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Lead poisoning decimating endangered condors

Wildlife biologists have struggled mightily to save the California condor, the king of the vulture family, which was previously driven to extinction in Arizona (and to the brink in California).

There are only about 350 of the birds left alive, and only 150 in the wild. But those in the wild are being whittled away by hunter’s bullets — not directly, as in the past, but indirectly.

Lead poisoning is the leading cause of death for an experimental population of California condors re-introduced to the Grand Canyon, according to environmental lobbyists from the Sierra Club and the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council.

The condors,  ingest the lead as they scavenge animal carcasses left by hunters. The birds consume tiny fragments of lead, from bullets, along with the carrion. Then they get sick, and some die.

At last count, there are 63 of the magnificent birds left in Arizona, about a third of the entire wild population.

Eight condors were lost to lead poisoning between 2005 and 2006 — about 13 percent of Arizona’s total.

Conservationists have petitioned the Arizona Game and Fish Commission to amend state hunting regulations to require the use of non-lead ammunition.

“Lead is an extremely toxic substance that we have sensibly removed from most of our environment, including water pipes, gasoline, paint, and cooking utensils,” said Sandy Bahr, Chapter Director of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter, in a press release. “It only makes sense to remove it from ammunition too.”

It’s a big step, and no doubt the hunters will be up in arms. Non-lead ammo is a little more expensive. Currently, it’s a little hard to find. Other than that, it kills animals just as well, apparently.

California passed a similar law earlier this year, and the state seems to be doing fine.

Let’s get it done here.

John Collins Rudolf

(photo credit: Daniel Bianchetta, via Ventana Wildlife Society)

Report: one-fourth of world species face extinction

One-fourth of the world’s current species will be wiped out this century, according to this report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

Here’s my top ten list of threatened or endangered Arizona species:

1. lesser long-nosed bat
2. masked bobwhite
3. bald eagle
4. jaguar
5. Sinaloan japuarundi
6. Mexican spotted owl
7. Sonoran pronghorn
8. Cactus pygmy-owl
9. Sonoran tiger salamander
10. Hualapai Mexican vole

And a few that have shuffled off this mortal coil for good (extinct):

California condor
black-footed ferret
Colorado pikeminnow
Woundfin

And let’s not forget the Mexican gray wolf… previously extinct in the wild, by using captive breeding stock, this species was reintroduced to the wild in 1998.

At last count there were 56 wolves still hanging on in the Arizona-New Mexico wilderness.

John Collins Rudolf

(photo credit: Colin Burnett)

Solar, wind industries aided by federal bailout

Congress finally passed a key renewable energy bill late last week, extending tax credits for solar and wind power. It only took the near-collapse of the American financial system to make it happen.

The $700 billion federal bailout for Wall Street, to buy up toxic mortgage-backed securities, contains $17 billion for wind, solar and other renewable energy technologies.

Am I the only one, or is this completely ass-backwards?

Wall Street gets $700 billion, to throw into a toxic stewpot of bogus securities and incomprehensible derivatives that no one understands, even the folks who invented them. Wind, solar, hybrid cars and alternative fuels — which would create jobs, slow climate change, and reduce our dependence on oil — which most smart people realize is either peaking now, or will in the near future — receive one-fiftieth of that.

Go figure.

Still, the bill is a big shot in the arm for Arizona’s solar and wind industry, which has been struggling to take advantage of the Arizona Corporation Commission’s renewable energy standard.

The Commission mandate requires that the state’s utilities generate 15 percent of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources by 2025.

It’s an admirable goal, but shows you just how antiquated the state’s energy mix is. Right now, Arizona is 46th in the nation for renewable, non-hydroelectric power, with about 0.6 percent of its power from wind, solar and geothermal.

By comparison, Germany, the world leader in wind power generation, is close to 5 percent renewable energy. We’ve got a long way to go to catch up. And somehow, throwing stacks of cash at Wall Street and pennies — relatively speaking — at our climate and energy crisis doesn’t seem to be the answer.

John Collins Rudolf

State jobs picture grim, but mines are hiring

Want a job? You might want to consider working in an open-pit copper mine.

