April, 29 2013, 04:08pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Kari Birdseye, Earthjustice, (415) 217-2098
Robert Johns, American Bird Conservancy, (202) 234-7181, ext. 210
Jonathan Evans, Center for Biological Diversity, (415) 436-9682, ext. 318
Jason Rylander, Defenders of Wildlife, (202) 682-9400
Andrew Christie, Sierra Club - Santa Lucia Chapter, (805) 543-8717
Wildlife Conservation Groups Join Fight to Ban d-CON Rat Poisons
Manufacturer rejected safeguards against accidental poisonings
WASHINGTON
Today, conservation groups took legal action to support the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) efforts to ban sales of several harmful rodenticides.
American Bird Conservancy, Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club, represented by the public-interest law firm Earthjustice, filed a motion to intervene in landmark administrative proceedings before the U.S. EPA.
The rodenticides at issue, marketed by British-based multinational conglomerate Reckitt Benckiser LLC, under the brand name "d-CON," do not comply with safety measures established by EPA in 2008 to protect children, wild animals, and pets from accidental poisoning.
"Reckitt Benckiser profits at the expense of American natural heritage," said Greg Loarie, an attorney at Earthjustice representing the groups seeking to intervene, "We will do everything we can to support EPA's decision to ban these poisons."
The rodenticides at issue interfere with blood clotting and cause the victim to bleed to death. In the absence of safeguards, rodenticides pose a significant risk to bobcats, foxes, owls, and other animals that are apt to eat poisoned rats or mice.
"EPA is trying to protect wildlife and children from the damaging and even lethal effects of rat poison," said Defenders of Wildlife attorney Jason Rylander. "But Reckitt Benckiser insists on putting money first. To their shame, they are the one company that still refuses to comply with reasonable safety standards."
In 2008, EPA ordered companies to re-formulate their products in protective bait stations and to stop marketing the most toxic rodenticides on the consumer market, instead limiting their sale to large containers from agricultural supply stores. Most other manufacturers have been quick to conform.
"The d-CON company is carrying out unprecedented stalling tactics while their poisons continue to cause gruesome deaths in hawks, owls, eagles and other raptors, as well as in dogs and cats," said Cynthia Palmer, Pesticides Program Manager for American Bird Conservancy. "Reckitt Benckiser is determined to fight this battle to the end because d-CON products are a significant source of income in their $37 billion portfolio, alongside French's Mustard, Lysol, Woolite, and other products. It is time for d-CON to put children's health and animal welfare above corporate profits and to get in line with every other rat-poison manufacturer."
"There's no reason to leave the worst of the worst poisons on the market to benefit one multi-national corporation," said Jonathan Evans who is the Toxics and Endangered Species Campaign Director for the Center for Biological Diversity. "There are safe, cost-effective options on the shelves today that don't indiscriminately kill wildlife."
"Our children, America's wildlife and a rogue rodenticide manufacturer don't mix," said Andrew Christie, director of the Sierra Club's Santa Lucia Chapter. "Reckitt Benckiser's preferred profit margin is not worth another poisoned child or dead kit fox. More needs to be done, but the EPA's proposed ban of d-CON is a necessary minimum safeguard."
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Green Groups Praise 'Step Forward' on Biden Old-Growth Forest Plan
Advocates also argue that the administration "must go further to protect and restore resilient old-growth forests in a way that meets the challenges of the changing climate."
Jun 20, 2024
Environmental groups on Thursday welcomed the U.S. government's latest progress on President Joe Biden's directive to protect old-growth forests, which are threatened by but also play a key role in combating fossil fuel-driven climate change.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Forest Service announced a draft environmental impact statement for the proposed national old-growth forest plan amendment, which is set to appear in the Federal Register Friday, launching a 90-day public comment period.
"President Biden made a commitment to protect mature and old-growth forests in the United States, and today's announcement gets us one step closer to achieving that," said Sierra Club forest campaign manager Alex Craven. "Conserving what remains of our oldest forests is undoubtedly a positive step towards climate action."
"We look forward to engaging in this process to ensure the amendment not only retains, but increases, the amount of old-growth forests across the country," Craven continued. "Shifting our approach to national forests from resources meant for extraction to natural wonders worth preserving is long overdue."
"The Forest Service must fully meet President Biden's historic directive to protect old growth, as well as our much vaster mature forests, which still remain exposed to commercial logging."
