Bears Ears: Leave it as it is

It was the first national monument to grow out of the thinking, study, support, and political power of Native American nations.

[On May 6, 1903, not a hundred feet from where I was standing at the canyon’s edge, Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech that environmentalists—a word yet to be invented—would come to deem as important as Churchill’s “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat” or Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. It was a perfect match of subject and stage. In the open air on the canyon’s ledge, the president declaimed on the miracle of nature he was trying to save. The five words the speech is most remembered for would become synonymous with the Grand Canyon, and become a touchstone for protecting other wild landscapes.

“Leave it as it is,” Roosevelt told the crowd. “You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all, should see….”]

REGINA LOPEZ-WHITESKUNK WAS A COUNCILWOMAN OF THE UTE MOUNTAIN UTE DURING THE CAMPAIGN TO ESTABLISH BEARS EARS NATIONAL MONUMENT. “WE KNEW WE WERE SPEAKING FOR NATIVE AMERICANS, BUT WHAT WE DIDN’T ANTICIPATE WAS BECOMING LEADERS FOR THE PEOPLE OF UTAH BEYOND THE TRIBES.” | PHOTO BY JUSTIN CLIFTON

Land Grab: Trump’s Campaign Against Bears Ears National Monument | Sierra

Desert Solitaire

[“Wilderness preservation, like a hundred other good causes, will be forgotten under the overwhelming pressure of a struggle for mere survival and sanity in a completely urbanized, completely industrialized, even more crowded environment,” Abbey warned. “For my own part I would rather take my chances in a thermonuclear war than live in such a world….

The arches themselves, strange, impressive, grotesque, form but a small and inessential part of the general beauty of this country. When we think of rock we usually think of stones, broken rock, buried under soil and plant life, but here all is exposed and naked, dominated by the monolithic formations of sandstone which stand above the surface of the ground and extend for miles, sometimes level, sometimes tilted or warped by pressures from below, carved by erosion and weathering into an intricate maze of glens, grottoes, fissures, passageways and deep narrow canyons….”

Outdoor recreation was Abbey’s rebellion against the decaying and overcrowded cities. In the 1980s, as a succession of Reagan-era appointees sought to weaken protection of federal lands, “Desert Solitaire” became a must-read for environmentalists and Abbey found himself speaking to crowds of hundreds, denouncing money-grubbers who willy-nilly looted the public domain. His death in 1989 silenced his outraged voice, but no one will ever be able to silence the power of “Desert Solitaire,” his wild-goat cry to leave it as it was. “A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original,” Abbey warned, “is cutting itself off from its origins.”]

 

We are All Connected

BLACKFOOT CONFEDERACY LEADERS CALL US GOVERNMENT GRIZZLY DE-LISTING AN ACT OF “CULTURAL GENOCIDE”

“The grizzly bear is central to some of our oldest and most sacred narratives, accounts that speak to the creation of constellations and the coming of sacred bundles. The circumstances do not exist that would make us, the stewards of this land, turn on our relative, the grizzly bear, to satisfy the US government, state game agencies, and affluent white trophy hunters,” Chief Yellow Old Woman impresses upon the Secretary.

“The grizzly bear has been significant to the Blackfoot people since the time of our Creation,” says Chief Stanley Grier of the Piikani Nation.

Chief Grier describes the grizzly as “a fundamental part of our existence,” and for that reason he categorizes the US government’s intent to delist the Great Bear and enable the states of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho to open trophy hunts on them as an act of cultural genocide.

Chief Charles Weasel Head of the Blood Tribe and Chief Yellow Old Woman “fully concur” with Chief Grier’s assessment.

“It is cultural genocide. I wouldn’t put it any other way,” agrees Blackfeet Councilwoman Cheryl Little Dog. “To delist and allow trophy hunting of the grizzly bear is the government again saying to our people, ‘Forget how sacred the grizzly bear is. Forget your sacred ways,’” she says.

The Blackfeet Nation is now in the eye of the grizzly delisting storm. Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suggest that the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) intended to target the Blackfeet Nation as the key to facilitating the delisting of the grizzly population in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE) if the government and states were again thwarted in Greater Yellowstone.

“The Region has the horses to focus on only one grizzly delisting effort at a time,” FWS Assistant Director, Gary Frazer, cautioned FWS Director Ashe in a communication dated 3/19/12. Frazer then advised Ashe that FWS grizzly coordinator Chris Servheen would take, “other necessary steps for delisting the bears in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem.”

Read the full report | NATIVE NEWS ONLINE

Animals That Became Extinct In The Last 100 Years

[In June 2015, a study published by experts from Stanford, Princeton and the University of California-Berkeley declared the world’s vertebrates are going extinct 114 times faster than the natural rate of extinction, according to the Huffington Post.

The researchers write that “these estimates reveal an exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity over the last few centuries, indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way.”

Last year, we published the following list of every animal that went extinct in the last century. Updating it today to highlight the most recent study and news that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service have declared the eastern cougar extinct. And we’re dangerouslyclose to losing 13 more animal species.

The number of extinct animals is difficult to calculate and always higher than the estimate. In some cases, a species is presumed extinct — none have been seen in years — but it’s yet to receive official extinction status by the IUCN. But the important thing to remember is that extinction is not a historical problem — it’s a contemporary issue.

In the article, take a look at every animal (except insects, which are extremely difficult to catalogue but which you can find here) that went extinct in just the last 100 years. The list is based on research provided by the Sixth Extinction, a website created to “enhance free public access to information about recently extinct species,” and in order of their approximate date of extinction. We’ve included all the animals confirmed extinct by the IUCN, and added a few more declared extinct by other credible individuals and organizations.]

Here is Every Single Animal that Have Become Extinct the Last 100 Years | PIXABLE

Running Wild… on so Many Fronts

http://runningwildfilm.com/