A new report by the Arizona Department of Commerce estimates that between 2008 and 2009, the state will lose about 50,000 jobs — almost 2 percent of its total non-farm employment.

One of the few bright spots — if you can call it that — is the natural resources and mining industries. They’re going like gangbusters, with a projected growth of 14 percent this year, and 7.1 percent the next.

The copper industry is even hotter, with employment up 25 percent this year, according to the Arizona Mining Association.

While that might sound like a lot of new jobs, it really isn’t: all told, the copper industry only employs about 10,000 people in the state. Nevertheless, since many of those 10,000 folks are operating really, really, really big shovels, trucks and other machines, they are tearing stuff up like never before.

John Collins Rudolf

Arizona scientists, companies turning algae into jet fuel

Arizona researchers and private companies are hot on the trail of the latest biofuel golden goose — turning giant vats of slimy green algae into a renewable, lower-emissions jet fuel.

Scottsdale-based PetroSun Inc. is building a vast algae farm on the Gulf Coast to use for biofuel production, with a portion of the property set aside for the production of “experimental jet fuel.”

Arizona State University’s research arm is also getting into the game, securing $3 million in funding to develop algae that can be turned into kerosene.

It all sound lovely, but if you’ve ever smelled a pool of algae, I doubt you’d want to be anywhere near one of these plants.

It’s been estimated that an algae pool the size of Maryland would provide enough bio-fuel to take care of the United States’ fuel requirements for a year. And to be honest, who really needs Maryland anyway?

Copper mine west of Tucson poised for restart

According to this Reuters story, yet another copper mine in Arizona is poised to go back into production.

Nord Resources Corp. is gearing up operations at the Johnson Camp Mine, about 65 miles west of Tucson, an open-pit heap-leach operation that closed in 2003 due to low copper prices.

Nord secured an air-quality permit from the Arizona Dept. of Environmental Quality last month that was the company’s last hurdle to clear before reopening the mine.

The company’s CEO told Reuters that the mine’s full production could reach 25 million pounds of copper by spring 2009.

With new mines popping up and old mines like Johnson Camp returning to production, it’s pretty clear that Arizona’s copper industry is hot. But with copper prices tied closely to global economic conditions, is the industry poised for a fall?

Only time will tell.

John Collins Rudolf

In memoriam, David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace, one of America’s best writers, was found dead, by suicide, earlier this month at the age of 46, in his home in California.

Wallace has Arizona ties: in 1987, he graduated from the University of Arizona with a master’s in fine arts degree, in my current hometown of Tucson (and not coincidentally, one of the characters in his magnum opus Infinite Jest is a kicker for the Arizona Cardinals and serial seducer of single moms).

In his memory, I’m posting an excerpt from a commencement speech he gave at Kenyon College in 2005. It’s not about the environment, per se, but I doubt anyone could hear it — or read it — and just continue happily along their merry, consumerist way.

Check out the whole thing here:

“Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.

They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”

Uranium exploration near Grand Canyon sparks battle with Bush administration

In the fight to protect the Grand Canyon from uranium mining and exploration, one battle is over, but another has just begun.

Last week, three environmental groups – the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and the Grand Canyon Trust – announced they had reached a settlement with VANE Minerals, a U.K.-based minerals exploration firm that had previously received approval from the Forest Service to drill 39 exploratory holes in search of uranium deposits in the Kaibab National Forest, which borders both the north and south rims of the Grand Canyon.

Essentially, VANE is back at square one. If they still want to drill some holes, they will have to go through much more rigorous environmental review than they had previously faced.

Thanks to an injunction by a federal judge back in April, “the writing was on the wall that they were going to lose the case,” says Taylor McKinnon, public lands program director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

With the settlement, VANE essentially folded a losing hand.

It’s a big victory, but the issue is far from settled.

“This has been our flagship battle for a much, much larger war,” McKinnon says.

That’s because if mining companies like VANE are willing to go to the time and expense, they very well may be able to gain approval for exploratory drilling in the future.

While exploratory drilling causes relatively little damage in comparison to, say, a large heap-leach uranium strip mine, environmental groups like the CBD are determined to stop any exploration near the Canyon.

