Climate of Our Future

Bighorn sheep, California condor, and Northern goshawk habitat all threatened

September 9, 2008

Bighorn Sheep
U.S. Bureau of Land Management

San Francisco, CA — A coalition of conservation groups is taking the Bush administration to court because of weak management plans that threaten wildlife in 10 Sierra Nevada national forests.

The groups are striving to restore safeguards for a variety of Sierra wildlife, including bighorn sheep, the endangered California condor, and the Northern goshawk, following the removal of their protections by the Bush administration.

In December 2007, the Bush administration removed specific monitoring requirements for indicator species, plants and animals that must be studied before the U.S. Forest Service can approve logging, road building and other forest-related projects that could destroy sensitive habitat for threatened or endangered species.

“The Bush administration eliminated an important safety net for Sierra forests and wildlife,” said Craig Thomas of Sierra Forest Legacy. “We want the court to reinstate these vital protections that have been a critical component of forest management plans for decades.”

Indicator species are studied because their well-being reflects the overall health of a forest. If the Forest Service finds that logging, road building and other forest projects could harm these bellwether species, it must take action to ensure that such species and their habitat are protected before revving up the chainsaws or bulldozing new roads into the forest.

Under the new provisions, the Forest Service is only required to collect monitoring data for a fraction of the species previously covered by the plans. The Forest Service cut the number of management indicator species from approximately 60 to just 13.

“By eliminating these common sense monitoring requirements for imperiled species, the Bush Administration continues its assault on our national forests,” said Marc Fink, attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. “We are hopeful the courts will once again find that the Forest Service has violated the law through its weakening of long-standing environmental protections.”

“The National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act require the public to be informed of projects that may have significant impacts on Sierra Nevada wildlife and their habitats,” said Erin Tobin of Earthjustice. “Federal agencies are supposed to look before they leap, not dismiss the tools needed to protect species on the brink of extinction.”

Forest management plans govern most activities that occur in our national forests. Provisions to monitor the health of important wildlife and its forest habitat are the cornerstone of such plans because the monitoring information improves forest planning and decision making that otherwise could jeopardize species and habitat. Forest plans managing that habitat must comply with the National Forest Management Act and the Endangered Species Act, which require the Forest Service to protect the diversity of fish and wildlife in our national forests.

The Forest Service adopted forest plans for the 10 national forests in the Sierra Nevada in the 1980s and early 1990s. These forest plans established clear forest-wide monitoring requirements for certain management indicator species to ensure well-distributed and healthy populations of all plant and animal communities within each forest and throughout the entire Sierra Nevada. Additionally, in 2001, the Forest Service adopted a comprehensive Sierra-wide monitoring plan to improve its ability to protect these and other at-risk species.

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ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2008) — The theory that global warming may be contributing to stronger hurricanes in the Atlantic over the past 30 years is bolstered by a new study led by a Florida State University researcher. The study will be published in the Sept. 4 edition of the journal Nature.

Using global satellite data, FSU geography Professor James B. Elsner, University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor James P. Kossin and FSU postdoctoral researcher Thomas H. Jagger found that the strongest tropical cyclones are, in fact, getting stronger — and that ocean temperatures play a role in driving this trend. This is consistent with the “heat-engine” theory of cyclone intensity.

“As seas warm, the ocean has more energy that can be converted to tropical cyclone wind,” Elsner said. “Our results do not prove the heat-engine theory. We just show that the data are quite consistent with it.”

Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology first suggested the possible connection between global warming and increases in tropical cyclone intensity in a 2005 paper. He linked the increased intensity of storms to the heating of the oceans, which has been attributed to global warming.  Keep Reading

ScienceDaily (Sep. 7, 2008) — Permafrost blanketing the northern hemisphere contains more than twice the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, making it a potentially mammoth contributor to global climate change depending on how quickly it thaws.

So concludes a group of nearly two dozen scientists in a paper appearing this week in the journal Bioscience. The lead author is Ted Schuur, an associate professor of ecology at the University of Florida.

Previous studies by Schuur and his colleagues elsewhere have estimated the carbon contained in permafrost in northeast Siberia. The new research expands that estimate to the rest of the permafrost-covered northern latitudes of Russia, Europe, Greenland and North America. The estimated 1,672 billion metric tons of carbon locked up in the permafrost is more than double the 780 billion tons in the atmosphere today.

“It’s bigger than we thought,” Schuur said.

Permafrost is frozen ground that contains roots and other soil organic matter that decompose extremely slowly. When it thaws, bacteria and fungi break down carbon contained in this organic matter much more quickly, releasing it to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide or methane, both greenhouse gases.

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Expansion endangers public health and environment

September 4, 2008

Richmond, CA — Environmental justice groups, represented by lawyers from Earthjustice and Communities for a Better Environment, filed a lawsuit today challenging the Richmond City Council’s approval of Chevron’s refinery expansion project.

At issue is an environmental review that concealed that the project would result in much higher levels of air pollution and increased risks of catastrophic accidents and oil spills. Communities in Richmond, particularly low-income and communities of color, are severely overburdened with industrial pollution-related health problems, including high rates of asthma and cancer. Chevron’s refinery is the largest industrial polluter in the region.

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