Defenders of Wildlife Blog

The Calico project's footprint, comprised of fields of solar panels similar to this one, will fall on 4,000 acres of public land in California, including key habitat for threatened desert tortoise.

BREAKING: The proposed California-based Calico solar project fails to meet basic environmental protection requirements and threatens imperiled wildlife, according to Defenders of Wildlife, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club. The groups are filing a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior after failing to reach agreement with the developers and the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to move the project to a location without major environmental conflicts.  

Read our fact sheet to learn more about what’s wrong with the Calico project.

Over the course of three years, the environmental groups met 10 times with the Bureau of Land Management and Calico’s current and former developers, K-Road Power and Tessera Solar (respectively), to urge the developers and Interior to relocate the project to less environmentally sensitive lands. Some of these options included degraded private agricultural lands near the proposed project that would significantly reduce the project’s impacts and bring it more in line with “smart from the start” principles. All these options were rejected.

The proposed project covers 4,000-plus-acres of vital wildlife habitat in the Mojave Desert’s Pisgah Valley – an area four times as large as San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park – and is located on key desert tortoise habitat that connects several tortoise recovery areas in the region. Building a solar project here, the groups contend, would threaten at least six other imperiled animals and plants, including golden eagles, burrowing owls and Mojave fringe-toed lizard.

Desert tortoise benefit from smart planning of solar power projects.

Defenders, NRDC and the Sierra Club have previously supported or reached agreements with developers of five of the seven large-scale solar projects approved in California by Interior since 2009. This consensus building effort resulted in better projects that would create almost 3,670 construction jobs, about 525 permanent jobs and nearly 2,600 megawatts of clean power while minimizing impacts on key species and wild lands.

Collaborative solar development efforts among these conservation groups, solar developers and federal, state and local agencies will continue, including a joint effort to help shape Interior’s national solar program that will provide a robust blueprint for successful and responsible solar development on public lands in California and the rest of the West.

Following are statements from leaders of the conservation groups presenting the lawsuit:

Kim Delfino, Defenders' California program director.

“What’s frustrating about the Calico solar project is that the developer and the Bureau of Land Management can avoid the worst impacts to wildlife by being ‘smart from the start’ and moving the project to degraded agricultural lands near the proposed site,” said Kim Delfino, Defenders of Wildlife’s California program director. “If this project moves forward at this location, Calico will irreversibly harm the sensitive Pisgah Valley and the desert tortoise.”

“We drew a line in the sand and the Calico solar project crossed it,” said Johanna Wald, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “My colleagues and I tried very hard to avoid litigation and filed this suit as the last resort. We have focused instead on consensus building to improve as many large-scale solar projects as possible to transition our nation to clean energy sources while protecting wild lands and wildlife. The Calico project, however, is an example of a solar project done wrong from the start.”

“The Pisgah Valley is just too critical for desert tortoise recovery and for a whole suite of important desert species like golden eagles,” said Sierra Club Senior Representative Barbara Boyle. “We need to build renewable energy, but we can find much better places that don’t harm important wildlife and habitat.”

A golden eagle.

Hundreds of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat and sensitive public lands once targeted for large-scale solar power plants are now off the table, sparing threatened desert tortoises, desert bighorn sheep, golden eagles and other unique wildlife.

On Thursday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar released an improved draft of the federal government’s plan for solar energy development on public lands in the West, which dropped some proposed energy zones that Defenders opposed, such as the Iron Mountain and Pisgah zones in California.

The announcement came as good news for wildlife, but it could also spell a bright future for the emerging solar power industry.

That’s because the Bureau of Land Management made several improvements to the plan that could jumpstart responsible solar energy development in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

BLM officials say the draft plan now aims to focus development in sunny places that also have a better chance of avoiding and minimizing impacts on wildlife and the environment.

A solar dish.

Solar power projects that steer clear of wildlife habitat and fragile desert lands, says Defenders senior director for renewable energy Jim Lyons, tend to face less controversy and fewer slowdowns.

“The benefits of guided development are clear: Clean energy can come online faster and at a lower cost to developers and to our nation’s wildlife and treasured places,” he says.

Related: Read our press release on the Interior Department’s announcement.

Defenders and the conservation community worked alongside solar industry representatives earlier this year to answer to the question of how to quickly ramp up solar energy production without sacrificing imperiled wildlife and the unique desert landscape.

