A lawsuit has been filed over the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision not to provide wolverines with Endangered Species Act protection/USFWS
Whether climate change is adversely impacting wolverines, something the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service believes is uncertain, is being challenged by a coalition of conservation groups that is suing the agency to provide Endangered Species Act protection to the small carnivores.
Earlier this year Noreen Walsh, director of the agency's Mountain-Prairie Region, which includes Wyoming and Montana, decided there wasn't enough evidence to demonstrate climate change was adversely affecting the species, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times. That development led other biologists outside Fish and Wildlife to speculate that politics, not science, had forced that decision.
On Monday eight conservation groups announced they would challenge that decision in court.
Back in February 2013 the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to list the wolverine as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act after the agency's biologists concluded global warming was reducing the deep spring snowpack pregnant females require for denning.
But, according to the conservation groups, "after state wildlife managers in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming objected, arguing that computer models about climate change impact are too uncertain to justify the proposed listing," Ms. Walsh ordered her agency to withdraw the listing. The reversal came despite confirmation by a panel of outside experts that deep snow is crucial to the ability of wolverines to reproduce successfully, the groups said.
'The wolverine is a famously tough creature that doesn't back down from anything, but even the wolverine can't overcome a changing climate by itself,' said Earthjustice attorney Adrienne Maxwell in a release. 'To survive, the wolverine needs the protections that only the Endangered Species Act can provide.'
The groups behind the lawsuit are the Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Northwest, Friends of the Clearwater, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Idaho Conservation League, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, and Rocky Mountain Wild.
Wolverines have been spotted in Denali National Park, Yosemite National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Glacier National Park, and North Cascades National Park, among others. It's difficult to say just how many wolverines are wandering around the parks. Their extensive travels, sneaky scavenger-like maneuvering, and solo dwelling make it difficult for researchers to closely monitor their patterns.
In their lawsuit (attached), the groups maintain that "the best available scientific information" predicts that snowfields that wolverines rely upon will shrink by nearly a third by 2045 due to climate warming, and by more than 60 percent by 2085.
"This threat of habitat loss associated with climate change is compounded by other threats facing the wolverine population in the lower-48 states, including highly isolated and fragmented habitat, extremely low population numbers, recreational wolverine trapping in Montana and incidental trapping elsewhere, and disturbance from winter recreation activities that has been demonstrated to disrupt wolverine reproductive denning," the lawsuit states.
Against this data, the lawsuit added, "FWS did not identify any new scientific information that cast doubt on the previous conclusions of the agency's own expert biologists. Nor did FWS identify any existing scientific information that the agency's biologists had overlooked. Instead, FWS attempted to apply a new interpretation of the existing scientific record in an effort to justify a refusal to afford the wolverine any protections under the ESA. In so doing, FWS disregarded the best available scientific information and the recommendations of its own scientists, made numerous analytical errors, and ultimately violated the ESA."
At the Center for Biological Diversity, endangered species director Noah Greenwald said Ms. Walsh's decision is "yet another unfortunate example of politics entering into what should be a purely scientific decision. All of the science and the agency's own scientists say the wolverine is severely endangered by loss of spring snowpack caused by climate change, yet the agency denied protection anyway.'
"The best available science shows climate change will significantly reduce available wolverine habitat over the next century, and imperil the species,' said Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance's Siva Sundaresan. 'As an agency responsible for protecting our wildlife, FWS should not ignore science and should make their decisions based on facts and data.'
"One of the most important things that we can do to get wolverines on the road to recovery in the face of a warming climate is to get them back on the ground in mountain ranges where they once lived,' said Megan Mueller, senior conservation biologist with Rocky Mountain Wild. 'We are disappointed by the Service's decision not to list wolverines under the Endangered Species Act as protections would have helped to facilitate such efforts in Colorado and beyond.'
'The remote, rugged, and snowy North Cascades are ideal wolverine habitat,' said Dave Werntz, Science and Conservation Director with Conservation Northwest. 'Protection under the Endangered Species Act will help wolverine survive a warming climate, shrinking snowpack, and increasingly fragmented habitat.'
Comments
So tell me muddy, which of those "tens of thousands" (LOL) predicted no warming over the last 17 years?
I know that 97% of climate scientists agree that man has helped create the global climate changes.
I know that in the hundred or so years of using internal combustion engines that the use of fossil fuel, the population, and the growth of polluting industries have all grown exponentially, and the resulting cumulative effect on the environment is self-evident. I know that I live in Alaska and see the changes all around me. I know second and third generation subsistence hunters and fishermen who have described dramatic changes of foliage, weather, and animals within their lifetimes; changes dramatically out of scale for their previously normal ebb and flow of life. I've seen trees and telephone poles leaning sideways because the permafrost under them has been melting. When your life is a continual amassing of anecdotal evidence, I know that it doesn't add up to much in a jab versus jab debate online, but then I also know that that jab versus jab has diddly-squat to do with the real world.
At this point I simply have to believe that climate change deniers are either willfully complicit, or simply ignorant and easily led. Which are which is also fairly easily self-evident.
The whole of the world has accepted the validity of the science and moved to act accordingly. A handful of idealogues terrified of the political repurcussions don't make facts cease to exist. I'm not wasting my time beating a dead horse. You can continue your crusade to argue that 1+1=3, but it means literally nothing to the world. You may as well be chasing chemtrails with vinegar-soaked rags to save humanity from the mind-altering chemicals that are part of a government plot to subjugate the public. To the overwhelming majority of humanity, you're a fruitcake.
The 97% of climate scientists agree on AGW has been debunked. Another NASA fib. You have to wonder why some people are so gullible and intulectually dishonest. Your being lied to, shown the evidence of the lies, and yet you still "believe". No wonder this country is in such a mess.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230348030457957846281...
Who, pray tell, is behind this horrible conspiracy?
Unfortunately, these fruitloops hijack these threads and never allow intelligent thought to be discussed. It always devolves into a beachdump. I guarantee Beachdump has never even seen a wolverines habitat, so he knows little about wolverines or their habitat or what is going on with it. It's pathetic how threads get out of whack by these people. It's already evident that the wolverines habitat is being altered and diminished, so they are going to have to adapt quite a bit to survive. I lived next to the Sawtooth National recreational area, one of the wolverines remaining habitats, and while there seems to be a stable population of them in that place, most of their habitat is being altered by an accelerating and warming climate. What used to be permanent snowfields in high elevation alpine meadows and crags, rarely contain snow throughout the season anymore. While there were a few years where snow hung on well into July those are now the exception to the rule, and no longer the norm.
Muddy, I'll take your response as "none". None of those 10s of thousands (LOL again) of peer reveiwed studies predicted the current 17 year lull in warming. Why do you continue to swallow hook line and sinker these "studies" that have proven to be so wrong?
And for those that think this thread has been hijacked, it is only because you don't want to face the reality. The essense of the article is whether there is evidence that global warming is threatening the habitat. Discussing the myth is hardly off topic.
Exactly.
ec said, " It is a favorite trick of those for whom the facts have turned hostile to select words out of context and completely change their meaning."
I say, "Yeah, so why do you keep doing it?"