California Senator Dianne Feinstein is fuming over a federal plan to use some Mojave desert lands to develop solar power plants and wind farms.

In a letter to Dept. of the InteriorSecretary Ken Salazar, Feinstein said she planned to introduce legislation that would protect the former railroad lands, thereby preventing the federal government from leasing them to renewable energy project developers. The 600,000 acres in question were acquired by and donated to the government’s Bureau of Land Management between 1999 and 2004 for the purpose of conservation.

“I have been informed that the BLM now considers these areas open for all types of use except mining.  This is unacceptable!” Feinstein wrote in a March 3 letter made public last week.

Feinstein, a supporter of renewable energy, said many of the desert lands being considered for solar and wind development are unsuitable.

“It is critical that these projects move forward on public and private lands well suited for that purpose,” Feinstein wrote.  “Unfortunately, many of the sites now being considered for leases are completely inappropriate and will lead to the wholesale destruction of some of the most pristine areas in the desert.”

Earlier this month, the U.S. Interior Department said it would identify zones on public lands where the department can act rapidly to create large-scale production of solar, wind, geothermal and biomass energy. Building and consuming more clean, renewable energy is a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s energy and economic policies.

You won’t see this on Wall Street folks.

Times are tough for U.S. non-profit organizations, so tough that some employees at one are donating their own money to help stave off layoffs and keep their projects going.

Employees at the National Audubon Society, an environmental group dedicated to habitat conservation, have pledged about $800,000 through voluntary payroll deductions in an internal donation drive to help see it through the recession. You can see my report here.

Conservation groups are often staffed by people who are passionate about their cause and many are facing tough times as the recession bites.

Audubon president John Flicker told me that for many U.S.-based conservation groups, the recession could not come at a worse time as the season is ripe politically for their agenda.

The Democratic-controlled Congress and President Barack Obama are regarded by most conservationists as more friendly to their cause on a range of fronts than former president George W. Bush, who worked with Republican majorities for most of his eight years in office. 

The fight against climate change and safeguards for endangered species are among the many areas where greens see new political opportunities in Washington.

“There are so many opportunities to make great strides in conservation right now … We have the new Congress which is presenting some terrific opportunities to do things which we haven’t been able to do in a long time,” Flicker said.

Do you know of any other conservation groups where the employees are donating from their own salaries? And in an age when many are angry at “Wall Street greed”, what do you think of this staff effort to keep things rolling?

(Photo: Undated National Audubon Society picture of a purple finch. REUTERS/National Audubon Society Handout)

The fast-growing U.S. Southwest has a problem: too many people, not enough water.

But then, what do you expect when you build cities like Las Vegas in the middle of a desert?

My colleagues Tim Gaynor and Steve Gorman have done a story on this, looking at the water woes of Los Angeles and Las Vegas. You can see their report here and other stories from our water package here.

Tim joined the “water warriors” of Las Vegas, city investigators who enforce restrictions on usage; Steve looked at the dire situation in Los Angeles, America’s second largest city.

Tim accompanied waste water investigator Dennis Demera as he followed a tell-tale trickle of water up the dusty concrete gutter to a house in suburban Las Vegas, the United States’ driest big city.

This is one of the violations that we look for,”  Demera said, pointing to a broken sprinkler head in the sparse lawn of the detached home in residential Surfline Drive.

A water cop employed by the Southern Nevada Water Authority, it is Demera’s job to claw back wasted water one gallon at a time — and it’s a job for our times.

 Most of the U.S. Southwest’s fast growing cities are built either in the scalding deserts or on their fringes, where H2O has always been a scarce resource.

Now as the area is hit by droughts and higher temperatures, possibly linked to climate change, water scarcity is driving those desert cities to respond to scarcity in a variety of ways.

It begs the question: should cities of such size exist in such places in the first place? Is this kind of urban growth really sustainable into the future? What do you think?

Photo credit: Reuters/David Becker (Las Vegas water sleuth Dennis Demera looks for leaks, February 2009)

Sarah Palin has struck back at Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, which is running a video accusing the Alaska governor of planning to expand the aerial hunting of wolves in her state.

The graphic video, part of the group’s “Eye on Palin” campaign, is narrated by Hollywood star Ashley Judd and has generated a lot of media attention this week.

Here is the full text of Palin’s brief statement, which was released late on Tuesday:

“It is reprehensible and hypocritical that the Defenders of Wildlife would use Alaska and my administration as a fundraising tool to deceive Americans into parting with their hard-earned money.”

“The ad campaign by this extreme fringe group, as Alaskans have witnessed over the last several years, distorts the facts about Alaska’s wildlife management programs. Alaskans depend on wildlife for food and cultural practices which can’t be sustained when predators are allowed to decimate moose and caribou populations. Our predator control programs are scientific and successful at protecting vulnerable wildlife. These audacious fundraising attempts misrepresent what goes on in Alaska, and I encourage people to learn the facts about Alaska’s positive record of managing wildlife for abundance.”

