Published: Thursday, October 10, 2013

Governors in Arizona, Utah and South Dakota this month have offered state funds to reopen national parks including Zion, Arches, Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore, where government-shutdown-caused closures have harmed gateway communities.

“Responding to the economic impacts that the park closures are having on many communities and local businesses, Secretary Jewell will consider agreements with governors who indicate an interest and ability to fully fund National Park Service personnel to re-open national parks in their states,” Interior spokesman Blake Androff said in a statement. “The Interior Department will begin conversations about how to proceed as expeditiously as current limited resources allow.”

It’s likely to come as a relief to gateway communities that thrive on the business visitors to the nation’s 401 park units bring to hotels, restaurants, outfitters and gas stations.

Jewell’s overture comes as a key House Republican today pledged to hold hearings to discuss how to facilitate more state and local authority over national parks. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), the chairman of the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation, said that the Obama administration has shuttered parks in an “overly political manner” and that states and localities could manage them better.

The Obama administration has said it is unwilling to cede control over federal lands to states, and conservationists have summarily rejected the idea.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) this week said the government shutdown was costing Utah — home to Zion, Arches, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef and Canyonlands national parks, among other units — about $100 million.

“It is within the power and authority of the executive branch to allow the national parks and monuments to be reopened,” Herbert said in a Tuesday letter to President Obama. “We have a solution in place. We just need, literally, the keys to the gates. I cannot overstate that time is of the essence.”

A spokeswoman said Herbert spoke with Jewell by phone this afternoon.

“We’ve had a breakthrough and are working out details now,” said Ally Isom, Herbert’s deputy chief of staff.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) late last week sent a similar letter, arguing that Interior allowed the Grand Canyon to be reopened during the government shutdown in 1995 using state and private donations and has accepted similar overtures from private groups to reopen visitors centers closed as a result of the federal sequester cuts.

A spokesman for Brewer did not say whether the governor had requested funding from the state Legislature, and if so, how much.

This week, a food bank is delivering food boxes to thousands of Grand Canyon employees who are stranded without work or pay during the government shutdown (Greenwire, Oct. 9).

South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard (R) said last week that he is willing to raise private funds to light Mount Rushmore and use state personnel to provide security.

John Garder, a budget expert with the National Parks Conservation Association, said legal agreements need to be in place before the Park Service can accept nonfederal funds or resources to operate a park. He said it took lengthy talks in 1995 to reopen only a small portion of the Grand Canyon.

“The Park Service has diverse legal requirements and arrangements unseen by the public that can impact why certain facilities are closed while others are not,” he wrote earlier this week on the group’s website. “We know the Park Service is receiving many requests related to the shutdown, but a key challenge is that they are trying to do so with only a tiny fraction of their normal staff.”

Jewell’s consideration of nonfederal funding sources is an apparent break from the Park Service’s initial response to states.

NPS spokesman Michael Litterst on Tuesday cited possible “legal constraints” involved in operating parks during the shutdown and said “it would not be appropriate or feasible to open some parks or some parts of parks while other parts of the National Park System remain closed to the public.”

The Park Service is under intense pressure from Republicans to open parks they argue require little day-to-day maintenance or supervision. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus in a televised media appearance last week offered to pay security expenses to maintain operation of Washington, D.C.’s National World War II Memorial, a site that has become a symbol of the partisan rancor surrounding the closure of parks.

Reporter Elana Schor contributed.

The National Park Service issued citations to nearly two dozen people entering Grand Canyon National Park amid the government shutdown.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office will handle all citations, which Grand Canyon Chief Ranger Bill Wright said were given to some people spotted at the South Rim on trails, attempting rim-to-rim hikes or attempting to sneak into the park via dirt roads.

Law enforcement is patrolling the park, but most other park workers are furloughed, Wright said (AP/New York Times, Oct. 9).

Yellowstone and Grand Teton national park officials also have cited visitors attempting to sneak in.

“We have issued nine citations,” Grand Teton spokeswoman Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles said earlier this week.

Yellowstone National Park spokesman Al Nash said there have not been “widespread” issues as a result of the closures. “I know a few citations have been written,” Nash said. “We do have a fairly robust boundary patrol in conjunction with hunting season on land surrounding the park.”

