Accounts differ on what happened next. A third-party observer said that during strategy sessions among opponents of mountaintop removal mining, the Sierra Club and Earthjustice argued vigorously against pursuing the species angle.
Both groups for years have worked to build partnerships in Appalachia with local opponents of mountaintop removal mining, who the groups say are mostly concerned about the practice's damage to local land, water and public health.
According to the sources, the groups expressed fear that ongoing discussions about endangered species could hurt their cause by helping coal companies frame opponents of mountaintop removal mining as outsiders willing to sacrifice jobs in one of the country's poorest regions in order to protect mayflies and crayfish.
The alleged trade-off between economic well-being and environmentalism is already a talking point in the mountaintop removal debate. A bumper sticker currently making rounds in the region reads: "Save a Coal Miner, Kill a Tree Hugger."
Joan Mulhern of Earthjustice and Aaron Isherwood of the Sierra Club, attorneys who work on mountaintop removal for their groups, say the strategy discussions went differently. They said they do not oppose using the Endangered Species Act against mountaintop removal mining; they just choose not to use it themselves because they think it is neither the most effective strategy nor the one that resonates with the local groups they represent.
"If you talk to the people in the region about what mountaintop removal has done to the places where they grew up, the damage it has done to the people who live there now ... those are the things that they care about most," Mulhern said.
SELC's Murray said the same measures that safeguard Appalachia's species -- such as water pollution controls and forest protections -- are essential to protecting its people.
But Mulhern said mining companies are constantly seeking to turn that argument on its head. "If you look at the comments of the mining companies, they're trying to say that it's all about 'mayflies versus jobs,'" she said. "Whatever environmental groups say, mining companies will try to say the impacts of mountaintop removal aren't that significant. I think that they've been pretty unsuccessful in making that argument to anyone but themselves."
For now, the groups plan to continue pressing the Obama administration to deem mountaintop removal mining a violation of the Clean Water Act, said the Sierra Club's Isherwood. "I think we need to enforce the Endangered Species Act, but not every mountaintop removal mine is going to affect a threatened or endangered species," he said. "What we really need is for the Obama administration to enforce the Clean Water Act and end mountaintop removing mining."
Local environmentalists were dubious about the endangered species angle, but as more mountains are dynamited and the Obama administration deliberates, all options are still on the table, said Jim Sconyers, chairman of the West Virginia Sierra Club. He was not present at the strategy discussions where the debates allegedly took place.
"We would probably think you'd be barking up the wrong tree if you came over and wanted us to talk about endangered species," Sconyers said. "But who knows? Maybe someday we will."
Reprinted from Greenwire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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12 Comments
Add CommentOne clarification regarding the new salamander species; while the species was described recently, the actual discovery occurred in spring 2007.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The initial discovery came in spring 2007 near Toccoa, Ga., when Peterman and Milanovich stumbled across it while collecting another species of salamander in Stephens County."
http://www.ovpr.uga.edu/news/article/20090708-salamander/
Coal mining is one of the most damaging process our environment is subject to for very little gain. Acid leaching of ores in ground ore bodies is worse. When used to generate electricity the best power plants in the world can only convert 28% of coals energy to electricity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMining coal destroys aquifers, kills of billions of creatures, (both macro and micro life forms) vitally important for the ongoing existence of current life on our planet, and deplete our vegetative cover that reduces CO2 to sugars.
Its not just the endangered species that matter, if that was so lets have a cull of homo sapiens, not endangered in the short term, but definitely facing extinction in the medium term from overpopulation that is destroying its habitat.
Correction:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAcid leaching of ores in ground ore bodies is worse.
Read as:
Acid leaching of in ground ore bodies is worse.
I just don't know how I could get by without that new species of salamander. Better shut all the coal mining down.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, my guess is that the environmentalists haven't gone after the coal mining because they haven't had any good candidates to use as their endandered species. Well now they do thanks to this salamander.
Before any action to stop coal mining is going to find traction, there has to be a viable alternative energy source in place.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we stop mining coal in the US they will just buy it from a foreign country, such as China, without the rigorous safety and environmental standards and practices in place within the US.
I've had enough of this "green" talk. It's been a millstone to the US economy for far too long. Let's first get this country back on its feet. Once this is accomplished, we can go back to wasting our time "tree hugging."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo all those advocating coal mining to jump start the economy:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIgnorance is bliss (a la the recent Bush administration)
until you realize that the US economy is from the stone age and is so stubborn in its high opinion of itself relative to other nations that it refuses to alter its infrastructure for fear of "falling behind". Have you not taken an economics class? Do you not understand the concept of how present investment leads to future growth, whereas we have a lack of investment in green technology and our future production possibilities will be severely stunted?
Keep drilling and digging-- maybe one day you'll realize you're living in a hole with nothing but human debris. It's not about a single salamander, it's about not being a selfish and above all misinformed citizen.
We conservatives understand the concept that protecting endangered sub-species is as brutal and cruel a form of class warfare that has ever been perpetrated in the United States of America.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet's start with the famous "Northern Spotted Owl" which cost 50,000 good-paying jobs here in Washington and Oregon. It was when this controversy broke out that I learned that the Endangered Species Act of 1972 was not about "species" at all in the way that the public was lead to believe when the act sailed through Congress. The law was written so sloppily that it soon came to protect sub-species: furthermore the definition of what a sub-species might be is so nebulous that basically the law now amounts to jobs-for-life for wildlife biologists all of whom will have permanent sinecures within the EPA making well into six-figure salaries.
