WildEarth Guardians
 | A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. (May 2010) |
WildEarth Guardians is a non-profit environmental organization, founded in 1989, with offices in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Denver, Colorado, Phoenix, Arizona, and Tucson, Arizona. The organization's approach to conservation features a combination of scientific analysis, strategic litigation to enforce existing environmental laws, and efforts to reform public policies. WildEarth Guardians was founded by Sam Hitt and its current Executive Director is John Horning.
Mission statement
"WildEarth Guardians works to protect and restore wildlife, wild places and wild rivers in the American West."[1]
Programs
Climate and Energy
The goal of the Climate and Energy program is reform that prioritizes energy efficiency and conservation, phases out fossil fuels, and embraces environmentally appropriate clean power sources. WildEarth Guardians activities are focused toward meeting the goal of returning to 350 parts per million. They are committed to a 10% reduction in greenhouse gases every year through incentives, policy reforms favoring distributed electricity generation, an emphasis on conservation and efficiency, a move to sustainable communities, and promoting responsible renewable energy development. Using litigation, science, public outreach and organizing, the media, and lobbying, they are making progress. Together, these campaigns represent WildEarth Guardians’ unique “cover all bases” approach to tackling the climate crisis here in the American West.[2]
Wildlife
WildEarth Guardians works to protect the vast spectrum of native species because they have an inherent right to exist. The American West hosts a dazzling array of native wildlife and plants, from the mighty black bear and grey wolf, to tiny caddisflies, springsnails, and irises. The diversity of life in the region is a product of varied topography and a multitude of ecological niches that these native species call home. WildEarth Guardians, like most people, value wildlife, wild lands, and naturally functioning systems. They work to preserve that tapestry, rather than let it unravel. A cornerstone of WildEarth Guardian's Wildlife Program is advocacy for endangered animals and plants. The best way to pull them back from the brink is to obtain their formal listing under the Endangered Species Act. Listing species under this law is a top priority because this law is so effective at preventing extinction but the majority of imperiled species in the United States are not yet listed under it. WildEarth Guardians also work to protect and restore native carnivores in their native home. Their mountain lion project has resulted in the states of Colorado, Montana, and New Mexico adopting hunter education programs designed to protect breeding females and their dependent kittens. The centerpiece of their work to confront wildlife persecution is their campaign to End the Federal War on Wildlife. They aim to abolish the euphemistically named “Wildlife Services,” a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that annually kills millions of animals each year, using a macabre toolkit of weapons. They work to reform backwards policies and practices, whether perpetrated by the federal Wildlife Services or those allowed by state wildlife agencies beholden to special interests. At the local level, WildEarth Guardians promote living with wildlife rather than intolerance against the wildlife species that live in our midst.[3]
Wild Places
There are more than 300 million acres of public lands in the 17 western states and the goal of WildEarth Guardian's Wild Places Program is to prevent their capture and destruction by private, extractive interests. WildEarth Guardian's vision is vast, protected, wild landscapes interconnected by corridors that are free from the unmitigated impacts of human activity and teeming with the diversity of life. They employ an array of strategies to implement this vision, including public education, legislative reform, restoration, federal and state litigation and economic incentives. They believe the public lands face serious threats from development of oil and gas, logging, domestic livestock grazing, and off-highway vehicle use among other activities and misguided policies. While advocating to end these activities that threaten to destroy our public lands, WildEarth Guardians also work to ensure that these lands remain biologically intact and ecologically functional by actively restoring previously damaged lands, waters and ecosystems. These projects heal landscapes damaged by unsustainable resource extraction, while providing new economic opportunities to forest-based communities. [4]
Wild Rivers
Streams and rivers in the American West are one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America. Despite their central role in the economic, cultural and spiritual well-being of our communities, rivers in the American West continue to be threatened by a legacy of dam and levee building, water diversions by agricultural and municipal interests, ground water pumping, livestock grazing, urban development and other uses. WildEarth Guardians prioritizes the protection of rivers, large and small, because they are essential to life as we know it. They envision free-flowing rivers with sufficient flows of high enough water quality to sustain native fish and wildlife and healthy native streamside vegetation. WildEarth Guardians employ a diverse set of strategies to implement their vision, including federal and state litigation, lobbying, restoration, and economic incentives. The priority of their policy reform efforts is focused on the West’s iconic Great River - the Rio Grande - and her tributaries. WildEarth Guardians has been working since 1996 to protect the Rio Grande and has succeeded in changing numerous policies and practices. Also since 1996, when they became the first conservation organization in the West to acquire a lease of state school trust lands for the purpose of conservation, they’ve acquired many leases and started new restoration projects with cities, counties, and private landowners. The native vegetation they plant jump-starts the restoration process, restoring healthy stream banks, purifying and cooling waters and providing important habitat for fish and wildlife.
Notes
External links
- WildEarth Guardians Home Page
- Newspaper Article about a lawsuit Forest Guardians filed with Sinapu to prevent recreational trapping.[dead link]
- PDF of the filed complaint in the lawsuit with Sinapu against recreational trapping.
- Newspaper Article about a lawsuit Forest Guardians was involved with fighting for the protection of the Gunnison's Prairie Dog
- Newspaper Article about a lawsuit that Forest Guardians filed against the US Forest Service for jeopardizing the endangered Mexican spotted owl through poor grazing management.
- www.fguardians.org about a petition that Nicole issued to get 475 threatened south west species onto the Endangered Species Act
- New Mexico Biomass for a critical perspective on the Forest Guardians stance on alternative energy and wildfires.