Category: the earth

animals, the earth

U.S. Wildlife: Wild Earth Guardians to defend Wyoming’s wolves

by sharonstjoanLeave a Comment on U.S. Wildlife: Wild Earth Guardians to defend Wyoming’s wolves

By: John C. Horning, Executive Director, WildEarth Guardians

On September 10, 2012, WildEarth Guardians and partners filed papers initiating our lawsuit to overturn a decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove wolves in Wyoming from the Endangered Species Act.

It’s the last option we have to prevent the slaughter of Wyoming’s wolves. Please support our Wolf Legal Defense Fund (see the link below) to help us stop the killing.

If the Service’s decision is allowed to stand, people in Wyoming could trap, hunt, bait and pursue wolves to their death throughout most of the state. And it all starts in a few weeks.

We simply can’t allow this to happen. We need to reverse the decision and return wolves in Wyoming to federal protection. Your support of our Wolf Legal Defense Fund will enable us to take swift and strong action to save wolves.

The Wyoming “wolf elimination plan” allows wolf killing every day of the year in over 80 percent of the state. Many of Wyoming’s current population of approximately 330 wolves will die this winter unless we strike down this plan.

The state intends to allow only 100 wolves to survive outside of Yellowstone National Park and the Wind River Reservation, but it has no way of tracking wolf numbers.

Wyoming’s wolf plan is driven by politics, not science. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved the plan to appease his friends in the Congressional Cowboy Caucus.

It’s not about livestock. Less than one half of one percent of livestock are killed by wolves.

It’s not about hunting elk. Wyoming’s elk population is 24 percent over its objective of 85,000 animals. The 2010 count reported 104,000 elk in the state.

It’s about intolerance and hate.

We must stand up to a small minority that want to eliminate wolves. We must ensure that an ethic of compassion and coexistence ultimately prevails. Our first step is to defend these beautiful animals in the court of law and in the court of public opinion.

Please help us prevent the Wyoming wolf slaughter by supporting our Wolf Legal Defense Fund today.

For the Wolves,

John C. Horning

Executive Director

WildEarth Guardians

jhorning@wildearthguardians.org

To visit the web page Wolf Legal Defense Fund, click here.

Photo: © Saipg | Dreamstime.com

the earth

More on the Powder River Basin

by sharonstjoanLeave a Comment on More on the Powder River Basin

If you were disheartened to learn that there are plans to expand the largest coal mines in the world, in the Powder River Basin, in Wyoming, a little of the history of this region gives a more in-depth, though none too cheerful, picture.

(To see the story, “Putting a Chill on New Coal in the Powder River Basin,” click here)

According to a Wikipedia article, Powder River Country lies between the Bighorn Mountains and the Black Hills.  The Black Hills were sacred mountains to Native American people, including the Lakota and the Cheyenne; until the land was taken away from them, and Mount Rushmore and a number of other monuments were constructed there.

In the 1860’s, Red Cloud, the Oglala Lakota Chief, allied with the Cheyenne and Arapaho people, fought a war against the U.S. military to retain control of their land, the Powder River Country.  They were successful and held on to this land for the next eight years.

Following the Great Sioux War of 1876-77; however, control of the land fell to the U.S. government, which opened the land to homesteading by white settlers. Later on, oil was discovered and the oil fields developed. Coal mines followed.

Long gone are the days when the area was a natural tract of wilderness, a vast habitat for wildlife, in the hands of native people. There, in a nutshell, is the sad story of Powder River Country, now being strip-mined, and the largest coal mines in the world, which are located there, may be on their way to being expanded.

To read the Wikimedia article, “Powder River Country,” click here.

Photo: Beth Steinhauer, Black Hills National Forest / Wikimedia Commons / “This image is a work of the Forest Service of the United States Department of Agriculture. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.” / Black Hills, South Dakota

the earth

Putting a Chill on New Coal in the Powder River Basin

by sharonstjoan1 Comment on Putting a Chill on New Coal in the Powder River Basin

Crossposted with permission from WildEarth Guardians:

Last week, WildEarth Guardians filed suit to stop a horrendous climate catastrophe  from unfolding in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming: Four new coal leases that would expand the world’s largest coal mines, leading to the release of more than 3.5 billion metric tons of carbon pollution.

But as powerful as our legal efforts are, we need your help to reverse the disastrous course we’re on. Sign our petition today  calling on U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to put a freeze on new coal in the Powder River Basin.

It’s not just because coal kills. Our federal leasing program is a massive taxpayer giveaway, to the tune of billions of dollars to huge coal companies. Worse, horrible strip mining and lax reclamation has left the land scarred. But it’s the link to global warming that has us fired up.

In 2009, Salazar told the world, “Carbon pollution is putting our world—and our way of life—in peril.”

Unbelievably, since that time Salazar has overseen the most dramatic increase in coal production in U.S. history, with his Interior Department proposing 7 billion tons of new strip mining in the Powder River Basin, enough to fuel roughly 100 power plants for the next 100 years.

That’s not cool.

Already the largest coal producing region in the country, the Powder River Basin fuels hundreds of power plants, producing 13% of our nation’s carbon pollution. And increasingly, companies are not only taking billions from the taxpayers through cheap federal coal leases, but also shipping the coal overseas to Asia and Europe.

Salazar’s actions would lock us into decades of more coal and more carbon, putting, as he said himself, our world—and our way of life—in peril.

It’s a taxpayer ripoff and it comes at the expense of our land and our climate. It’s time put an end to this. It’s time to put a chill on new coal. Sign our petition today and demand that Secretary Salazar enact a moratorium on new leasing and mining in the Powder River Basin. the Tongue River is in the area of the Powder River Basin.

We can’t strip mine our way to a safe climate. And more than ever our planet needs a good freeze.

For the Wild,

Jeremy Nichols

Climate and Energy Program Director

WildEarth Guardians

jnichols@wildearthguardians.org

Photo: Wikimedia Commons/ “This image is in the public domain because it contains materials that originally came from the United States Geological Survey, an agency of the United States Department of Interior.” / The Tongue River, a tributary of the Yellowstone River, in eastern Montana.

To visit the website of WildEarth Guardians, click here.