Category: RT Newswire

USE ME! Essentially, this is a catch all for everything. This is probably the ONLY category where things that are not directly related to Rising Tide affiliates/allies should go. For example if a coal company goes out of business (and we didn’t directly cause it) it should probably only go here.

Land Management Changes Undermine Wildlife Conservation on Public Lands

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 18, 2008  2:35 PM

CONTACT: Center for Biological Diversity

Josh Pollock, Center for Native Ecosystems, (303) 546-0214
Megan Mueller, Center for Native Ecosystems, (303) 546-0214
Lisa Belenky, Center for Biological Diversity, (415) 385-5594

Land Management Changes Undermine Wildlife Conservation on Public Lands; Yet Another Round of ‘Midnight Regulations’ Strips Wildlife and Endangered Species Protection Out of Agency’s Guidance Manual

DENVER-December 18. In another example of last-minute changes issued on the way out of office, the Bush administration has released final changes to a key policy manual for management of endangered, threatened, and other special-status species found on federal lands that would eliminate important protections currently given to the most at-risk wildlife and plants.

Among the sweeping changes to the Bureau of Land Management Special Status Species Manual are new policy directives that undermine protections for endangered and threatened plants, limit efforts to protect those species officially awaiting protection under the Endangered Species Act, make it prohibitively difficult to protect sensitive species found in multiple states, and eliminate some protections for state-protected species found on federal lands.

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When Loss of Forest Cover Made the World Hotter

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” … physical evidence, backed by powerful
simulations on the world’s most advanced computer
climate models, is reshaping that view and
lending strong support to the radical idea that
human-induced climate change began not 200 years
ago, but thousands of years ago with the onset of
large-scale agriculture in Asia and extensive
deforestation in Europe.”

“No one disputes the large rate of increase in
greenhouse gases with the Industrial Revolution,”
Kutzbach notes. “The large-scale burning of coal
for industry has swamped everything else” in the
record.

“But looking farther back in time, using climatic
archives such as 850,000-year-old ice core
records from Antarctica, scientists are teasing
out evidence of past greenhouse gases in the form
of fossil air trapped in the ice. That ancient
air, say Vavrus and Kutzbach, contains the
unmistakable signature of increased levels of
atmospheric methane and carbon dioxide beginning
thousands of years before the industrial age.”
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The “Little Ice Age:” When Forests Cooled the World

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This is major…

ASW

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“They concluded that reforestation of agricultural lands-abandoned as the
population collapsed-pulled so much carbon out of the atmosphere that it
helped trigger a period of global cooling …”
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Stanford University News Service

News Release
December 17, 2008

Post-pandemic reforestation in New World helped
trigger Little Ice Age, Stanford researchers say

The power of viruses is well documented in human
history. Swarms of little viral Davids have
repeatedly laid low the great Goliaths of human
civilization, most famously in the devastating
pandemics that swept the New World during
European conquest and settlement.

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Broad Coalition Works to Halt Egregious Midnight Land Sale in Utah

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 17, 2008  3:21 PM

Broad Coalition Works to Halt Egregious Midnight Land Sale in Utah

CONTACT: Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
Erin Allweiss, 202-513-6254 or 202-277-8370 (cell)
Robert Redford, Members of Congress, and Broad Coalition Call on Administration to Halt Midnight Land Sale in Utah Environmental and Preservation Groups Take Legal Action against

WASHINGTON-December 17. Robert Redford joined members of Congress and a coalition of environmental, preservation and business groups to stop the Interior Department from auctioning Utah wilderness to oil and gas companies. Congressmen Baird (D-WA), Hinchey (D-NY), and Holt (D-NJ) are leading the charge on the Hill to stop the auction, which is scheduled to take place on December 19. At a press event today, the environmental and preservation groups–led by Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Southern Utah Wilderness Association, and Earthjustice–announced that they are taking legal action against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to halt the leasing of more than 110,000 acres of land near Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, Dinosaur National Monument, and Nine Mile Canyon.

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