“Shame on the Defenders of Wildlife for twisting the truth in an effort to raise funds from innocent and hard-pressed Americans struggling with these rough economic times.”

What is perhaps most revealing about the statement is that Palin, who shot to national prominence last year as the Republican Party’s vice presidential candidate, did not address one of the group’s key allegations: that she plans to introduce legislation shortly that would expand the aerial predator hunting program.

Whether the program is expanded or not, what do you think? is this kind of predator control cruel and inhumane? Or are most if not all efforts at the control of wild predators cruel? Can it ever be justified on scientific grounds? Or to, say, protect humans from man-eaters such as crocodiles? And is Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund using Palin to raise cash during a recession? What do you think?

(Photo Credit: REUTERS/Hans Deryk, USA, Nov 13, 2008)

Sarah Palin still has environmentalists howling.

The Alaska governor and former Republican vice presidential hopeful is the target of a campaign by the Washington-based Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund which claims she is pushing for an expanded program for the shooting of wolves from the sky.

In a graphic video narrated by Hollywood star Ashley Judd, the group claims Palin even offered a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf collected. You can view the video here.

“When Sarah Palin came on the national scene last summer, few knew that she promotes the brutal aerial killing of wolves. Now, back in Alaska, Palin is again casting aside science and championing the slaughter of wildlife,” Judd says in the video, which features footage of a wolf howling in pain after apparently being shot from the sky.

(Photo: Palin works a crowd, Dec 1, 2008. REUTERS/Tami Chappell, USA)

On its web site, the group said in a statement that: “Governor Palin is expected shortly to introduce state legislation that would dramatically expand the aerial killing program by removing the few remaining scientific requirements from the program. ” Palin’s office was contacted by Reuters and was not immediately available for comment.

Palin, an avid hunter and angler like many Alaskans, has frequently clashed with environmentalists on issues ranging from artic oil drilling to the delisting of endangered species.

After suing last year to keep polar bears off the U.S. threatened species list, Alaska’s government said in January it plans to issue a similar challenge to block federal protections for a struggling population of beluga whales in Cook Inlet, a mature oil-producing basin.

(Photo: Judd has an eye on Palin REUTERS/Ramin Rahimian, Jan 17, 2009, USA)

Palin was credited with galvanizing the Democratic Party base and raising money for abortion rights causes last year because of her social and religious conservatism and strong opposition to abortion rights.

It seems Palin can still galvanize activsists on the left and in this case perhaps help raise money for a conservation group.

(Photo Credit: Wolves on the prowl. Canon USA Handout, Undated)

2009 may not be such a green year in America after all.

According to a new poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, environmental protection has fallen off sharply as a priority issue among Americans. You can see the whole survey here.

“Of the 20 issues people were asked to rate in both January 2008 and January 2009, five have slipped significantly in importance as attention to the economy has surged. Protecting the environment fell the most precipitously – just 41 percent rate this as a top priority today, down from 56 percent a year ago,” Pew said.

It said green concerns and others such as illegal immigration had been overtaken by growing anxiety over the souring economy.

“The share of Americans saying that strengthening the nation’s economy should be a top priority has risen from 68 percent two years ago to 75 percent last January to 85 percent today,” it said.

The poll comes in the first week of the presidency of Barack Obama who has clearly signaled that the economy is his top priority. But Obama has also promised to reverse much of the environmental legacy of former president George W. Bush on issues such as climate change and the creation of so-called “green jobs” is high on his agenda.

Conservation groups have already said they are feeling the pinch. The Bronx Zoo based Wildlife Conservation Society said last week that it was facing a “dire financial situation.” Conservation is clearly losing ground to the economy as an issue that people can devote attention or resources toward.

What do you think? Do you think the conservation movement is in for a rough spell? Or will it just be a temporary setback and environmental issues will grab the public’s attention again in the near future? 

The nationwide poll of 1,503 adults was taken from Jan. 7-11 and has a margin of error of three percentage points.

(Photo Credit: REUTERS/Fred Prouser, Dec 26, 2008, USA)

Half a million Magellanic penguins are among the critters to get protection in a new coastal marine park just established by Argentina.

“It is the first protected area in Argentina specifically designed to safeguard not only onshore breeding colonies but also areas of ocean where wildlife feed at sea,” the Bronx-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said on Tuesday.

“Researchers found that the area was in need of protection from increasing pressures by commercial fishing and the oil industry,” said WCS, which helped set up the park. Named the Golfo San Jorge marine park, it became official earlier this month.

Only a fraction of the planet’s coastlines and marine areas are protected, so any move in this area is bound to be welcomed by conservationists.

According to conservation group WWF for example, only 0.6 percent of the world’s oceans have been designated as protected - compared to almost 13 percent of the planet’s land area.

