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heritage, the Carolina Fence is the perfect centerpiece for public and private habitats throughout South Carolina." executive director, South Carolina Wildlife Federation |
Carolina Fence: A Habitat That PromotesIt's a simple idea, really, but one
that reflects the natural and cultural history of South Carolina: a
split-rail fence entwined with some native plants inviting to wildlife and
sporting a birdhouse that beckons to the state bird, a Carolina wren. |
State of Montana
Montana is at it again. As this issue went to press, the Montana Department of Livestock had rounded up and sent to slaughter 15 buffalo that wandered outside Yellowstone Park in search of food.
Slaughters More
Yellowstone Bison
The excuse for the killing: The animals tested positive for brucellosis, a disease that causes cows to abort their fetuses. The disease theoretically could be transmitted from bison to cattle, although there is no evidence this has ever occurred.
NWF is condemning the latest killings as particularly senseless, on several counts:
13 of the 15 animals slaughtered were bulls, which obviously could not transmit a disease spread by contact with infected birth materials, such as aborted fetuses.
There are no cattle around to be at risk. "It's outrageous that they're slaughtering bison now when cattle don't even come out to graze until June," says Steve Torbit, senior scientist in NWF's Rocky Mountain Natural Resource Center.
The Montana Department of Livestock also engages in unnecessary "hazing"--using snowmobiles to try to harass wandering buffalo back into the park--a practice that cau-ses the animals considerable stress. "They have been doing this routinely since October, and there are no cows around." says Torbit.
NWF expects that the current round of killings could continue well into May. Two years ago, Montana killed 1,082 bison--more than a third of the Yellowstone herd--when they left the park to feed.
So far, the state has refused to consider a proposal by NWF and the InterTribal Bison Cooperative to test all animals that would otherwise be killed and relocate healthy animals onto tribal lands.
Lead Poisoning
The call of the loon is threatened throughout New England, where populations are of concern in most states.
In Loons Target
Of Vermont Project
According to studies at Tufts University, more than half of loon deaths in freshwater breeding grounds in New England are caused by lead fishing sinkers that the birds ingest along with fish or with pebbles they scavenge from pond bottoms to aid in digestion. When the sinkers break down in the birds' gizzards, lead enters the bloodstream and severely damages the kidneys, brain and other organs.
To discourage use of lead sinkers, NWF's Northeast Natural Resource Center, the Vermont Institute of Natural Science, the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Lake Champlain office launched a "Safe Waters for Loons" project.
Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, teams of volunteers will offer free exchange of safe steel sinkers for toxic lead sinkers at ten major fishing and boating access sites on lakes and ponds in northeastern Vermont. NWF and its partners will spread the word about the lead hazard through fact sheets, brochures, posters and public-service announcements.
Although loons are most critically affected, more than 1.5 million migratory waterfowl also are thought to die each year by ingesting lead. In 1994, the Environmental Protection Agency drafted, but never issued, regulations banning lead sinkers. Beginning in 2000, New Hampshire will ban lead sinkers weighing less than one ounce from fresh waters.
Land Deal Protects
In what is believed to be an unprecedented land conservation deal, Champion International Corporation, a timber company, has sold 300,000 acres of forest land in New York, Vermont and New Hampshire to the Conservation Fund.
Northeast's Most
Valuable Wildlands
The fund, a nonprofit organization, in turn will sell about 30 percent of the land, which includes the most environmentally sensitive areas, to the states or federal government. The remaining 70 percent will be sold to private investors for sustainable timber management, with recreation and wildlife values protected through conservation easements.
The sale is a victory for the Northern Forest Alliance, a coalition of 40 conservation, recreation and forest organizations founded by NWF. The alliance had previously recommended protecting 10 areas in the region as wildlands that would provide wildlife habitat, recreation and a sustainable source of timber for the region's economy. The sale sets aside several of the areas the alliance had identified.
"The goal is to create protected biological cores surrounded by buffer zones of sustainably managed timber lands," says Mark Lorenzo, Northern Forest project manager in NWF's Northeast Natural Resource Center. "These are complementary approaches, not conflicting approaches, and they represent the way of the future for forest conservation in the Northeast."
Zoo Exhibit Links
"Touch the Earth Gently" is the title of a new permanent exhibit in Ohio's Toledo Zoo, being designed with the help of NWF's Population and Environment Campaign staff.
Population Growth,
Environmental Loss
The interactive exhibit will dramatize the link between the burgeoning global population and the decrease in wildlife habitat and environmental quality both in the Great Lakes region and worldwide. A large mechanical counter will track the rise in human population and the decrease in habitat.
