Defenders of Wildlife v. Jewell, No. 14-5284 (D.C. Cir. 2016)

Appellants filed suit challenging the Service's withdrawal of its 2010 proposal to list the dunes sagebrush lizard, whose habitat is in New Mexico and Texas, as endangered. Between the time the Service proposed listing the lizard and the time it decided to withdraw that proposal, the Service received updated information about the conservation efforts in the two States and by the Bureau of Land Management in New Mexico. Based on this information, the Service concluded that “current and future threats are not of sufficient imminence, intensity, or magnitude to indicate that the . . . lizard is in danger of extinction (endangered), or likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future (threatened), throughout all or a significant portion of its range.” The court concluded that appellants failed to show the Service did not rationally apply its policy in evaluating the Texas plan inasmuch as the Service’s factual conclusions are supported by substantial evidence in the record. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. Download PDF

Downstream From a Slippery EPA

Downstream From a Slippery EPA In the aftermath of the Gold King spill, the agency is holding itself to a lower standard than polluters. Ryan Flynn, New Mexico’s secretary of environment. The bright yellow water that gushed from Colorado’s Gold King mine and into the Animas River last summer has dissipated, but the environmental disaster continues downstream. An estimated 880,000 pounds of lead and other metals poured out of the Gold King in August when the Environmental Protection Agency fumbled a construction project and blew out the mine’s plug. This water raced down the Animas River in mountainous Colorado, and then meandered gradually through my state of New Mexico, the territory of the Navajo Nation and Utah, before dumping into Lake Powell. Geography is important here: The slower the flow, the more that heavy metals drop out of the water and into the riverbed. From the start, the EPA bungled its response to the spill. The first call alerting New Mexico that contaminated water was on its way didn’t even come from the agency. The water-quality manager of the Southern Ute Tribe, who live in Colorado right on the border with New Mexico, contacted my department with a warning on Aug. 6. The New Mexico Environment Department quickly dispatched technical staff to take advance water samples, to establish a water-quality baseline. The Animas River is much more than a kayaking spot or a fishing hole for New Mexicans. The drinking water of eight communities—about 90,000 people—is drawn directly from the river, which also sustains crops and livestock, and supports thousands of people’s livelihoods. After failing to alert New Mexico promptly, the EPA to a large extent left the states and tribes downstream to fend for themselves. No one from the EPA’s regional office in Dallas showed up in New Mexico for nearly a week, by which time the plume had passed. New Mexico’s representative to the EPA’s Incident Command Center in Colorado reported that she was shut out of closed-door meetings where decisions were made. When EPA staff did finally arrive in New Mexico on Aug. 9, they were rotated out of the state every few days. This led to redundant briefings and inconsistent execution. One EPA communications officer arrived in New Mexico with no capability to text, email or dispatch photos from the field. As the spill wound its way downstream, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy repeatedly went on camera to say that the agency would hold itself to a “higher standard.” Instead it engaged in a careful campaign of minimization and misdirection. About two weeks after the spill, the EPA released an environmental standard for the Gold King mine sediment that was an order of magnitude weaker than those applied to other polluters. The agency used a “recreational” standard and suggested that lead in the soil at 20,000 parts per million would be “safe” for campers and hikers. But in New Mexico people live along the Animas, so a “residential” standard would be more appropriate. During a cleanup of a superfund site in Dallas, in the regional EPA office’s own backyard, the standard for lead in the soil was 500 parts per million. The EPA released a chart that seemed to show lead levels in the Animas to be near zero. But the chart used a linear, instead of a logarithmic, scale. As any high-school science student can tell you, a linear scale can visually compress data and make it appear close to the zero line. In reality the lead levels had screamed past maximum contaminant levels for drinking water, defined as 15 parts per million. We advised communities that drew from the river to close their water intakes and rely on emergency backup supplies, which they did. Even months later, although the yellow water has passed, the EPA’s data show that storms have disturbed contaminated sediment and pushed lead levels back above the tolerance for safe drinking water. The city of Farmington (pop. 45,000) still shuts its water intakes whenever storms or snowmelt increase water turbulence. Yet the EPA persisted in claiming that the watershed had returned to “pre-spill” conditions. Such subterfuge made our job of educating the public on the consequences of the spill much more difficult. It seems clear to me that the EPA sacrificed truth on the altar of image management. Today, New Mexico and Utah continue to work on a comprehensive long-term plan to monitor the Gold King spill’s effects on health, wildlife and agriculture. We have invited the EPA and the state of Colorado many times to join the effort. Both have refused, preferring to pursue a narrow, short-term plan that ignores critical issues such as damage to wildlife and groundwater. As Utah’s assistant director of water monitoring said at the beginning of February, the levels of contamination seen so far could be “the tip of the iceberg.” Citizens who depend on the Animas River for their drinking water, crops and livelihoods deserve better. They deserve answers from the EPA, as they would expect from any other polluter. Under Gov. Susana Martinez’s direction, the New Mexico Environment Department is vigilantly monitoring the water to ensure that lead and other heavy metals from the Gold King mine do not find their way into crops, wildlife, livestock or humans. We urge the EPA and Colorado to wake up, drop the charade of minimizing the disaster, and join us. Mr. Flynn is New Mexico’s secretary of environment.

