This article is posted here as supplemental background material. For discussion and more information visit watchpaul.blogspot.com.
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In a message dated 4/5/2007 3:24:24 PM Pacific Daylight Time, salzman@inreach.com writes:
From our friends at the NEC, in case you have not yet picked up your copy of Eco-News:
http://yournec.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=541&topic=37
ECONEWS: Shedding Light On Sunshine, Simpson, PacifiCorp
Thursday, April 05, 2007
by Greg King
A confluence of potentially unfortunate events is worth noting this spring, as the NEC develops and reinforces programs to protect habitat and rural communities on the North Coast. The following list is not exhaustive, but is representative of what’s at stake.
Let’s start with the Arkleys. The family that has made many generous contributions to North Coast life has all but negated the positive value of these efforts with a bullying agenda apparently aimed at making Humboldt and Orange counties indistinguishable.
Robin Arkley Jr.’s “Humboldt Sunshine” lawsuit against the county’s planning process is a bitter salvo on behalf of tract homes and strip malls, freeways and unchecked growth.
Humboldt Sunshine is most committed to unlimited profits for a quite limited few, at the expense of air and water quality, fish and wildlife habitat, a vibrant economy of scale and the uniqueness and rural character of our communities.
Guardians
The NEC is responding to these and other 20th century development plans by creating a “Sustainable Communities” program. Sustainable Communities will promote “slow growth” and “smart growth” developments, including clustered and live-work housing to protect open space and habitat; school and community gardens; alternative energy sources and conservation measures; and dedicated navigation routes for non-motorized transportation.
Just up the hill from the Arkley initiatives, Green Diamond Resource Co. (formerly Simpson Timber) is seeking an amendment to its 1992 Habitat Conservation Plan that would allow the company to kill eight pairs of spotted owls. This is in addition to the documented (and government-sanctioned) destruction by the company, since 1992, of at least 45 pairs of spotted owls on its 493,000 acres in Humboldt and Del Norte counties.
Last year Green Diamond also applied to federal agencies for a permit to kill protected salmon and steelhead. This proposal comes at a time when salmonids and spotted owls are in decline throughout the West. These are “indicator species” whose dwindling numbers tell us that our terrestrial and aquatic habitats are in peril.
As always, the NEC is tracking and commenting on requests by businesses to destroy habitat. Though litigation is always a last-resort measure, we will not hesitate to stand in the way of a plan that threatens to kill the last owls and salmon.
Up the Klamath River, where dam-removal represents the “no-brainer” of the century, PacifiCorp, owner of the four dams up for relicensing, is now setting the stage for keeping the dams in place.
A new PacifiCorp study, flying in the face of all other data, claims that it would be cheaper to build fish ladders than it would be to remove the dams. Even if the company’s numbers are correct (which is doubtful), the question arises: Cheaper for whom? Certainly not Klamath salmon that may be on the brink of extinction.
The NEC remains at the forefront of a massive conservation collaboration aimed at restoring spawning habitat by removing the Klamath dams. The meetings are endless, the paperwork measured in yards.
But the goal is extraordinary: the largest dam removal project in history, reclaiming hundreds of miles of wild river for the salmon and other species that now desperately need it.
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