on wood packing crates from China, is a voracious predator of virtually all hardwood trees. Unfortunately, these bugs have already done there damage in Chicago and New York. Tougher regulations on imported goods are needed to ensure that these bugs don't invade your area.
III. This Sounds Familiar....
The State Department Authorization is going to full committee mark-up tomorrow, April 13, at 10 AM. Chris Smith (R-NJ) has inserted his United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) cut-off language (no money to UNFPA unless the President certifies either that UNFPA has withdrawn from China or there have been no coerced abortions during the preceding 12 months). This is an attack on family planning and women the world over.
Recognizing it as such Rep. Tom Campbell (R-CA) will offer an amendment to restore the U.S. contribution to UNFPA, negating Chris Smith's UNFPA cut-off language. As Rep. Cynthia McKinney warned Chris Smith in his subcommittee's mark up of the bill, "UNFPA is a positive force in China; and whatever we think about this point, I am sure it has activities in many other places in the world that deserve our support. We should work to find a way to make that happen, and I will be actively involved at the appropriate time to try to achieve that. Mr. Chairman, you have been warned!"
Please help Representatives McKinney and Campbell. If you live in Doug Bereuter's (D-NE) or Pat Danner's (D-MO) district please urge them to vote in favor of Campbell's amendment.
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