PHOENIX, Arizona, March 14, 2008 (ENS) – The Center for Biological Diversity and Maricopa Audubon have won a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to continue Endangered Species Act protection for the desert nesting bald eagle, found mostly in Arizona.

The groups challenged the Service’s 2006 rejection of their October 6, 2004 petition to increase protection for the eagle and its habitat and challenged the agency’s nationwide effort to remove Endangered Species Act protection from all bald eagles.

On March 5, Federal District Judge Mary Murguia reversed the Service’s 2006 decision, calling it “arbitrary and capricious, and contrary to law.” She reinstated Endangered Species Act protection for the eagle and its habitat in Arizona and ordered the Fish and Wildlife Service to complete a reevaluation of its 2006 decision within nine months.

Only about 50 breeding pairs of desert nesting bald eagles survive. The groups assert that they are “reproductively, geographically, biologically, and behaviorally distinct from all other bald eagle populations” and occupy uniquely hot and dry habitat.

Unique populations and their habitat qualify for Endangered Species Act protection with a designation as a distinct population segment, DPS.

On October 6, 2004, the Center and Maricopa filed a petition requesting increased protection for the bald eagle in Arizona. The petition was based on evidence of increasing threats to habitat and presentation of data from a previously suppressed Arizona Game and Fish Department study demonstrating likely extinction of nesting bald eagles from Arizona within the next 57 and 82 years.

Increasing habitat threats represent the gravest risk to nesting eagles in Arizona mostly because of increasing groundwater pumping drying up streamside nesting habitat, the groups say. The Endangered Species Act is the only law that protects the habitat of imperiled wildlife.

On August 30, 2006, the Fish and Wildlife Service rejected the groups’ petition.

Desert nesting bald eagle in Arizona
(Photo by George Andrejko courtesy
Arizona Game and Fish Department)

On January 4, 2007, the Center and Maricopa Audubon filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the rejection of their petition. The Service responded on July 9, 2007 with nationwide removal of Endangered Species Act protection for bald eagles, including the desert nesting bald eagle in Arizona.

In her ruling, Judge Murguia quoted several Fish and Wildlife Service, FWS, officials who participated in a telephone conference call on July 18, 2006.

“During that call,” the judge wrote, “although Sarah Quamme, of the FWS’s Regional Office, stated that there was “no info[rmation] to refute [Plaintiffs' petition] at [the] 90 day stage,” FWS biologist Chris Nolan asserted that whether or not a population qualifies as a DPS is “largely a policy call.”

Nolan informed the participants on that telephone conference that Ben Tuggle, FWS southwest regional director and Ren Loenhoffer, FWS associate director in the Washington, D.C. Office “have reached a policy call and we need to support [it].”

Quamme then said that “the answer has to be that it’s not a DPS” … we “have marching orders.”

Doug Krofta, of the Washington, DC office, who was on the conference call said, “We’ve been given an answer, now we need to find an analysis that works.” He said, “Need to fit argument in as defensible a fashion as we can.”

Judge Murguia concluded, “These statements suggest that the FWS drew an irrational connection between the facts found and the choice made in the 90-day finding; they appear to exemplify an arbitrary and capricious agency action.”

She wrote, “…it appears that FWS participants in the July 18, 2006 conference call received ‘marching orders’ and were directed to find an analysis that fit with a negative 90-day finding on the DPS status of the desert bald eagle. These facts cause the Court to have no confidence in the objectivity of the agency’s decision making process in its August 30, 2006 90-day finding.”

Dr. Robin Silver, founder and board member of the Center for Biological Diversity and vice president of Maricopa Audubon, said, “Bush administration officials removed bald eagle habitat protection to benefit their developer friends who seek to divert stream flow critical for eagles.”

“This court victory has given Arizona’s desert nesting bald eagle a stay of execution,” he said. “We now have additional time to make protection for our bald eagle and its habitat permanent.”

The San Carlos Apache Tribe, Yavapai-Apache Nation, Tonto Apache Tribe, Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, and Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community all joined the lawsuit to help protect the desert nesting bald eagle.

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FRESNO, California, December 12, 2007 (ENS) – A federal district judge today upheld a 2002 California law that regulates the emission of greenhouse gases from the tailpipes of cars and trucks. The California emissions standard requires a 30 percent reduction in tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions by 2016. The reduction would be phased in gradually starting with model year 2009.

Sitting in Fresno, Judge Anthony Ishii ruled against an automobile industry challenge to the law brought by the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which includes most of the major car companies.

Judge Ishii rejected the automakers’ claim that U.S. foreign policy and federal fuel economy laws preempt state authority to curb emissions.

He also ruled that if California’s motor vehicle regulations are approved by by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, enforcement of the regulations will be consistent with federal law.

“This is the fourth major legal victory for California and a stinging rejection of the automobile industry’s legal challenge to greenhouse gas emissions standards,” said California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr.

“This court ruling leaves the Bush administration as the last remaining roadblock to California’s regulation of tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions,” Brown said.

On December 21, 2005 California submitted to the EPA a waiver request for the state’s Clean Car program which has been pending ever since.
Car exhaust contributes to global warming, smog and acid rain.

The EPA’s waiver of federal preemption under the Clean Air Act is the last step before the California regulation can be adopted not only in California but in 16 other states that have passed similar legislation.

Judge Ishii wrote, “Given the level of impairment of human health and welfare that current climate science indicates may occur if human-generated greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, it would be the very definition of folly if EPA were precluded from action.”

The EPA has granted such waiver requests some 53 times over the last 40 years and has never refused such a request.

Alliance chief executive Dave McCurdy said the organization is considering an appeal of Judge Ishii’s ruling.

“We can all agree that higher fuel economy is important, but the issue here was about federal fuel economy law,” said McCurdy today. “Under federal law, only the federal government can set fuel economy standards for all 50 states. We need a consistent national policy for fuel economy, and this nationwide policy cannot be written by a single state or group of states – only by the federal government.”

“In fact, the federal government has taken action, raising fuel economy standards for seven straight years,” he said. “Just in the last week, Congressional leaders have agreed on a new national fuel economy standard that will aggressively raise fuel economy standards for the next 12 years.

McCurdy said that automakers are acting on their own to curb emissions. “Automakers are now selling a range of fuel-efficient technologies, such as hybrids, diesel and cylinder deactivation that save gas and reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and autos with these technologies are now on sale on dealers’ lots,” he said.

Environmental groups were delighted with the ruling. “This is a huge win for clean air and a cooler planet. Judge Ishii’s opinion leaves no doubt that the EPA must act now to pave the way for the innovative clean car programs being advanced by California and 16 other states across the nation,” said Vickie Patton, senior attorney with Environmental Defense, a defendant-intervener in the case.

The public too is behind the California Clean Car law. About 98,000 comments were submitted in response to EPA’s request for comment on the waiver, and most were supportive of the waiver. Only one individual automobile manufacturer and some automobile trade associations submitted negative comments.

The Bush administration has said that it will issue a decision by the end of this month.

“EPA Administrator Steve Johnson should immediately grant California’s request to move ahead with this program,” said Environmental Defense President Fred Krupp. “All similar California air pollution requests have been approved. Not one has been turned down in EPA history.”

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