The Toledo Zoo expects to unveil the exhibit next fall, just as the planet's human population reaches six billion.
NWF Works To Save
At the urging of NWF, the Environmental Defense Fund and prominent opinion leaders in Brazil, the Brazilian government has agreed to reconsider drastic budget cuts in environmental programs that conserve forests. Brazil had proposed the cuts in order to secure a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Brazilian Reserves
From Budget Axe
IMF made the three-year, $18-billion loan, designed to stabilize Brazil's wobbly economy, contingent upon the Brazilian Congress passing an austere budget. As proposed, that budget would have slashed funding for environmental projects in general by more than 65 percent and Amazon conservation programs by more than 90 percent.
At special risk, says NWF's Latin American specialist Barbara Bramble, are the Amazon's 21 extractive reserves--legally protected areas of forest managed by local people, who harvest non-timber products, such as rubber and nuts, in a sustainable way. The concept was pioneered by Chico Mendes, founder of the National Council of Rubber Tappers, who was assassinated by cattle ranchers in 1988.
NWF worked closely with Mendes and the rubber tappers to help them lobby their government and expand the reserves. After Mendes' death, NWF established the Chico Mendes Fund which continues to finance the efforts of native people to establish reserves.
Rescued Wetland
The wetland that spurred NWF's Alaska office to launch its Anchorage Wetlands Watch program is now slated to become the city's first natural park.
In Alaska Slated
As Natural Park
When developers targeted the Sand Lake wetland, which the city ranks as the most valuable wetland among 177 studied, NWF rallied residents to the cause. (See International Wildlife, November/December 1998, page 9.) Opposition was so great that the community council voted down the plan, and the Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit to fill the wetland.
Now, Sand Lake's popularity has paid off again: Congress has appropriated $1 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund to enable the city to acquire the wetland. NWF is helping to develop a plan to turn it into a natural park that will preserve the area for its flood-control and wildlife-habitat values, while allowing such low-impact activities as fishing, cross-country skiing and outdoor education programs for school children.
NWF Seeks Support
From the Florida Everglades to the local patch of green threatened by development, America's wildlands and open spaces are disappearing fast.
For Clinton Land
Conservation Plan
A $1 billion Lands Legacy Initiative proposed by President Clinton as part of his fiscal year 2000 budget would, if passed by Congress, help reverse the trend.
NWF is calling on its members to contact their state, county and city officials and urge them to let Congress know they support the lands initiative as a way to protect threatened places in their own communities.
The President's proposal, touted as the largest one-year investment ever for protection of America's land, earmarks more than $400 million for acquiring and restoring the nation's parks, refuges and forests and more than $500 million for protecting open spaces and reducing urban sprawl.
Jersey Wetlands
Thanks in part to strong protests from NWF and the New Jersey Audubon Society, the Environmental Protection Agency has rejected New Jersey's proposal to grant a general permit for cranberry growers to turn 300 acres of valuable wetlands into cranberry bogs.
No Longer Slated
For Cranberry Bogs
The proposed permit threatened wetlands in the New Jersey Pinelands, one of the last thriving pine forests on the Atlantic coast. NWF also feared it would set a dangerous precedent, spurring other special-interest groups to seek permits to destroy wetlands.
Idaho Affiliate
The Idaho Wildlife Federation (IWF), one of NWF's affiliates, has launched a petition campaign to generate support for retiring four Snake River dams--a move that would speed recovery of steelhead trout and several species of salmon.
Seeks To Retire
Snake River Dams
Volunteers canvassing neighborhoods, fairs, football games and other public events have collected 8,000 signatures so far on petitions that IWF will present to Idaho's congressional delegation and to the governors of Idaho, Washington and Oregon.
The petitions call for retirement of the four lower Snake River dams in Washington as the cheapest and most effective way to restore self-sustaining runs of wild salmon and steelhead to the Snake River Basin. According to IWF, the dams provide no flood control, no irrigation storage and only four percent of the Northwest's power supply.
Currently, young fish migrating to the sea are transported on barges that navigate through the reservoirs and locks of eight dams, a trip that weakens the smolts and ruins their ability to imprint on 300 miles of their migratory corridor, says Kent Laverty, executive director of IWF. When they are dumped out of the barges below the Bonneville Dam, the disoriented fish are easy prey for waiting terns and gulls.
If the dams were retired, the concrete structures would remain in place, but the earthen sections would be removed to allow the river--and fish--to flow around the dams. The National Marine Fisheries Service is expected to issue a final decision on the dams in early 2000.
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