The historic sensible definition of a species was : " Those creatures who can interbreed with each other and produce offspring that can breed." The so-called endangered "Northern" and "Mexican" Spotted Owls, for instance, could interbreed with each other or with common Spotted Owls and were never, therefore, endangered.
The characteristics used to designate the "Northern" Spotted Owls were nebulous and transitory local variations that typically almost all species of anything display. For that reason even federal government attempts to save the Northern Spotted Owl have been fruitless despite the sacrifice of 50,000 good jobs for working class people. The cute little Spotted Owls are still disappearing from old growth forests for reasons that no one understands, but most probably related to competition from larger Horned Owls that find the protected forests attractive as well. Little Spotted Owls have been spotted nesting in suburban parking lots to get away from the bullies in the forest.
A sub-species of humans is now disappearing, the pygmy tribes of Africa. Better food sources, interbreeding with taller people, for whatever reason, pygmies are disappearing.
The epicenter of the human cost of educated cosmopolitan people whimsically chosing to make sub-species into their long-range pets was the town of Forks, Washington. Today Forks has a mini-boom going being the folk center of a popular series of human vampire books and movies. Almost all the jobs created by this are low-paying and will soon fade away when the pop-culture phenomenon does.
The people of Forks suffered a catastrophic hit on the value of their homes and businesses which has made Rush Limbaugh into a hero.
The US economy had plenty of unregulated growth in the 1800 and first half of the 1900. The result was much poisoned rivers , lakes, and land that we have been paying to clean up for the last 50 years. Look at the state of China now that has been following a similar path of growth that ignores the costs of ignoring the environment. It is much cheaper and healthier to grow cleanly from the beginning.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCorrect. We are being duped into beliving our government represents our best intrest, our even the people. Our politicians represent those who paid for them to get in office. A corporations bottom line is the dollar, not the American people. As long as we continue with the present system of the way we elect officials we will have government coruption. Anyone who thinks corporations give politicians vast sums of money without seeking compensation for the money given is very naive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs long as we keep the current system of electing government officials in place the American people will be kept in the dark as the bottom line is not the truth, but the dollar. We've became a race unable to analyze facts by way of logic and reason. We believe what we're told. We believe they represent us because they tell us they do. We believe what they say because they tell us what a good guy or gal they are.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs it any wonder we have so few great scientists and mathmaticians coming from our schools. Big money don't want a poor or middle class that can reason for themselves. "Coal's good." " Oil's good"." It has nothing to do with the fact they paid for my campaign. Honest...I'm a Christian and I stand for American values." If you question them your un-American. Your a liberal. Your a tree hugger. Hey I'd rather be a caring humanitarian who actually acts like Jesus would want if you went by His Teachings, then one who has been duped by the system into believing there are no clean energy alternatives, and we don't coincide with what makes oil and coal money money because they line our pockets, we do it because we care about you...honest..."I'm a Christian who stands for America's core values"..."could I lie?" "Honest it has nothing to do with the fact that they want no one else to cut into their market because their bottom line would suffer. " "Sure they gave me millions fof my campaign, but could a company whose bottom line has always been the dollar really want something in return for their investment?" "Of course not, they're doing it because they really care about the American people." "And you record checkers are just being un-American, I voted the way I did because I love you, it was just a coincidence that the same people who paid for my campaign reaped huge profits from the laws I helped to change. "
I really cannot figure out how we evolved to a race with less logic and reasoning skills then the first hominid that started their own fire.
We need to stop the fake wars which support the military industrial complex and give a college education to every American who should want one. Let those who should call it socialized education or communism give their kids the jobs that were taking away from the illegals, who were the only ones working them. Let them hold on to the minimum wage which cannot support anyones livelyhood very well at much above the poverty level.
Sad. Sad. Sad.
Anybody who thinks America was ruined during its development is very naive. Any fool can exaggerate a claim that a river or lake or plot of land is "poisoned" because anything can be a poison. It is all a matter of degree, of how much. If you livein the vicinity of Mt. Shasta in California you get to breathe airborne asbestos, courtesy of the windswept mountain ridges.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow much? More than the government would allow, were Mt. Shasta a corporation. It is not much cheaper and healthier to grow cheanly from the beginning and China understands that. If you are so much a hypochondriac that you worry about every trace of anything in your food, go ahead and by the purests organic food you want and drink bottled water all day. It will cost you dearly because herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers all do vital functions in the production of food and if they didn't farmers wouldn't pay for or use them.
The worst thing about organic food snobbism is that it is making a lot of avowedly green farmers into liars, because when they have a money crop in the ground and the bank note is due, but a certain type of problem is appearing that only a chemical can cure, then the farmer will cheat on the organic designation and do what he or she has to do.
Even a lot of conservatives anymore have become snobs who insist upon non-genetically modified seeds in their survival kits. That little bit of stupidity could starve them someday. A genetically modified wheat plant that resists rust ( a plant disease) or is hardier in a really short growing system could make the difference between your family having enough flour to bake bread or starving to death while you eat your shoes or chew on tree roots.
China will clean up all its worst enviro mistakes when it gets rich enough to do so. It will ignore those contaminations that are over-hyped or which nature is cleaning up itself adequately. They understand the deep validity of the statement that the answer to pollution is dilution.