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Bracing for the challenges of an urban world
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ENVIRONMENT BRIEFS
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Endangered Species of the Southern US
A weekly column by Shawn Gaynor
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Nature Conservancy tarnished in
environmental scandal

By Oliver Burkeman

Washington, DC, May 29— The world’s wealthiest green group may be investigated by the US government in the light of allegations that it has engaged in practices more commonly associated with the enemies of the environment.

Nature Conservancy felled trees, allegedly drilled for gas beneath the last breeding-ground of an endangered bird, and sold unspoiled land at discounted prices to its trustees so they could build luxury homes in some of America’s most beautiful landscapes, according to the Washington Post, which spent two years investigating its activities.

The conservancy group has $3 billion in assets and a million members, and is ubiquitous in the US.

Its image as the preserver of the country’s wilderness (widely promoted on television and in print using the actor and environmentalist Paul Newman as its figurehead) has been severely tarnished by the investigation.

The paper says the oil company Mobil gave the charity a stretch of coastline in Texas which supports the almost extinct Attwater’s prairie chicken. But the Post claims that instead of shielding the land, Nature Conservancy sank a gas well, losing a $10 million lawsuit concerning another charity’s claim to the oil rights, and exposing the birds, in the words of one of Nature Conservancy’s scientists, to “a higher probability of death.”

Tax deductions

The revelations, confirmed by the Guardian, encompass a scheme in which the conservancy’s wealthy supporters, among them the chat show host David Letterman, were sold land by the charity at far less than cost, in return for accepting restrictions on how they could develop it.

Often, those buying the land would make up the difference with a roughly equivalent donation to the conservancy, claiming a large tax deduction for the gift, meaning that the US treasury sweetened the deal. The buyer was free to develop the land as long as the charity’s environmental restrictions were followed. But they were often not strict enough to prevent the owner installing swimming pools and tennis courts and clearing trees for a better view.

Letterman, a conservancy trustee, bought part of a 215-acre stretch on Martha’s Vineyard, though it was not clear whether he made a parallel donation.

The charity says it has suspended the “conservation buyer” scheme pending a review. But Democrat and Republican senators are seeking an investigation, bringing into the Washington spotlight a long-running debate on how close the green movement should get to big business.

And Nature Conservancy is certainly very close. Among those with seats on its council are some of America’s most notorious environmental offenders: Pacific Gas and Electric (the polluting villan of the movie Erin Brockovich) Exxon Mobil, and General Motors. It receives hundreds of millions of dollars a year from business, some for letting companies use its name and logo on products.

“Talking philosophically, there’s a spectrum, and, yes, the conservancy is very pragmatic,” Jordan Peavey, its spokeswoman, told the Guardian. The charity has admitted that it made mistakes, but, Peavey said, “We have our niche, and we’re very effective at what we do. That enables us to get work done that groups like Greenpeace couldn’t do — not to pick on them particularly, because they can do things that we couldn’t.”

A former head of land acquisition for Nature Conservancy, David Morine, told the Post: “It was the wrong decision to get so close to industry. Business got in under the tent, and we are the ones who invited them in. These corporate executives are carnivorous. You bring them in and they just take over. [That policy was] the biggest mistake in my life.”

It is the Texas gas-drilling which may do the most damage, because it seems so profoundly at odds with the charity’s stated mission of “saving the last great places on earth.”

The plan was to buy more land for the Attwater’s prairie chicken, which the US National Wildlife Federation calls the country’s most endangered bird, but little went right. Oil spills and a gas explosion blighted the operation.

Failed conservation

There is no evidence that the drilling directly harmed the birds, but the conservation efforts failed, too, and the number of birds has fallen from 36 birds in 1998 to an estimated 16.

Stanley Temple, a Wisconsin University biologist, wrote in a report for Nature Conservancy that he was “shocked to find that one of the release pens is subject to flooding in heavy rains, and that birds have drowned in the pen.”

Temple told the Guardian that his remarks had been blown out of proportion, and that his point was that the location was appropriate only for a short-term project. “The Texas City preserve was an absolutely hopeless site to try to conserve the Attwater’s prairie chicken in the long run,” he said.

Mark Hertsgaard, author of the book Earth Odyssey, said: “I don’t see how you could make up a worse scenario than that. I think it tells you something about the lack of accountability in the movement, and the lack of an atmosphere in which people are going to call each other on things.

“It really points to a much bigger problem, which is, how do you deal with corporate power and capitalism.”

As for the conservation buyer scheme, Peavey insisted that it did not entail selling land to conservancy trustees and donors at a loss, because the development restrictions decreased the value.

“You’re giving up substantial rights to develop, in perpetuity — owners hundreds of years from now will still have to abide by those restrictions,” she said. “So while it is true that the land was sold at a cheaper price, it was because it was worth less, by independent appraisals.”