On Earth Day in 2022, Biden issued an executive order—and a few months, he later signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which directed $50 million toward old-growth conservation. Since then, the Forest Service and Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have been working on efforts to conserve ancient U.S. trees.
"With our nation's forests absorbing more than 10% of our annual greenhouse gas emissions, protecting and expanding old growth is critical to delivering on the Biden-Harris administration's and conservation priorities," White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory said in a statement Thursday.
BLM and the Forest Service have completed a historic inventory, which showed that they collectively manage approximately 32 million acres of old growth and 80 million acres of mature forests nationwide. The service also recently finalized a related threat analysis.
"The Forest Service continues to move this process forward," Earthjustice senior legislative representative Blaine Miller-McFeeley said Thursday. "However, the Forest Service must fully meet President Biden's historic directive to protect old growth, as well as our much vaster mature forests, which still remain exposed to commercial logging under the proposal."
According toThe Associated Press, which obtained an early copy, the new analysis "shows that officials intend to reject a blanket prohibition on old-growth logging that's long been sought by some environmentalists" after concluding the policy "would make it harder to thin forests to better protect communities against wildfires that have grown more severe as the planet has warmed."
However, "the exceptions under which logging would be allowed are unlikely to placate the timber industry and Republicans in Congress, who have pushed back against any new restrictions," the AP reported.
As the Wilderness Society highlighted, the administration's proposal:
- Establishes affirmative direction that the conservation of our oldest forests is a critical part of addressing the wildfire crisis;
- Provides some protection for remaining old-growth forests from harmful logging;
- Creates a roadmap that promotes a collaborative, community-led approach for conserving old-growth forests, including identifying forests that should be stewarded to become old-growth in the future;
- Elevates the role of tribes in forest management through co-stewardship agreements; and
- Includes the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska within the amendment's scope of old-growth conservation.
"We need the U.S. Forest Service to create a clear path for old-growth conservation paired with climate-informed wildfire management, if our oldest forests are to remain for generations to come," said the group's president, Jamie Williams. "The proposed national old-growth amendment is a step in the right direction, but it must go further to protect and restore resilient old-growth forests in a way that meets the challenges of the changing climate."
The new draft analysis comes as deadly wildfires rage in the U.S. West while extreme heat hits the Midwest and Northeast. Scientists stress that both fires and heatwaves are more likely because of the climate crisis.
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Study Helps Explain How Wolf Removal Can 'Unravel' Key Ecological Systems
The lead author expressed hope that the research "will be of use to both conservation organizations and government agencies" amid a legal battle over protections for wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains.
Jun 20, 2024
As U.S. conservationists continue to fight for federal protections that would cover gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains, research released Wednesday highlights just how important the apex predators are to the western United States.
The study was published in the journal BioScience and led by William Ripple, a scientist at Oregon State University (OSU) and the Conservation Biology Institute known for his work on trophic cascades and carnivores as well as his demands for climate action.
The paper uses gray wolves to show the trouble with "shifting baselines," which, "in ecology encapsulate the gradual and often unnoticed alterations in ecosystems over time, leading to a redefinition of what is considered normal or baseline conditions."
As the study details:
Gray wolves (Canis lupus) in North America have experienced a substantial contraction of their historical range, at one point almost disappearing from the contiguous 48 United States. However, their conservation is important in part because of the potential cascading effects wolves can have on lower trophic levels. Namely, the proliferation and changes to behavior and density of large herbivores following the extirpation or displacement of wolves can have major effects on various aspects of vegetation structure, succession, productivity, species composition, and diversity, which, in turn, can have implications for overall biodiversity and the quality of habitat for other wildlife.
"By the 1930s, wolves were largely absent from the American West, including its national parks," Ripple said in a statement. "Most published ecological research from this region occurred after the extirpation of wolves."
"This situation underscores the potential impact of shifting baselines on our understanding of plant community succession, animal community dynamics, and ecosystem functions," he continued.
The researchers examined journal articles, master's theses, and Ph.D. dissertations from 1955 to 2021 that involved field work in national parks in the northwestern United States for whether they included information on the removal of gray wolves.
They found that "in total, approximately 41% (39 of 96) of the publications mentioned or discussed the historical presence of wolves or large carnivores, but most (approximately 59%) did not. The results for the theses and journal articles were similar."
