Steam Valve

Giving New Meaning to "Wildlife Area"

I hear about the need for more open space and wildlife habitat all the time.  Just the other night we attended the Vermillion River Corridor meeting for our area.  The proposal for funding this project represented one of its goals as: "Identifies and integrates wildlife habitat protection/restoration and outdoor recreation (public access and trail) projects and priorities with water quality improvement activities"

Now wcco.com reports on "ongoing problems" in the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Burnsville, where police are cracking down on males who frequent the wildlife area in order to have sex in public with strangers.  I'm guessing that's not exactly the kind of wildlife that the federal government intended to sponsor in this 14,000-acre refuge.

Although I suppose one could broadly interpret portions of the refuge's 2004 Comprehensive Conservation Plan promoting "native species and natural processes" to somehow support this natural use of the wildlife refuge.  Fortunately, however, local police do not adopt this point of view and instead call it "unacceptable behavior."

We're told that the Burnsville police will continue their enforcement in the area at least until next week.  After that, who knows?

Cross-posted at www.mnpropertyrightswatch.org

Birds Thrive in Urban Sprawl

Surprise.  Moderately settled suburban subdivisions, a/k/a "sprawl" was found to increase biodiversity for birds.  And the most birds were not found around tightly clustered homes in the middle of open space or forested land.  Instead, University of Washington Professor John Marzluff explained:

"The diversity peaks in these moderately settled subdivisions, what we think of as sprawl. That was really a surprise. We expected that sprawl would be the worst thing for birds, but in fact it increases diversity."

Marzluff points out openings, some edges, some forest remnants, and urban features are all close together here. He says that variety of habitat in the typical leafy suburb promotes the feathered riches.

The finding jives with what longtime neighborhood resident Milton Dick sees beyond his five acre lot. Dick says it seems like there are more birds around.

Dick: "Lots of birds here, all kinds. A lot of people feed them. A lot of people have bird feeders down here. The birds come back, year after year you see them."

Twin Cities Astroturf

I spent the day at the Environmental Law Institute today.  I learned a lot there.

What stands out most clearly was what I heard in the late afternoon in a breakout session covering environmental reviews under federal and state law. About the time I started wondering whether toothpicks might keep my eyes open, I heard something that jolted me into full alertness, and wrote down the exact words I had just heard.

The speaker, who had previously identified himself as the attorney representing Al Franken's disenfranchised voters in the recent litigation over the senatorial election, was talking about representing clients who want to challenge a proposed project on environmental grounds.

I wrote down the exact words:

You "might want to hire a grassroots advocacy group."

What?

Here's one definition of "grassroots:"

The common people at a local level (as distinguished from the centres of political activity)

I must be naive.  I didn't know "grassroots advocacy groups" were for hire in Minnesota. (Chicago, maybe, but Minnesota?)

Thank goodness for continuing legal education seminars. 

Do these "grassroots advocacy groups" that are available for hire advertise anywhere?  Maybe they advertise in some DFL publication that I don't receive.  Does hiring a "grassroots advocacy group" make you a "community organizer?"

Clean Water Alert

Policing the Garbage

Christian Science Monitor reports that San Francisco's mayor wants to fine citizens who don't properly sort their food waste up to $1,000. The author points out one way in which unintended consequences proceed from this kind of extreme governmental control:

Don't liberal politicians, despite well-motivated attempts at social change, recognize that they can't legislate positive impulse? In the attempt, they obstruct the most effective way to bring about change: the ability of individual ideas and initiatives to expand into global problem-solving.

It is from grass-roots efforts that seeds of change proliferate: cellphones bring instant access to African villages still lacking electricity and micro-credit loans to Indian housewives create homespun entrepreneurs. Bicyclists descending on urban thoroughfares disable traffic and force motorists to contemplate their energy options.

Global solutions require visionary mind-sets, not government decree. Today, the lag time between the germination of an idea and its potential geometric expansion is almost nonexistent. Daily, individuals sitting at laptops become explorers, inventors, innovators, with ideas as the product and the thrill of discovery as the reward. In such a reconfigured technological landscape, threats and penalties are outmoded tools of change.

If personal initiative can bring the third world into the 21st century, surely San Francisco can add an additional 5 percent to a 70 percent voluntarily-achieved recycling rate without bringing Big Brother into the fray.

