Senate Votes to Bar Energy Developments in National Monuments
On July 11, the US Senate voted to prohibit coal mining and oil and gas drilling in National Monuments on the Colorado Plateau and across the West. The vote, aligning the Senate with the House, which voted last month to ban mineral extraction from the monuments, came after the Interior Department confirmed that there are significant energy reserves inside national monuments designated by former President Clinton, including the 1.7-million acre Grand Staircase Escalante monument in southern Utah. Senator Richard Durbin, sponsor of the proposal, said that "damaging these irreplaceable lands is not going to solve America's energy crisis, but could cause a crisis in conservation."
Link to media account

"Population Viability" Stipulation Under Attack in Debate Over Forest Service Planning Regulations
Challenges to the new USDA Forest Service planning regulations attack the concept of managing for viable populations of vertebrate wildlife species on public lands. The Bush administration has delayed compliance with the new regulations until May of 2002. The regulations, formulated and adopted after a multi-year effort by a top panel of independent scientists and a series of public hearings held across the nation, could be rescinded or rewritten to weaken the focus on Biodiversity and population viability. The Dept. of Agriculture has serious problems with the new regulations' focus on "ecological sustainability", and the president of the Society of American Foresters calls the goals for maintaining species diversity and population viability "difficult, if not impossible, to attain".
Link to Society of American Foresters account and SAF letter to the Sec. of Agriculture

Pronghorn, Cattle Face Off on Southern Colorado Plateau
A declining prongorn population in northern Arizona has intensified debate over the fate of livestock grazing on Forest Service lands. Anderson Mesa, an expansive grassland/pine landscape , has been grazed seasonally for 100 years, and pronghorn numbers have fluctuated from several hundred to several thousand animals in recent decades. Recent population estimates of 200-400 individuals, combined with high fawn predation rates, have raised local concern. A last-ditch, collaborative effort to move management in the pronghorn's favor has been initiated in hopes of heading off threatened legal battles, in hopes of focusing attention on the animals, rather than litigation. Success of that effort may hinge on the limited science that is available, and how it is interpreted.
Link to media account

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