In all, about 510 National Park Service workers in both parks were furloughed (AP/Billings Gazette, Oct. 8). — WW

Published: Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Found only in a small part of the Santa Cruz Mountains in California, the cypress is no longer at imminent risk of extinction from development, logging or agricultural conversion, the agency said in its proposed rule published today in the Federal Register.

The trees grow on lands managed for conservation by the state and by a private landowner. However, the species faces a number of other threats, so still requires the protection of the Endangered Species Act, the agency said.

“[T]hreats associated with alteration of fire regime and lack of habitat management continue to impede the species’ ability to recover,” the agency wrote in the proposed rule.

The Santa Cruz cypress tree was listed in 1987, when officials estimated 2,300 individuals remained. As information has improved, the agency said that was likely an underestimate. Between 33,000 and 44,000 cypress trees are now estimated to grow across about 188 acres.

The Pacific Legal Foundation petitioned in 2011 to downlist the tree, along with a handful of other species, and sued FWS in April for missing the deadline to issue a proposed rule. The group argues that endangered species listings affect property owners’ rights and can require landowners to undertake costly consultations to receive development permits.

However, the downlisting “does not significantly change the protections afforded this species under the Act,” according to the proposed rule. As before, all federally funded or permitted activities must not jeopardize the cypress’ long-term survival.

Conservationists applauded the proposal.

“The remarkable rebound of this precious little California evergreen is the latest proof that the Endangered Species Act puts species on the path to recovery,” said Angela Crane, endangered species organizer at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Published: Tuesday, August 20, 2013

The groups yesterday announced a settlement designed to balance the protection of primitive lands in the Deep Creek Mountains wilderness study area with access for motorized vehicle users.

It marks the first negotiated settlement in Utah’s larger bid to obtain rights of way over more than 12,000 road segments crossing tens of thousands of miles of federal lands.

“This could be a model for settling other … lawsuits, as long as counties and the state come to the table with solid evidence to support historic public use of a route, and as long as the settlement offers protection for special areas under threat from [off-highway vehicles] and roads,” said Heidi McIntosh of Earthjustice, which represented the Sierra Club, Wilderness Society and Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance in the case.

Utah and Juab filed the lawsuit in federal district court in Salt Lake City in 2005 under an obscure 1866 mining law known as R.S. 2477.

Until its repeal in 1976, R.S. 2477 allowed homesteaders, miners and ranchers almost unrestricted rights to build roads and trails across federal lands. If the state or county can prove the roads were sufficiently used or maintained before 1976, R.S. 2477 rights of way can be retroactively granted.

In the Deep Creek case, three rights of way were granted to Juab, which agreed to maintain them for “responsible use” limited mostly to their current width, environmentalists said.

In return, the county said it would relinquish one R.S. 2477 claim and half of two others, impose off-highway vehicle restrictions and waive all future claims in the wilderness study area and in lands proposed for wilderness designation in House and Senate legislation from Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to designate more than 9 million acres of wilderness in Utah.

The settlement must be approved by U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) said he is hopeful that the Juab settlement can be replicated in some of the other lawsuits filed in 2012 in 22 of Utah’s 29 counties.

The settlement requires BLM to unlock a gate on Granite Canyon Road and remove fallen trees and any other obstacles blocking access to Camp Ethel, Utah said. The state or county may repair the roads, but they are prohibited from paving, improving or widening them.

“This settlement is a great first step and we hope this will serve as a template on how to resolve other public road lawsuits involving similar types of road claims,” said Utah Attorney General John Swallow in a statement. “It also demonstrates that the state and counties will take preservation issues into account when resolving road claims.”

Juab Commission Chairman Chad Winn said the routes were once used to reach “beautiful camping areas and historic sites in our county.” The date for opening the roads has not been determined.

Stephen Bloch, SUWA’s legal director, was more circumspect, noting that the settlement is just one in what he has called a “tsunami of litigation” that threatens the state’s national parks, monuments and best remaining backcountry.

“This settlement is a positive development, but it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the state of Utah has 29 other active lawsuits claiming more than 14,000 other dirt roads and trails — totaling more than 36,000 miles — as R.S. 2477 ‘highways,'” he said in a statement.

The settlement follows a federal district judge’s decision in March to award Utah’s Kane County rights of way over 12 of the 15 R.S. 2477 claims it had filed, including four that traverse the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and one that enters a wilderness study area (Greenwire, March 25).

