This year, the jaguar won a proposed 838,000 acres of protected critical habitat in the U.S. Southwest — including 11 mountain ranges in southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. There have been several confirmed sitings of the big cats return, finding their way back north despite the border wall with Mexico.
Check out this video of Randy Serraglio of the Center for Biological Diversity setting up wildlife cameras for the Center’s push for millions of more acres of protected habitat:
Cross Posted from Rabble.ca
Chief Theresa Spence is now on Day 13 of her hunger strike. Too weak to leave the teepee she is living in on Victoria Island, a mere stone’s throw from Parliament, she called for a round dance yesterday at 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa, Prime Minister Harper’s residence.
Throughout the duration of her hunger strike, Harper has maintained a chilly silence around the grassroots Indigenous movement now widely known as Idle No More, taking to Twitter instead to share his jokes about bacon with the Canadian electorate. What started as a string of emails between four Saskatchewan women back in November in protest of Bill C-45 eventually became a hashtag on social media, snowballing over time into a global movement for Indigenous rights.
Matt Stoecker – Beyond Searsville Dam, 650-380-2965
Steve Rothert – American Rivers, 530-277-0448.
Palo Alto — The National Marine Fisheries Service has launched an investigation into whether Stanford University’s operation of Searsville Dam is violating the Endangered Species Act by harming steelhead trout and other species threatened with extinction. The dam blocks steelhead from migrating to almost 20 miles of historically accessible habitat upstream, it dewaters Corte Madera Creek below the dam, degrades water quality and habitat downstream and causes other negative impacts that harm threatened species. Continue reading
Young buffalo bed down on a frosty winter’s day.
State, federal, and tribal governments — including Yellowstone National Park –are aiming to kill hundreds of wild buffalo this winter through hunting, slaughter, or both. The agencies state that they want to “even the sex ratio” and have placed a heavy target on female buffalo, wanting to kill at least 400 female buffalo.
Yellowstone National Park states that a “skewed sex ratio” has resulted from years of capture and slaughter operations, which have removed more bulls than cows from the population. In other words the government is saying they will slaughter more buffalo to mitigate the impact of slaughtering so many buffalo.
TAKE ACTION to stop Yellowstone’s plans to slaughter before it starts!
Click here to learn more about volunteering with Buffalo Field Campaign – join us on the front lines with the buffalo!
Silent march in Chiapas 12.21.12
The gray, the tempest that awaited them that day do not cease to be symbolic. The world is thus seen, felt these days, particularly the national reality. The return of the PRI to power (which is practically on the three levels in Chiapas), the labor and education reforms, the imminent threat of the dismantling of what remains of the ejido [commons](in the form of reforms to agrarian law presented by Calderón days before finishing his term), repression and criminalization of social protest with the PRI rearmed, and the deepening of the extractive model, read the open plunder of natural resources. So gray and stormy is the panorama. And in the middle of that night there appeared once again the Zapatistas.
In silence, in perfect order, they bore the rain, the cold, and the wind as if their very nature is to resist. They advanced in columns, the rivers of people, of balaclavas, and bandanas. On their passing, came out their sympathizers who have felt themselves called by Zapatism. There were also journalists and tourists as in ‘94. Many businesses closed their doors, such is shameless fear. But there were also those, the lesser in number, that greeted the contingents from the doors of their businesses. Continue reading
Anne Minard / Indian Country Today
Belinda Ayze, Navajo, of Flagstaff, Arizona, holds a protest sign during a rally on December 21 to oppose snowmaking with treated wastewater on the San Francisco Peaks.
Hardy activists braved single-digit temperatures in Flagstaff on December 21 to protest Arizona Snowbowl, the resort atop the sacred San Francisco Peaks that will soon blanket its slopes with snow made from reclaimed wastewater.
Tribal and environmental opponents of snowmaking toted signs with the slogans “Protect Sacred Sites, Defend Human Rights,” and “Danger: Shi*tBowl; Health Hazard” in front of Flagstaff City Hall, during an all-day protest meant to coincide with the kickoff of Snowbowl’s 75th ski season this week. It will be the first season during which the resort will spray the treated effluent on a site held sacred by 13 tribes.
“What needs to happen is the government needs to afford the same rights to Native Americans that everybody else in this country enjoys,” said Klee Benally, a long-time Navajo activist on behalf of the San Francisco Peaks. He believes the failure to protect the mountain is a violation of freedom of religion for people who consider it holy.
Protester Belinda Ayze, Navajo, said this issue is one in a series that activists in her family have been publicizing and protesting for generations. Continue reading
Tar Sands Blockaders have been organizing in Houston’s east end in the neighborhood of Manchester and something is brewing. There have been lockdowns, blockades, youth empowerment programs, free stores, hunger strikes (26 days and counting), and plenty of seeds of resistance sowed.
Follow this link to download a .pdf booklet with high resolution photos and learn all about how Tar Sands Blockaders are working to help amplify the voices of this Latino community which corporations like Valero are desperately trying to silence. The Valero refinery in this neighborhoods only park is one of the destinations of the toxic tar sands that will be carried through TransCanada’s Keystone XL Pipeline.
NO TAR SANDS IN MANCHESTER! KEYSTONE SPILLS, VALERO KILLS!
EF! DAM
Ecodefense