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FOR THE 1.4 MILLION MEMBERS AND ONLINE ACTIVISTS OF THE NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL Fall 2013
Good News for Belugas In a crucial victory for the last beluga whales of Cook Inlet, Alaska, a federal judge has ruled in NRDC’s favor, saying that the Obama Administration violated the law by allowing Apache Alaska Corporation to use seismic airguns to survey the inlet for oil and gas. The blasts from the submerged airguns, which would sound 12 hours a day, can easily deafen or kill marine life and are especially dangerous to a population of whales that has plummeted from 1,300 to 312 in recent years. These same whales are threatened by the proposed Pebble Mine, which would put a port for oceangoing ships in the heart of their habitat.
Patagonia UndammedPlans to build a massive hydroelectric dam complex in Chile were dealt another major blow when leading presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet said the project
“should not go on.” It’s a key victory for NRDC and our local partners, who have been fighting the HidroAysén project for six years. The dams would destroy two of Patagonia’s wildest rivers and flood thousands of acres of
pristine forest critical to endangered wildlife. Bachelet has now joined the majority of candidates and Chileans in opposing the project and favoring a move toward more sustainable and energy-efficient alternatives. As political support for the dam continues to dwindle, we will continue waging what has become the longest environmental battle in Chilean history.
in the news
W ith the world at a critical juncture in the fight
to slow global warming, NRDC has launched
a new activism website that aims to help
end our own nation’s dependence on dirty fossil fuels.
DemandCleanPower.org is countering Big Oil’s propaganda
machine by streaming video messages from a range of
cultural luminaries, such as Robert Redford, Julia Louis-
Dreyfus, Van Jones and Carole King, while making it easy
for people to make their own voices heard against energy
devel opment that endangers our planet.
“Our Members know that NRDC is on the front lines when
it comes to fighting for a clean energy future, whether it’s
campaigning to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline
or preventing Shell from drilling in the Arctic or defending
communities from an onslaught of fracking,” says Frances
Beinecke, NRDC’s president. “Demand Clean Power
is allowing us to build a juggernaut of broader public
support as well.”
The new website is focusing its first wave of popular activism
against the climate-wrecking Keystone XL tar sands pipeline,
which President Obama could quash with a stroke of his
pen (see Campaign Update on next page). But as Van Jones
and others remind us, such planet-saving actions by our
leaders are likely only if millions of Americans stand up
Thanks to a landmark agreement, whales and other marine mammals in the Gulf of Mexico will finally receive protection from the devastating
impact of seismic airguns, which the oil and gas industry uses for offshore exploration. The milestone protections are the result of a settlement reached with the Obama Administration and industry in a federal lawsuit brought by NRDC and our allies.
For years the oil and gas industry has deployed airguns in the Gulf with virtually no restriction, subjecting threatened and endangered marine mammal species to a relentless assault of explosive noise that is destroying their ability to feed, mate and nurse their young — in short, to survive. “Throughout the northern Gulf, recent studies show that noise from airguns alone averages nearly 120 decibels throughout the year,” says Michael Jasny, director of NRDC’s Marine Mammal Protection Project. “The government says that just a single second of exposure to
noise at that level can cause harm, yet that’s what whales and dolphins in the Gulf are routinely having to suffer through.”
The toll of this industrial onslaught has been even more acute in the wake of BP’s catastrophic oil spill in 2010. Many of the Gulf’s marine mammal species, from bottle nose dolphins to endangered Bryde’s whales, are still struggling to recover. The new protections will immediately ban airgun blasting from biologically critical areas, such as important feeding and calving grounds, and will require industry to better monitor for marine mammal activity and to explore more environ mentally sensitive alternatives to airguns, even as the Obama Administration undertakes a compre hensive review of seismic exploration in the Gulf.
NRDC Wins New Protections for Marine Mammals in the Gulf
Pollution from a coal-fired power plant.
Bryde's whale.
Editor: Stephen Mills Writers: Jason Best, Shanti Menon Managing Editor: Liz Linke Designer: Dalton Design Director of Membership: Linda Lopez
All of the environmental projects and victories described in Nature’s Voice are made possible through the generous support of Members like you. If you like what you read, you are invited to make a special contribution at www.nrdc.org/joingive
Natural resources DefeNse couNcil40 W. 20th st., New York, NY 10011 www.nrdc.org/naturesvoice • 212-727-4500 email: [email protected]
SWiTCHBOARD The following entry first appeared online at: www.switchboard.nrdc.org
One Place Left AlonePosted by: Frances Beinecke, President, NRDC
We had already been rafting for several hours when we saw the wolf. I had expected to see wildlife during our trip through Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but the scene unfolding before us was a special treat. It started with the grizzly bear and her two cubs rooting around along the shore. They soon grew tired of the grass and lumbered into the water not far from our raft, letting the current carry them a few hundred feet. As we watched them climb out, we noticed half a dozen caribou grazing on the opposite shore, their tawny coats just beginning to shed their winter thickness. Right beside them stood the wolf. I wondered what his next move would be — lunging at the caribou or running from the grizzlies. Instead, he sauntered slowly through the hot sunshine, lay down in the grass, licked his paws and watched us float by.
