Insider Update #1 : Page 3
DATE: TO: FROM: RE: January 23, 2012 WildEarth Guardians Board of Directors (and select others) John Horning, Executive Director Programmatic Update, Confidential The last year was one of the more productive in my 17-year tenure at the Guardians with major breakthroughs in our Wildlife and Climate & Energy Programs as well as the release of our first-ever book, The Rio Grande: An Eagle’s View . And yet, as I look forward to 2012, I believe we have the potential to do even better. Regardless, as always, it will be an interesting year ahead. The summary that follows is an intimate look into some of our biggest campaigns. Thanks for caring about WildEarth Guardians. I. Historic Endangered Species Act Settlement: Year 2 Our legal settlement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service requiring listing decisions for more than 250 of our nation’s most endangered species as well as action on another 600 imperiled species was one of the most significant milestones in the history of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Whether it’s the most significant will largely depend on how much the Service actually does over the six-year period of the agreement and, ultimately, whether we’re successful in turning the tide for these endangered species. The agency did not get off to an auspicious start late last year when it bowed to political pressure from the oil and gas industry and its allies in Congress and delayed listing of the dunes sagebrush lizard. But the listing pressure won’t decrease — nor will the political pressure — as our legal settlement requires more than 60 actions to list species in 2012. This includes draft listing rules for the critically imperiled Gunnison’s sage grouse and the lesser prairie chicken, a decision whether to list the Mexican gray wolf as a separate species and listings for many other lesser known species. Among them is the Coral Pink Sand Dunes tiger beetle, which is threatened by off-road vehicles. WildEarth Guardians will be playing two critical roles in 2012: first, we will continue to build popular support and political will (both in the Fish and Wildlife Service and in Congress) for the implementation of our historic agreement and second, once high priority species are actually listed under the Act we will engage in the critical but difficult work of reducing threats and advancing recovery. This likely means that we’ll have a whole new emphasis of our ESA legal advocacy that will largely focus on forcing public land, water and wildlife management agencies to restrict threats, including oil and gas drilling, off-road vehicles, livestock grazing and water diversions. Having broken the ESA listing logjam with our settlement, and with species now moving onto the arc of protection that is the Endangered Species Act, we 3
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