That case has been appealed by both Kane County and the Interior Department to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Without more settlements, Utah’s R.S. 2477 lawsuits could easily last decades and could dramatically change how federal lands in the state are managed.

Published: Monday, August 12, 2013

The Fish and Wildlife Service was able to deduce which scientists its contractor AMEC was proposing to review the delisting proposal, a fact that runs afoul of the agency’s peer review standards, an FWS spokesman said.

The peer review selection process has been put on hold pending further review, said the spokesman, Gavin Shire.

“We’ve decided that [it] doesn’t meet the standard for independent peer review selections,” he said.

The decision is likely to come as a relief to wolf advocates who had criticized the agency for suggesting that AMEC exclude from the peer review three scientists who had signed a May 21 letter raising scientific objections to a leaked wolf delisting proposal (Greenwire, Aug. 8).

Today, one of those three scientists said the agency was wrong to recommend he be excluded from the peer review team.

John Vucetich, a professor at Michigan Technological University who has conducted extensive research on wolves at Isle Royale National Park in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, said his past criticism of the agency’s delisting proposal should not disqualify him from the peer review team.

Vucetich, Roland Kays of North Carolina State University and Robert Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles, were among 16 scientists who signed the letter. AMEC proposed that all three be included in the peer review.

But Fish and Wildlife in a recent email to the firm — which had been selected to lead the peer review — said signatories to that letter would not be appropriate for the peer review, though it is not entirely clear why. The agency has not provided a copy of that email.

“Everyone who signed that letter was qualified and knowledgeable,” Vucetich said in an interview with E&ENews PM today. “People should be more concerned with the qualifications of a person rather than their final judgment.”

The opinions expressed in the May 21 letter are exactly what’s expected of peer reviewers, Vucetich added.

“If you pass judgment but don’t offer any reasons or if you pass judgment and simply aren’t qualified to, that’s inappropriate,” he said in a separate interview with the California Wolf Center that was posted to YouTube. “I and several others passed judgment, but we passed judgment after becoming familiar with the materials and based on our qualified knowledge of the topic. I don’t think that’s advocacy.”

Vucetich said FWS easily knew that he was among the scientists AMEC was proposing to take part in the review.

The firm had submitted the resumes of the scientists it was proposing for the review with the names removed. However, any reasonable observer could have identified Vucetich’s resume given that his name is cited about 100 times in the resume for the publications he has helped author, Vucetich said.

Wayne’s resume would have also been readily apparent, Vucetich said.

“It’s simply a lie,” he said, to suggest the agency didn’t know who was on the peer review list.

Vucetich was also picked to participate in the peer review by Atkins Global, another environmental consulting firm, which bid for the FWS contract but lost.

The agency’s handling of the peer review last week drew complaints from critics who argued it was trying to stifle scientific dissent.

“It seems like reviewers are being cherry-picked,” said Dan Thornhill, a scientist for Defenders of Wildlife who holds a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Georgia and has been involved in peer reviews for more than 15 years. “It’s not like a jury. You really want things to be vetted by the best and brightest scientists.”

Defenders and other environmental groups have opposed the delisting proposal, arguing that wolves should be allowed to occupy more of their former habitat in the southern Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast.

Vucetich said the Endangered Species Act suggests that to be recovered, a species has to be “somewhat well distributed throughout its former range.” Currently, wolves occupy about 15 percent of their former range, he said.

The FWS solicitation for the peer review sought experts with backgrounds in wolf ecology who are sufficiently independent from FWS and who have not been engaged in advocacy.

“Peer reviewers will be advised that they are not to provide advice on policy,” the FWS solicitation stated. “Rather, they should focus their review on identifying and characterizing scientific uncertainties.”

FWS said it did not order the removal of any particular scientists from the peer review panel, though it did send an email to AMEC raising concerns over whether the signatories to the letter would be sufficiently independent and objective.

“Objective and credible peer review is critical to the success of threatened and endangered species recovery and delisting efforts,” agency spokesman Chris Tollefson said last week. “For this reason, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service takes every step possible to work with our independent peer review contractors to ensure that selected scientific experts have not prejudged the proposals they will review.”

The FWS delisting decision was hailed by Western states, livestock groups and hunters who agreed with the agency that wolves are no longer in danger of extinction after being nearly eradicated from the lower 48 states (Greenwire, June 7).

More than 6,000 wolves roam the western Great Lakes states and Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, up from nearly zero when they were listed in the 1970s.