Feds to introduce more wolves this summer

Written by Benjamin Fisher on March 1, 2016 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service provided an update on the controversial Mexican Gray Wolf Recovery Program to attendees at the sixth annual Natural History of the Gila Symposium — an update that told a story of poor genetic diversity and a small drop in numbers. The agency’s representative also revealed plans for more wolf reintroductions into the Gila National Forest in coming months. The recovery program has seen fair progress in recent years, with the population growing steadily to more than 100 wolves in Arizona and New Mexico. But with several deaths reported in the annual population survey — including two after being hit by tranquilizers during the survey itself — the species saw a decline this year to 97 documented specimens. According to changes made to the recovery plan in 2014, the FWS plans to reintroduce several more captive-raised specimens into the wild this year. The changes to the plan expand the possible reintroduction areas to anywhere between Interstate 40 and the U.S./Mexico border in Arizona and New Mexico. That, of course, includes the Gila National Forest here in Grant County. The wolf recovery program has seen major opposition from several demographics since its inception in the late 1970s. The ranching and herding communities especially have long claimed the reintroduction and recovery of the Mexican gray wolf is an attack on their livelihood, and have decried the program as potentially dangerous. These groups were predictably upset by the expansion of the reintroduction area. But the plan goes on. Recovery Plan Field Team Leader Kent Laudon said at the symposium that the expansion and planned releases are necessary for the wolf’s survival as a species. “You can’t just keep putting wolves on top of wolves,” he said. “At some point they have to spread out.” The reintroductions will also help broaden the genetic diversity of the wolves, which is understandably low since they all derive from the same seven original wolves. “They’re like a bunch of brothers and sisters running around,” Laudon said. “We have to keep inserting more genetically interesting wolves to help with that diversity.” No specific dates have been set for the reintroductions this summer because some of the wolves set for release are pups that haven’t been born yet. This fostering approach to reintroduction has only been attempted once with Mexican gray wolves and was not a huge success. Laudon expressed optimism for the plan, however, saying it is based on a program from the Appalachian Mountain region involving red wolves that worked well. In any case, the pups will have to be released shortly after their birth so it is anyone’s guess when they will arrive. Laudon also spoke to the prickly relationship between the wolves and the ranching community. He said that most of the problems between wolves and cows or sheep could be avoided with the alteration of the unique and long-practiced ranching methods in the region. He said the type of year-round grazing done on the public lands here is “done almost nowhere else,” and causes more interaction between livestock and predators. “Wolves here are in and among livestock all the time,” Laudon said. “Sometimes they screw up.” Opponents to the recovery plan aren’t restricted to private-sector ranchers, though. The FWS also recently bumped heads with the New Mexico State Game Commission, which denied their permit to release wolves within the state. Since FWS is a federal agency, it turns out their request for the state’s permission was actually just polite. “We actually don’t need their permit,” Laudon said. “But we have internal protocols to try and work with state agencies when we can. We basically had to say thanks but no thanks and go ahead.” As usually occurs at any presentation about the recovery plan, a member of the audience at the symposium asked Laudon about rumors of coyote hybridization within the population. Laudon claimed, however, that there have been no known cases among Mexican gray wolves. Benjamin Fisher may be reached at ben@scdailypress.com.