Source: Guardian (UK)

Bracing for the challenges of an urban world

By J.R. Pegg

Washington, DC, May 29 (ENS)— Over the next three decades the world’s population is expected to grow by some 2.2 billion people and the majority of this growth will take place in urban cities within developing countries. This rapid and far-reaching urbanization represents a major transformation for humanity, said experts at the Global Health Council’s annual conference, and will have profound impacts on global health and the environment.

The key to preparing for this trend is better understanding of the cycles of poverty, disease, and violence that affect the urban poor today, today’s speakers explained, as these factors combine to put added stress on the environment and on efforts to improve global health.

Madagascar President Marc Ravalomanana asked conference attendees — and the world — to address the continued growth of wealth inequality and urged for a cure to “the lethal disease of poverty.”

This needs to be made the “priority of all priorities,” said Ravalomanana.

For the rest of this article, please visit www.ens-news.com

Endangered Species of the Southern US
A weekly column by Shawn Gaynor

Meet a tiny tarantula

You have to look close to see this tiny tarantula on the hunt. Like all arachnids, the Spruce-fir spider is a carnivore. Down below the protective canopy of the spruce-fir forests, where the moss grows thick on the rocks of the moist, cloud-draped mountain peaks, the Spruce-fir moss spider hunts for its meal of tiny insects. Roughly the size of a BB, the Spruce-fir moss spider is unique to the high Southern Appalachian mountain peaks.

Back during the last ice age, 18,000 years ago, the spruce-fir forest covered a wide range of what is now the southern US. As the glaciers receded, and the global climate changed and warmed, the spruce-fir forests range shrunk in the south, and became isolated “islands” on the cool, moist, mountaintops of the Southern Appalachians. Separated from the northern spruce-fir forests, these “island” ecosystems, like Darwin’s Galapagos, provided ripe conditions for evolution as species became isolated breeding groups, and began developing along their own evolutionary lines.

These isolated conditions have led the high mountain peaks of the Southern Appalachians to become a biologically rich ecosystem, boasting unique species.

Cornell University scientists Crosby and Bishop, who wandered the peak of Mount Mitchell as they surveyed the peaks of western North Carolina in 1923, first described the Spruce-fir moss spider, though the spider has not been seen there since the early 1980’s.

The spider has a relatively long lifespan, with the females surviving up to three years. Though it is a web-weaving spider, making tiny tube-shaped webs in which it resides, there is no record of prey being found in the webs. The spider leaves the web to hunt small insects, especially the abundant springtails that feed on the moss.

In 1995, with the spruce-fir forests in the Southern Appalachians in decline, the US Fish and Wildlife Service designated the Spruce-fir spider as an endangered species.

The decline in its habitat, which led to the designation, was due to a number of factors.

Acording to the Fish and Wildlife Service, “Most of these forests have suffered extensive changes and declines in size and/or vigor during the past century as the result of a number of factors including past logging and burning practices, storm damage, and possibly atmospheric pollution. The portion of the spruce-fir forests where the Spruce-fir moss spider has been found is dominated by Fraser fir. In recent years, Fraser fir throughout the Southern Appalachian Mountains has suffered extensive mortality due to the infestation of the balsam wooly adelgid (Adelges piceae), a non-native insect. Most mature Fraser fir are easily killed by the adelgid. The death and thinning of the forest canopy results in locally drastic changes in microclimate including increased temperatures and decreased moisture leading to desiccation of the moss mats on which the spider depends.”

In October of 2000, as a result of a lawsuit launched by the Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project (SABP), critical habitat for the spider was protected on mountain tops above 5,400 feet in Western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.

At that time, Dr. Harvard Ayers, Professor at Appalachian State University and chair of the North Carolina Clean Air Coalition, said, “the red spruce/Fraser fir zone is one of extremely high forest decline. In the Black Mountains near Asheville, including Mount Mitchell, the mortality in long-studied plots reveal that over the last 18 years, about 95 percent of the mature trees have died.

“About one third of the dead conifers in the Blacks are Fraser firs, many of which have been attacked by the balsam wooly adelgid. Two thirds of the many thousands of dead trees are red spruce, a species that is unaffected by the balsam wooly adelgid. Because almost all tree species above 5,000 feet elevation, including the minority hardwoods, are in decline, many leading scientists suspect that air pollution is the most likely underlying cause for the observed habitat loss.

“Acid levels are 10-50 times more in the clouds that hang on the mountains so many days of every year, as compared to the precipitation that falls on the surrounding valley locations,” said Ayers.

“The designation of critical habitat is not going to solve the air pollution problem, but under critical habitat designation, federal agencies and corporations cannot adversely modify the integrity of the designated habitat,” said Tracy Davids, director of SABP. “If an agency or corporation is adversely modifying critical habitat, a lawsuit can be filed to ensure the protection of an endangered species.”

Efforts to protect the Spruce-fir moss spider from threats are ongoing.