Cross-posted at Truth v. the Machine

Sometimes Nature Bites

So picture a fine summer day, bicycling or walking and enjoying nature, when all of a sudden out of the blue, nature attacks you.  And here you thought that if you stayed ecologically correct, abstaining from internal combustion engines, you would partake of the nirvana of the Garden of Eden. 
Ouch.

Misleading AP report On Polar Bears and the Bush Administration

This last week, the Fish and Wildlife Service issued regulations similar to those issued under the Clinton administration setting forth very detailed restrictions on the manner in which oil companies may explore for oil and natural gas in the Chukchi Sea in Alaska.

This may not sound like news, but an AP report has spun it into yet another one-sided, exaggerated report designed to pound it into all of us that the Bush Administration is an evil, anti-polar bear patsy in the service of big oil.

Here are some possible headlines that AP did not chose to use:

Bush Administration adopts Clinton Administration Polar Bear Regulations

Fish and Wildlife Service protects polar bears and walruses from oil and gas exploration.

But the actual article on yahoo.com begins:

Companies get OK to annoy polar bears

Less than a month after declaring polar bears a threatened species because of global warming, the Bush administration is giving oil companies permission to annoy and potentially harm them in the pursuit of oil and natural gas.

The Fish and Wildlife Service issued regulations this week providing legal protection to seven oil companies planning to search for oil and gas in the Chukchi Sea off the northwestern coast of Alaska if "small numbers" of polar bears or Pacific walruses are incidentally harmed by their activities over the next five years.

Environmentalists said the new regulations give oil companies a blank check to harass the polar bear.

Of course, that's not what the regulations say. They go on and on and on in an effort to protect, in every possible way, the polar bears and walruses that might be in the area of oil and gas exploration.

I don't think the AP writer read those regulations. They are very long and involved and would undoubtedly bore the pants off most people.

The 193 pages of regulations are similar to those previously in effect for the Beaufort Sea from 1993, when Clinton was president, through the present. They allow "nonlethal, incidental, unintentional" actions. They contain:

• detailed requirements directing the oil company to monitor the polar bears and walruses, and provide the Fish and Wildlife Service with information about the seasonal distributions of the mammals;
• minutely detailed "mitigation measures" directing the oil companies to power down or shut down seismic surveying activities under certain circumstances; and
• Required conflict avoidance mechanisms to protect subsistence-harvesting activities by natives

Here's an example at p. 55

Although concentrations of walruses in open water environments are expected to be low, groups of foraging or migrating animals transiting through the area may be encountered. Adaptive mitigation measures based upon real time monitoring information will be implemented to mitigate potential impacts to walrus groups feeding in offshore locations and ensure that these impacts are limited to small numbers of animals. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) identified that Level B harassment of marine mammals begins at 160–dB re 1 µPa. The Service concurs with this determination and believes its use is applicable to walrus aggregations. For that reason, whenever an aggregation of 12 or more walruses are detected within an acoustically verified 160–dB re 1 µPa disturbance zone ahead of or perpendicular to the seismic vessel track, the Service will require the operator to immediately power down the seismic airgun array and/or other acoustic sources to ensure sound pressure levels at the shortest distance to the aggregation do not exceed 160–dB re 1 µPa. The operator will not be allowed to proceed with powering up the seismic airgun array until it can be established that there are no walrus aggregations within the 160–dB zone based upon ship course, direction, and distance from last sighting.

Doesn't sound like a "blank check" to me. If you are in doubt, please feel free to read the other 192 pages.

Cross posted at Truth v. The Machine.

Protected Humans

You're on the short list of protected humans if you're an "uncontacted tribe" that doesn't use electricity, gasoline or other destructive modern technologies. FoxNews.com reports:

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — One of Brazil's last uncontacted Indian tribes has been spotted in the far western Amazon jungle near the Peruvian border, the National Indian Foundation said Thursday. The Indians were sighted in an Ethno-Environmental Protected Area along the Envira River in flights over remote Acre state, said the government foundation, known as Funai.

Funai said it photographed "strong and healthy" warriors, six huts and a large planted area. But it was not known to which tribe they belonged, the group said.

"Four distinct isolated peoples exist in this region, whom we have accompanied for 20 years," Funai expert Jose Carlos Meirelles Junior said in a statement.

Funai does not make contact with the Indians and prevents invasions of their land, to ensure total autonomy for the isolated tribes, the foundation said.