NMSU Master Gardener program names new state coordinator

NMSU Master Gardener program names new state coordinator DATE: 03/01/2016 WRITER: Jane Moorman, 505-249-0527, jmoorman@nmsu.edu CONTACT: Kelly White, 505-865-7340, lkelly@nmsu.edu Kelly White’s love of gardening and her skills as a program coordinator and teacher are being called upon in her new role with the New Mexico Master Gardener program. White joined New Mexico State University’s Cooperative Extension Service in November as the statewide coordinator of the 15-county Master Gardener programs. She will assist county agricultural agents in providing uniform curriculum to the volunteer Master Gardeners. Master Gardeners help the county agricultural agent to meet the high demand for urban horticulture and gardening advice. “In 1995, I took the Master Gardener training and served as a volunteer in Bernalillo County for six years,” White said. “It was personally gratifying to learn the scientific aspect of horticulture, and then work with people who loved their plants, but didn’t know why there were health issues with the plants.” White has a wide array of professional experience from being a high school teacher to coordinating a train-the-trainer program for an international non-profit organization. She will draw on her knowledge of designing curriculum to standardize the Master Gardener training. “Each county’s Master Gardener program has different training and volunteering requirements,” said Natalie Goldberg, Extension Plant Science department head, who oversees the program. “Kelly has been given the task of developing consistency across the state.” “There are wonderful Master Gardener programs in the individual counties and they are all a little different,” said White. “Standardizing the requirements will allow a person moving from one county to another to be able to continue their volunteering without the need for additional training.” Besides providing horticulture advice through a hotline telephone service, each county Master Gardener program has service projects they do in their communities. “The local groups are doing some very exciting projects,” said White. “I want to establish a way the individual groups can share their project ideas with other counties.” - 30 - Follow NMSU News on Twitter: http://twitter.com/nmsunews Follow NMSU News on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NMSUNews