I have seen many wild animals in my years of hiking and camping, but never had I seen so many so close. Then again, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge isn’t like most landscapes. It is a place of untamed abundance, from thundering caribou herds to towering mountain ranges to free-flowing rivers. But when we flew out of the refuge in a bush plane, we quickly realized just how close the oil industry is. Only 10 minutes into our flight, we could see the pipelines, road -ways, airstrips and drill pads of the massive oil fields connected to Prudhoe Bay. The oil giants have all this infra-structure next to the refuge; they can’t wait to cross the threshold. But just because drilling in the refuge might be convenient for the richest companies on earth doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice one of our last wild places.
For the entire length of my career, millions of citizens have stood strong
in defense of the Arctic Refuge when Big Oil clamored to invade it. Countless champions have devoted themselves to the task, from forester Robert Marshall to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas to NRDC Trustee Robert Redford. NRDC has been a leader in this effort, and we will continue the fight until the refuge is secure for future generations. They may never visit this spectacular place, and indeed, it doesn’t matter if they do. This isn’t a refuge to see; it is a refuge to keep. To save for wildlife, for stillness and for the very idea that humans can leave something alone.
Talk about an amazing turnaround: Where once many of the nation’s legendarily abundant fish stocks had been over fished to the point of collapse, today a
remarkable number have rebounded, thanks to fisheries
protections championed by NRDC. “The United States has
emerged as a global leader in rebuilding overfished stocks,
showing the world that it can be done,” says Brad Sewell,
an NRDC senior attorney.
It’s an environmental success story more than 15 years in the
making. For centuries, thriving fish stocks from the shores of
New England to the Pacific Northwest anchored robust ocean
eco systems and supported generations of fisher men. But by
the early 1990s, many of the nation’s most storied fish stocks
had been all but exhausted. In response, Congress passed the
Sustainable Fisheries Act in 1996, and NRDC has worked
hard to advocate for science-based recovery plans for dozens
of species under the act.
“In a couple of words: It’s working,” says Sewell. A recent NRDC investigation looked at 44 stocks that were previously overfished; 64 percent have returned to healthy levels or have made significant progress toward rebuilding, ranging from summer flounder and black sea bass off the Mid-Atlantic coast to Georges Bank haddock in New England to Pacific Ocean perch. Yet despite this astounding success, antiregulatory zealots in Congress continue their attack on these historic protections, even though a fully recovered, sustainable fishing industry in the United States promises an estimated $31 billion in economic benefits and 500,000 new jobs. Says Sewell, “We can’t afford to go back to the days of depleted
oceans and empty nets.”
Once in Crisis, U.S. Fish Stocks Make Dramatic Recovery
Early fall in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
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Black sea bass.
8
In their relentless quest for fuel, giant energy companies are
now clear-cutting southern forests, grinding up whole trees
into wood chips and pellets and burning them to produce
electricity. Adding insult to injury, they’re billing this
environmental disaster as “clean and renewable” energy.
“Burning trees for energy is worse than burning coal,” says
Debbie Hammel, head of NRDC’s Our Forests Aren’t Fuel
campaign. “It not only increases global warming pollution but
also destroys irreplaceable native forests.”
Until recently, burning plant material — called biomass —
to produce electricity was considered a renewable form
of energy, but the idea was to use treetops and branches.
Biomass energy was never meant to consume whole trees,
much less entire forests. Burning trees for electricity is a
widespread practice in Europe. Wood shipments from the
American South have been skyrocketing to feed European
power plants, led by the South’s largest wood-pellet manu-
facturer, Enviva. That region is now the world’s largest exporter
of wood pellets, with exports from southern ports growing 70
percent in the past year alone.
The demand for pellets continues to grow in Europe and
domestically. Two electric utilities — Virginia-based Dominion
Power and Britain’s Drax Group — are the primary players in
the push to burn southeastern forests for electricity. Dominion
and Drax buy millions of tons of wood from our southern
forests, and Enviva supplies them both. Drax now plans to
consume 7 million tons of wood annually; that’s equivalent
to burning a forest four times the size of Rhode Island. And
several major U.S. utilities are ramping up their plans for the
large-scale burning of trees. Dominion recently announced
it would convert three of its Virginia power plants from coal
to wood fuel. The growing demand for energy from trees could
prove disastrous for forests in the Southeast. The Wall Street
Journal recently exposed Enviva’s practice of clear-cutting in
sensitive wetland forests. Alarmingly, the company plans to
double its production of wood pellets in the coming years.
“Southern forests are already under stress from industrial
logging for wood and paper,” says Hammel. “The additional
pressure from the energy industry could be more than these
ecosystems can bear.”
New mapping data from NRDC and the Dogwood Alliance
show that less than one percent of the forest in the sourcing
area for Enviva’s flagship Ahoskie, North Carolina, pellet mill is
protected from destructive logging practices. This puts native
wetland forests, already in decline, right in Enviva’s crosshairs
as it seeks to ramp up pellet production. NRDC and other
groups are calling on Dominion, Drax and Enviva to stop using
whole trees and to pursue true renewables like solar, wind,
geothermal and agricultural waste.
Make your voice heard at: www.nrdc.org/saveforests
New Threat to Southeastern Forests: Burning Trees for Energy
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