Survival International said the Indians are in danger from illegal logging in Peru, which is driving uncontacted tribes over the border and could lead to conflict with the estimated 500 uncontacted Indians now living on the Brazilian side.

There are more than 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide, most of them in Brazil and Peru, the group said in a statement.

Just don't tell 'em about indoor plumbing, or they'll want to become part of suburban sprawl. We're sure they're happier where they're at. Ignorance, after all, is bliss. Or at least we think so.

Cross-posted at Truth v. The Machine.

Ultimate Green: Human Extinction

The green sustainable movement carried to its logical conclusion:  human extinction.  Here's what the spokeperson has to say:

Life's work: To phase out the human race by non-coercive means. VHEMT's newsletter, These EXIT Times, is now this web site, sharing and enhancing the concept of voluntary human extinction, which is constantly evolving in the world's consciousness. These EXIT Times, your vehement voice of The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, has been putting the mental in environmental since 1991.

Religious orientation: Eclectic. "Golden Rule" of Christianity, the Tao, and nice stuff like that.

Political orientation: Evolutionary anarchy.

Previous incarnations: I forget. Somebody dead for sure.

Accomplishment to be proud of: Became carfree in 2000.

Recent descent to the dark side: bought a car in 2007.

Favorite Les Talk column from These EXIT Times: "Man-to-Man".

Irrelevant data: age, gender, sexual orientation, "race," marital status, income level, body size, physical abilities and disabilities, nationality or politically-defined region of residence, ancestors' genetic make-up, occupation, diplomas and degrees, awards, last book read, brand of scotch, ad cetera.

Les U. Knight, Editor
These EXIT Times
P.O. Box 86646
Portland, Oregon 97286-0646
USA.
Phone: 503-913-8873

Beavers and the Law

If you read my posts here and here, you know that you can be sentenced to the federal penitentiary for placing fill on a wetland. That's under the federal Clean Water Act.

A quick check of the language of the Act regarding enforcement shows that enforcement is limited to "persons" who violate the Act.  A "person" is defined as "an individual, corporation, partnership, association, State, municipality, commission, or political subdivision of a State, or any interstate body."

So today when I read an unpublished decision just down from our Court of Appeals this week addressing certain legal ramifications of beaver dams constructed in county ditches, my natural curiosity caused a multitude of questions to spring to mind.  Here are some of the answers I found.

1.  I read here that beavers build dams because they don't like the sound of running water, and they want to cover up the sound.

2.  In contrast to the conclusive presumption that human placement of  fill on a wetland is always evil, beavers are given the benefit of the doubt:

The ponds, wetlands, and meadows formed by beaver dams increases bio-diversity and improves overall environmental quality.  It is our opinion that many environmental decision makers do not fully understand the positive effects that beavers and dams bring to ecosystems.

3.  This one made me laugh out loud.   The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality sent a letter to a Mr. Ryan DeVries.  The letter says there are two dams on his property for which there does not seem to be any permit.  The landowner is told to remove the dams and to restore the stream to its free-flowing condition.

Here's part of the response by Stephen Tvedten, who says that he is the landowner of the property in question:

As to your dam request the beavers first must fill out a dam permit prior to the start of this type of dam activity, my first dam question to you is: are you trying to discriminate against my Spring Pond  Beavers or do you require all dam beavers throughout this State to conform to said dam request?  If you are not discriminating against these particular beavers, please send me completed copies of all those other applicable beaver dam permits.  Perhaps we will see if there really is a dam violation of Part 301, Inland Lakes and Streams, of the Natural Resource and Environmental Protection Act, Act 451 of the Public Acts of 1994, being sections 324.30101 to 324.30113 of the Michigan Compiled Laws annotated.  My first concern is - aren't the dam beavers entitled to dam legal representation?  The Spring Pond Beavers are financially destitute and are unable to pay for said dam representation - so the State will have to provide them with a dam lawyer.

. . . .
In conclusion, I would like to bring to your attention a real environmental quality (health) problem; bears are actually defecating in our woods.  I definitely believe you should be persecuting the defecating bears and leave the dam beavers alone.   If you are going to investigate the beaver dam, watch your step!  (The bears are not careful where they dump!)

Being unable to comply with your dam request, and being unable to contact you on your dam answering machine, I am sending this response to your dam office.