After long hours of negotiations, the group agreed on a number of commonsense solutions, including removing some inappropriate zones, a process for creating new zones to meet future energy demand, and giving developers some flexibility to plan projects on low-conflict lands outside the zones.

BLM worked these ideas into the new draft of the plan after receiving more than 80,000 public comments last summer, including thousands from Defenders’ members and supporters.

BLM lands in California.

“Although the new draft has reduced the amount of land available for solar development, the proposed areas appear to offer a bigger shot at success,” says California program director, Kim Delfino, who helped to draft the joint comments. “The remaining zones, which still total nearly 300,000 acres, have been refined to help developers avoid and minimize the worst impacts on wildlife and the environment.”

There’s still ample opportunity for solar growth in California and across the West, she adds, pointing out that BLM is still considering some 79 solar project applications on nearly 700,000 acres of land.

There is also the potential for new solar zones to be created through the Interior Department’s proposed solar plan and California’s Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan process, which aims to identify important places in the desert to protect for conservation and areas that are suitable for renewable energy development.

The Bureau of Land Management is taking public comment on the supplement to the draft Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement over the next three months.

Meanwhile, Defenders will be taking a closer look at the nearly 600-page-long document to make sure it delivers on its promise of a “Smart from the Start” solar energy program.

Attacks on endangered species lurking around the corner

A (seemingly) modest proposal

Late Friday, the Senate Interior and Environment Appropriations subcommittee released a draft of their 2012 funding proposal for federal programs that provide clean air and water and protect endangered species. Missing from the proposal are the pernicious anti-wildlife provisions attached to the companion bill already approved by the House this past summer.

Read our report on pending ESA attacks.

If only it would stay that way.

Unfortunately, subcommittee chairman Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) are signaling that the proposal is merely a starting point for what are likely to become some very nasty negotiations. In fact, the funding bill may never come up for a vote for fear that members on both sides of the aisle will try to tack on amendments and exceptions to flout environmental laws for short-term political gain. (read more on E&E News, subscription only).

But avoiding public debate over the controversial provisions won’t be enough to keep anti-wildlife voices at bay. Several senators are already advancing legislation to rollback protections for particular animals in particular areas (e.g., grizzlies in Idaho, prairie dogs in Utah). And any bill that clears the Senate will need to be reconciled with the House version, which has more anti-ESA riders attached to it than any other appropriations bill in recent history.

As we documented in our comprehensive report on more than a dozen attacks on endangered species protections, some members of Congress have not been shy about doing the bidding of their corporate backers. A small handful of the most adamant anti-wildlife legislators have taken a combined total of nearly $6 million from the oil and gas and agribusiness industries. In exchange, these politicians are peddling provisions that would prohibit protections for animals on the brink of extinction, make it easier to poison our waterways with toxic pesticides, and reverse decades of work to restore imperiled wolves.

Anti-ESA hearing shows Congress’s true colors

The assault on America’s native wildlife and natural resources is far from over. Just last week, the House science oversight subcommittee held a hearing titled, “The Endangered Species Act: Reviewing the Nexus of Science and Policy.” The committee invited a series of experts to testify about the Act, most of whom used the opportunity to criticize our nation’s pre-eminent wildlife conservation law for being ineffective or inimical to economic development and private property rights.

Humpback whales are among the hundreds of species that are making a comeback because of the success of the Endangered Species Act..

What these supposed experts failed to mention is that the Endangered Species Act has successfully saved 99 percent of protected species from disappearing. Only about 10 species have gone extinct in the United States out of nearly 2,000 since the Act went into effect in 1973, and many of those species were already well beyond the point of no return.

In less than four decades, the Endangered Species Act has halted the decline and even restored hundreds of species, including iconic American animals like the bald eagle, grizzly bear and gray wolf. Amazingly, it has done so while the United States added about 100 million people to its roll call and created the highest standard of living in human history.

A fight we cannot lose

Preventing plants and animals from going extinct is a daunting challenge and the stakes are high. The world’s top biologists estimate that we are currently losing species 10,000 times faster than the normal rate. Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson has predicted that half of all species worldwide will go extinct in the next century at the current rate.

With that incredible loss of biodiversity as the backdrop, we should be doing everything in our power to protect all forms of life on the planet, beginning with the ones right here in our backyard. Slashing funding for wildlife and making it easier for businesses to bulldoze prime wildlife habitat is clearly a step in the wrong direction.