While the researchers focused on wolves, Robert Beschta, co-author and emeritus professor at OSU, noted that "in addition to the loss or displacement of large predators, there may be other potential anthropogenic legacies within national parks that should be considered, including fire suppression, invasion by exotic plants and animals, and overgrazing by livestock."
Ripple stressed that "studying altered ecosystems without recognizing how or why the system has changed over time since the absence of a large predator could have serious implications for wildlife management, biodiversity conservation, and ecosystem restoration."
"We hope our study will be of use to both conservation organizations and government agencies in identifying ecosystem management goals," he added.
"Nature is a really complex tapestry... When you start to pull threads out like you remove apex predators, the whole thing begins to unravel."
Amaroq Weiss, senior wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), welcomed the study, tellingInside Climate News that "I think this is a really important paper, because sometimes science advances at a certain rate without a self-introspection."
"Nature is a really complex tapestry," she said. "It's woven together by threads that hold it together and keep it strong. When you start to pull threads out like you remove apex predators, the whole thing begins to unravel."
The paper comes amid a wolf conservation battle that involves Weiss' group. In February, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) determined that Endangered Species Act protections for the wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains were "not warranted."
Two coalitions of conservation organizations, including CBD, swiftly filed notices of their intent to sue over the decision if FWS didn't change course. After the legally required 60-day notice period passed, they filed the lawsuits in April.
Earlier this week, "the cases were voluntarily dismissed and immediately refiled to avoid any potential arguments from the defendants that the plaintiffs failed to give the secretary of the interior proper 60-days' notice under the Endangered Species Act," Collette Adkins, an attorney who leads CBD's Carnivore Conservation program, told Common Dreams in an email Thursday.
"Plaintiffs believe that their case was properly noticed," she said, "but we refiled to avoid any further disruption of the proceedings."
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Most People on Earth, Even in Petrostates, Want Quick Fossil Fuel Phaseout: Poll
"There can be no doubt that citizens across the world are saying to their leaders, you have to act and, above all, have to act faster," a U.N. official said. "This is an issue that almost everyone, everywhere, can agree on."
Jun 20, 2024
A large majority of the global population, including people who live in oil, gas, and coal producing countries, supports a fast transition to clean energy and a phaseout of fossil fuels, a poll released Thursday showed.
Across 77 countries, 72% of those surveyed supported a quick fossil fuel phaseout, while an even higher percentage, 80%, supported stronger climate action in general, according to the poll, called Peoples' Climate Vote and conducted for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) with the University of Oxford and GeoPoll.
"There can be no doubt that citizens across the world are saying to their leaders, you have to act and, above all, have to act faster," UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner toldThe Guardian. "This is an issue that almost everyone, everywhere, can agree on."
📣 Our #PeoplesClimateVote 2024 results are live! The world’s largest standalone public opinion survey on #ClimateChange.
The results are clear. People want more #ClimateAction, and they want it now.
Explore a world of views on the climate crisis: https://t.co/mJsEzN3NGy pic.twitter.com/2kwA4KcPnn
— UN Development (@UNDP) June 20, 2024
People in most major fossil fuel producing nations support a quick energy transition in their own countries, the poll showed. In the United States, the world's largest oil and gas producer, 53% supported either a "very" or "somewhat" quick phaseout; in Saudi Arabia, the second largest, 75% did so; and in China and India, the leading coal producers, the figures were 80% and 76%, respectively.
The poll also showed overwhelming support for transnational cooperation, even if it requires setting aside other differences: 86% of those surveyed said want countries to tackle climate change together. Steiner called this a "stunning" level of consensus.
Steiner noted that fossil fuel subsidies distort the market and subvert the public will for change.
"There are very narrow, self-interested agendas that maintain artificially inflated [profits] for fossil fuel-based industries that ultimately are coming at the cost of everyone," he said.
The poll—the largest standalone public opinion survey on climate change to date, building on a first edition that was run in 2021—clarifies the will of the global public and strengthens the moral case for climate action, commentators said.
"Brilliant to see clear, credible evidence that the overwhelming majority of people across the world—oil rentier economy or not—want to see transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy 'quickly,'" X user Dave Drabble wrote. "Let's not let oil and gas interests determine our fate."
Similarly rejecting the influence of fossil fuel interests, Steiner said, "It is so important we let the people speak for themselves."
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