The new reserve is in Golfo San Jorge in Chubut Province, some 1,056 miles (1,700 kilometers) south of Buenos Aires. WCS said it covers approximately 250 square miles (647 square kilometers) of coastal waters and nearby islands strung along almost 100 miles (160 kilometers) of shoreline.

“The region serves as a nesting and feeding ground for some quarter million pairs of Magellanic penguin, estimated to represent 25 percent of the entire population in Patagonia. Its 50 small islands also support two nesting colonies of southern giant petrels that represent over 80 percent of its population on the entire Patagonian coast,” WCS said.

(Photo credit: Graham Harris/Wildlife Conservation Society)

New research shows that both Antarctica and the Arctic are getting less icy – and the best explanation is mankind’s emissions of greenhouse gases.

But will that convert anyone who doubts that global warming is caused by human activities, led by burning fossil fuels?

The scientists, writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, say that a study of temperature records from Antarctica (there aren’t many of them) shows a slight rising trend over recent decades that can be best explained by a build-up of greenhouse gases led by carbon dioxide.

Antarctica had until now been the only continent where a human fingerprint of warming had not been detected by scientists — that meant some sceptics said it might not be global at all.

Ice around the frozen continent has tended to expand in recent years — some climate experts have theories to explain that that could be a side-effect of warming linked to shifting ocean currents or changes in snow and rainfall.

But more ice obviously doesn’t sound a convincing argument for global warming when a runaway melt of the summer sea ice in the Arctic — to a record low in September 2007 – is often held up as Exhibit A in the evidence for climate change.

The U.N. Climate Panel said last year that it was at least 90 percent certain that most of the global warming in the past half century was caused by human activities. Ten percent is room for doubt, but it seems to be shrinking.

There are two turtle tales brewing on the coast of Texas at the moment and they’re both good.

First the numbers tale. 

The dedicated folks at the South Padre Island conservation facility Sea Turtle, Inc, report record numbers of nests by endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles.

“We have had record numbers of ridley nests on the Texas coast this year. We have found over 170 so far in 2008 compared to the previous record of 128 for all of last year,” Sea Turtle, Inc, curator Jeff George told Reuters.

This is the fifth straight year that the numbers have increased.

The species still has a few weeks left to its nesting season in the area, so the recorded 2008 total could reach 200.

The other turtle tidbit? Biologists report that for the first time in at least 70 years they have identified a leatherback turtle nest on the Texas coast.

The 203 cm (over six-foot) wide track in the sand was the first clue to the identity of the leatherback which laid two eggs early in June on Big Shell Island on the Padre Island National Seashore.

The eggs are being kept in an incubation facility and should hopefully hatch sometime around early August.

The massive leatherbacks are the largest of all living turtles, making them a wildlife icon.

George said both tales are good signals which show that conservation efforts from less destructive fishing practices to beach preservation and public education are working.

“The hope is that there are more turtles in the Gulf of Mexico that will use Texas as their breeding ground,” said George.

(Photo credit: Tim Wimborne, Reuters, April 12, 2006)

Can credits traded in the world’s financial centers stop local farmers in Madagascar from burning up a rain forest filled with lemurs and other life found nowhere else in the world?    

The New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society is working with the government of Madagascar to sell about 9.5 million tonnes of carbon credits to help save the Makira Forest, which contains 22 species of lemurs, hundreds of bird species and thousands of plants. Many of those species are found nowhere else on the planet. 

 ”We want to create incentives so people don’t deforest,” Ray Victurine, the finance expert at WCS, told me. 

The 9.5 million tonnes is the amount of carbon dioxide stored in existing trees WSC and Madagascar estimate can be saved over 30 years by stopping people from chopping them down.

Victurine said money raised by the credits could encourage farmers to stop slash and burn agriculture through investments in rice cultivation or in taking advantage of cloud formations in the forest to improve irrigation.

In Madagascar about 100,000 hectares (386 square miles) of forest are lost each year by agricultural burning, according to WCS.

The burning of forests by farmers accounts for 20 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions. An agreement at a 190-nation UN conference last year agreed to work on ways to reward countries for slowing deforestation.

Credits in a global climate trade system could generate $2 billion to $14 billion for developing countries, according to a study by EcoSecurities and the University of British Colombia. 

The WCS and Madagascar are hoping to sell their credits in the rapidly developing voluntary credit market. Later, they could adapt them for any post-Kyoto global trading system if the world agrees such credits would save forests in a fair way.  

Victurine said they are working with the Voluntary Carbon Standard and the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance to ensure the credits would be high quality and would pay for actions to save the forest that would not have occurred otherwise.

The higher the perceived quality of the credits, the higher price they may fetch. In today’s prices at the EU’s compliance carbon market the 9.5 million tonnes would be worth about $291 million, though carbon prices are volatile. In voluntary, unregulated carbon markets the tonnes would be worth closer to $62 million. 

All of which leads to a question.  Are financial instruments the best way to change human behavior and save the planet?