That’s because under the 1872 Mining Law, the bedrock of federal mining legislation, once a recoverable mineral deposit has been found, it gains a whole host of new legal rights and protections and becomes very difficult – and expensive – to stop.

So, until Congress gets around to reforming the 1872 Mining Act – hell, it’s only been 136 years – stopping exploration is the only way to really nip a mining project in the bud.

A few members of Congress have now gotten into the act, seeking to withdraw a huge section of land near the Grand Canyon from mineral exploration – using an emergency declaration that last three years and that federal law says the Department of the Interior is compelled to respect.

The declaration was passed on June 25, 2008, but has been ignored by Interior, prompting a new lawsuit by environmentalists – filed Monday – seeking to compel Secretary Dick Kempthorne to stop approving exploration projects within the withdrawal area.

TZR founder Adam Klawonn has the skinny here.

To Taylor McKinnon, it’s a classic power struggle between the executive and the legislative.

“I think that the Bush Administration objects to the power afforded Congress over the executive branch in this case,” he says.

The Bush Administration in a power grab? That’s shocking. Just shocking.

John Collins Rudolf

“Green Jobs” on the way for AZ?

Everywhere you turn, politicians are touting “green jobs” as the savior of the economy and the planet. But are “green jobs” more than just a political catchphrase?

A new report by The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, seems to think so. The report estimates that an investment of $100 billion in renewable energy and other “green” economic sectors over two years would generate two million new jobs.

The report singles out six key sectors for investment:

* Retrofitting buildings to improve energy efficiency
* Expanding mass transit and freight rail
* Constructing smart electrical grid transmission systems
* Wind power
* Solar power
* Next-generation biofuels

If this sounds like a good plan and you live in the Phoenix metro area, you should stop by the Green Jobs Now rally this Sunday, the 28th. It’s being held at the Glendale Public Library main branch auditorium, at 5959 W. Brown St., from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. For more info, you can contact the Green Party of Maricopa County, which is sponsoring the event: (602) 417-0213, www.maricopagreens.org

Whether you worry about global warming or the fact that our country is bankrupting itself by buying increasingly expensive foreign oil, investment in mass transit and alternative energy cars are the only remedies that makes any sense.

For instance, am I the only one who thinks it’s insane that there’s still no train service from Tucson to Phoenix?

Arizona, with the most sunshine of any state in the union, also has huge untapped potential for solar (kind of a no-brainer, but still). Of course, it’s cheaper to burn coal, but do we need to wait for the polar ice caps to melt and turn Arizona into a coastal state before we cut down our carbon emissions?

JCR

Bank seeks $9.5M from Tucson condo project

TUCSON — A group of California investors intent on converting apartments into condominiums walked out on a $12.6 million loan and is keeping the rent from the units in the meantime, according to a recent complaint.

Texas-based Comerica Bank filed suit against Pantano Coastal LLC and its main principal, Ralph Giannella of La Jolla, Calif., who had received the loan to upgrade and convert 136 apartments near the corner of Broadway and Pantano roads.

It’s the latest sign of the Arizona real estate debacle, which has led to a record number of mechanic liens, loan defaults and foreclosures.

According to the 32-page complaint, Comerica agreed to loan Pantano Coastal money in March 2006. To secure repayment of the loan, Pantano pledged the entire property and its rents as colateral.

But as the real estate scene soured, so did the financial outlook for the condo-conversion project. The maturity date of the loan was extended 90 days until December 2007, and other parts of the deal were tweaked, according to the complaint.

But after the maturity date came and went, Pantano Coastal had yet to make a single payment on the loan, the complaint claims. Any missed payments were subject to a 5 percent charge.

Comerica claims the company also withheld rent monies at the time and did not pay almost $60,000 in property taxes that were due for the site. It is upset because this impairs the bank’s security for the loan.

By the Comerica’s math, Pantano Coastal now owes $9.5 million on the project. It is asking a federal judge in Tucson to rule against the company and foreclose on the property to bring it under bank control.

Phoenix lawyers Mark Nadeau and Allison Harvey are representing Comerica Bank.

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