Grant funding available to expand New Mexico agriculture

Grant funding available to expand New Mexico agriculture NMDA hosts related workshops March 18 and 22 (LAS CRUCES, N.M.) – The New Mexico Department of Agriculture (NMDA) is inviting New Mexicans involved in agricultural production to apply for funding through one of two grant programs. Both programs aim to develop new markets and/or expand existing ones for agricultural products grown in New Mexico, but the programs differ in their respective details. The first is called the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program (Specialty Crops), which is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). NMDA serves as the fiscal agent for New Mexico’s share of the federal funding. “Chile, onions, pecans, honey, greenhouse/nursery crops, lavender – they’re all examples of specialty crops, which means marketing and promotion projects built around them could be considered for this federal funding,” said Felicia Frost, the NMDA marketing specialist who administers New Mexico’s share of the federal funds. USDA’s definition and list of eligible specialty crops is at 1.usa.gov/18wggxV. The deadline to apply for funding through the Specialty Crops program is 5 p.m. MST on April 20. Funding is expected to become available on October 1. Under Specialty Crops, project length varies from one to three years. The second program is called New Mexico Agricultural Development and Promotion Funds Program (ADPFP). Unlike the Specialty Crops program, ADPFP places no restrictions on the type of agricultural commodity that can benefit. The deadline to apply for funding through the ADPFP is 5 p.m. MST on April 29. Funding is expected to become available July 1. Under ADPFP, project length cannot exceed one year. For both grant programs, Frost said projects are given greater consideration when they have what it takes to succeed beyond the life of the grant – in other words, if they make good business sense in the long term. Both programs prohibit the use of grant funds to purchase land, buildings, equipment, or any other type of capital improvement. Also under both programs, funds are paid on a reimbursement basis – meaning they’re released only after the grantee has submitted a progress report, as well as an invoice and corresponding receipts. The same project cannot be funded through both programs. Frost and other NMDA staff are hosting two free workshops for potential applicants to understand the two grant programs and how to apply for them: • Santa Fe: March 18 from 1 to 3 p.m., Hotel Santa Fe (meeting room TBD), 1501 Paseo de Peralta • Las Cruces: March 22 from 1 to 3 p.m., NMDA (Main Conference Room), 3190 South Espina Street For more information on either grant program, as well as the workshops, please visit www.nmda.nmsu.edu or call 575 646-4929. ### Confidentiality Notice: New Mexico has a very broad public records law. Most written communications to or from state employees are public records. Your e-mail communications may therefore be subject to public disclosure. This e-mail, including all attachments is for the sole use of the intended recipients. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited unless specifically provided under the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act. Confidentiality Notice: New Mexico has a very broad public records law. Most written communications to or from state employees are public records. Your e-mail communications may therefore be subject to public disclosure. This e-mail, including all attachments is for the sole use of the intended recipients. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited unless specifically provided under the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act.

USDA Announces Commodity Credit Corporation Lending Rates for March 2016

USDA Announces Commodity Credit Corporation Lending Rates for March 2016 03/01/2016 10:00 AM EST WASHINGTON, March 1, 2016 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) today announced interest rates for March 2016. The CCC borrowing rate-based charge for March is 0.500 percent, down from 0.625 percent in February.

EPA Moves to Cancel the Insecticide Flubendiamide (also know as Belt by Bayer)

EPA Moves to Cancel the Insecticide Flubendiamide Products cause risk to aquatic animals and environments – manufacturers fail to comply with the terms of the registration WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is issuing a notice of intent to cancel all Bayer CropScience, LP and Nichino America, Inc., flubendiamide products that pose a risk to aquatic invertebrates that are important to the health of aquatic environments. Required studies showed flubendiamide breaks down into a more highly toxic material that is harmful to species that are an important part of aquatic food chains, especially for fish, and is persistent in the environment. EPA concluded that continued use of the product would result in unreasonable adverse effects on the environment. EPA requested a voluntary cancellation in accordance with the conditions of the original registration. EPA had issued a time-limited registration to the companies with conditions that were understood and agreed upon. If unreasonable adverse effects on the environment were found by EPA, the companies would submit a request for voluntary cancellation of all flubendiamide registrations within one week of EPA notification. After being informed of the EPA’s finding on January 29, 2016, the companies were asked to submit a request for voluntary cancellation by Friday, February 5, 2016. They rejected EPA’s request to submit a voluntary cancellation. Subsequently, EPA initiated cancellation of all currently registered flubendiamide products for the manufacturers’ failure to comply with the terms of the registration. Flubendiamide is registered for use on over 200 crops, including soybeans, almonds, tobacco, peanuts, cotton, lettuce, alfalfa, tomatoes, watermelon, and bell peppers, with some crops having as many as 6 applications per year. Crops that have been properly treated with flubendiamide or that may be treated with existing stocks can still be sold legally. Provisions on handling existing stocks of the pesticide will be finalized once the products have been cancelled. To view a copy of the Notice of Intent to Cancel and all supporting documents: https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/flubendiamide-notice-intent-cancel-and-other-supporting The registrants or adversely affected parties have 30 days from the date of the Notice to request a hearing. Details on how to request a hearing are contained within the Notice of Intent to Cancel. R35