In the coming weeks and months, Defenders will be confronting Congress with a simple message: the fight to protect America’s endangered species is one we simply cannot afford to lose. We will need the help of all wildlife supporters to make sure our elected representatives hear us loud and clear.

USFWS pursues premature delisting based on inadequate state management plan

WASHINGTON (October 4, 2011) – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) published a proposed rule today that would remove federal protections for endangered gray wolves in Wyoming. USFWS is moving forward with the delisting even though the state wolf management plan has yet to be approved by the Wyoming legislature. As currently written, the plan treats wolves as predators, allowing the animals to be killed at any time by any means across nearly 90 percent of the state, including on the public’s national forests where wildlife management is a core purpose. Wolves in the rest of the state could still be killed with a hunting license, and this licensed hunting area will expand seasonally to allow for dispersing wolves. Inside Yellowstone National Park, wolves will remain fully protected.

 The following is a statement from Jamie Rappaport Clark, president of Defenders of Wildlife:

“The Fish and Wildlife Service should  not be removing protections for wolves in Wyoming under these circumstances. The proposed delisting rule effectively endorses a state management plan that permits unmanaged wolf killing across the vast majority of the state, and it only perpetuates the notion that wolves are unwanted predators.

“Our country has spent decades restoring these animals because they are vital to maintaining balanced ecosystems and a healthy environment. We can’t achieve full recovery by relegating wolves to one corner of the state. This plan does an extreme disservice to all the hard work that’s been done to bring wolves back from near extinction and could reverse the many benefits they bring to the landscape.

“What’s particularly disconcerting is that this plan will allow wolves to be needlessly killed in our national forests. Wolves are part of our national wildlife heritage and should not be shot on sight on public land that belongs to all Americans. We expect our nation’s wildlife agency to uphold our commitment to good stewardship of our lands and wildlife, not rubber-stamp an irresponsible wolf management plan for the sake of political expediency.”

“The proposed delisting rule effectively endorses a state management plan that permits unmanaged wolf killing across the vast majority of the state, and it only perpetuates the notion that wolves are unwanted predators.” — Jamie Rappaport Clark, Defenders president

Background:
Gray wolves across the Northern Rockies were protected as an endangered species until this spring, when a rider attached to a must-pass budget bill stripped protections for wolves in Idaho and Montana. Wolves in Wyoming remained protected since the state did not have a federally approved state management plan in place. In recent months, the state of Wyoming and the U.S. Department of the Interior have agreed on the terms of a state management plan. DOI announced the principles of that agreement in early August, and the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission approved a state management plan based on those principles on Sept. 14. The Wyoming legislature must still approve the plan before it is finalized.

Read Wyoming’s wolf management plan

Read Defenders comments on the Wyoming wolf management plan

Learn more about Defenders’ efforts to protect wolves in the Northern Rockies

On our blog: read our weekly wrap-up of western wolf news

DESERT TORTOISE, (C) Jeff Aardahl/Defenders of Wildlife

NEWS: Conservation groups urge Interior Department to move the Calico Solar Project to less sensitive lands

A coalition of conservation groups made a last-ditch appeal to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today, urging the Bureau of Land Management to move the Calico Solar Project from vital desert habitat to degraded lands that could produce the same amount of energy, but pose less risk to imperiled wildlife and the environment.

Kim Delfino, Defenders' California program director.

“The conservation community wants to see clean energy projects succeed, but development has to be done smart from the start, where projects are designed up front to avoid, minimize and mitigate impacts on wildlife and the environment. The Calico Solar Project is a glaring example of the wrong way to pursue solar energy projects,” said Kim Delfino, California Program Director for Defenders of Wildlife.

“The harm to imperiled wildlife, plants and fragile desert habitat caused by this project if it is built in this location seriously outweighs any benefits. And while we’ve worked successfully with a number of large-scale solar project developers to reduce their project’s impacts on the environment and supported other projects with no changes, the impacts of this project are too great in its present location. As we have done successfully with other solar developers, we hope we can find a way to modify this project to reduce its impacts and permit it to proceed.”

Related: Read Defenders’ fact sheet explaining why Calico is an example of solar development done wrong.

The groups have notified the Interior Department of their intention to file a lawsuit against BLM and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for approving the 4,613-acre solar power facility, which will impact seven imperiled species in the fragile Mojave Desert landscape, including desert tortoise, burrowing owls and bighorn sheep.

The Calico Solar Project is a glaring example of the wrong way to pursue solar energy projects. – Kim Delfino

But the groups hope to work out an agreement with the project’s developer, K-Road Power, and BLM outside the courts if the developer is willing to move the project to less sensitive lands. The groups have pointed out that the project could work well on mostly private lands — including some degraded agricultural lands and former industrial sites, called brownfields, that are close to the current site, but outside of the sensitive Pisgah Valley.

The Calico project will use solar dishes like thisone and solar panels to capture sunlight and create electricity. (C) NERL

The California Energy Commission found that these alternative sites would be a good option for the project and would likely result in fewer impacts on wildlife and the environment. But BLM and the project developer at the time, Tessera Solar, rejected these locations.

Together, Defenders of Wildlife, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club have worked out agreements with developers to resolve concerns over four projects on public lands, resulting in the permitting of some 2,595 megawatts — nearly 90 percent of the solar energy to be built on BLM lands in California. Despite the groups’ strong track record of working with developers to reduce impacts on wildlife and natural resources, K-Road Power has been unwilling to consider a less environmentally damaging alternative.

“The area where the Calico project is currently planned is simply not appropriate for renewable energy development,” said Barb Boyle, Senior Representative for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.  “If built in this location, the Calico project will unnecessarily sacrifice important and irreplaceable wildlife, plants and habitat.  Especially when there are ample disturbed and/or degraded sites throughout California that are appropriate for renewable energy development, selecting this specific land for the project has created a preventable conflict between the project’s developers and Californians who want to preserve our state’s native wildlife and landscapes.  There is still time to get this right and we hope to work with K-Road Power to find an alternative location that has far fewer impacts on wildlife and desert ecosystems.”

Related: Read our letter to Interior Secretary Salazar.

DOI releases details of Wyoming shoot-on-sight wolf plan
Wolves to be targeted as unwanted predators for most of the year

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (August 3, 2011) – The U.S. Department of the Interior released more details today about its agreement with Wyoming on a wolf management plan that would allow wolves to be shot on sight across most of the state for most of the year. Under the plan, wolves would only have a reprieve in a small northwest corner of the state, but even there they could be hunted with a license.

The following is a statement from Suzanne Stone, Northern Rockies representative for Defenders of Wildlife:

“Allowing wolves to be shot on sight across the vast majority of Wyoming is completely unjustified. It was this attitude that led wolves to become endangered in the first place. Wolves are an essential part of healthy ecosystems in the region and should be treated as such.

“Moreover, granting wolves a reprieve in only a small part of the state could severely limit their natural dispersal to prime wolf habitat in surrounding areas. And sanctioning aerial gunning and the killing of pregnant females and newborn pups is not only a clear violation of fair-chase hunting ethics, but also a drastic and unwarranted step that could seriously harm the long-term viability of the population.

“Wyoming has settled on the indiscriminate shooting of wolves as the primary management tool in the state, which is a huge step backwards. Instead, the state should be working with all stakeholders to promote tolerance and prevent conflict by implementing nonlethal, proactive management tools.

“It seems that this is no better than a similar plan rejected by the Fish and Wildlife Service under the Bush administration. If it was no good then, it’s no good now.”

Background:

According to the details of Wyoming’s wolf plan, wolves will have year-round dual-classification: “trophy game” status in the northwest corner of the state where wolves can be hunted with a license, and “predator” status everywhere else where wolves can be shot on sight. The plan includes a restricted-kill zone that extends the trophy game boundary from mid-October through February when some wolves disperse into new areas. Yet any wolves that survive or attempt to establish a pack can be shot on sight again as soon as denning season starts. For the rest of the year, wolves will have “predator” status in this region and can be shot on sight. Wolves in the Trophy Game Management Area surrounding Yellowstone will also be subject to aerial gunning by the state in addition to wolf hunts.

The plan also requires that at least 100 wolves or 10 breeding pairs be maintained in Wyoming outside of Yellowstone National Park. But with a current population of 246 wolves outside the park, that means almost 150 wolves—nearly 60 percent—could be eliminated. Based on the latest population estimates (see USFWS 2010 Annual Report), there are 97 wolves within the boundaries of Yellowstone that will remain protected while they are in the park.

Read the USFWS’ press release

Learn more about Defenders’ Wolf Coexistence Partnership

Get the latest wolf news updates on Defenders’ blog