PLEASE READ:
ANOTHER BLUNDER IN THE MAKING!
THANK GOD FOR ECOLOGIST/BIOLOGIST AND AUTHOR,WRITER,AND FORMER BLM AGENT CRAIG DOWNER FOR POINTING OUT THE TRUTH AND WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THESE GREEDY AND POWER HUNGRY GOVERNMENT AGENCIES--THE TRUTH EXPOSED--GO GETT'EM CRAIG!
WERE BACKING YOU!
From: Craig Downer <ccdowner@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 2:34 PM
Subject: Fw: Clark, Lincoln & White Pine Counties Groundwater Development Project Draft EI
To: "nvprojects@blm.gov" <nvprojects@blm.gov>
Cc: Craig Downer <ccdowner@yahoo.com
August 14, 2011
Ms. Penny Woods, Project Manager
BLM Nevada State Office (NV-910-2)
P.O. Box 12,000
Reno, NV 89520-0006
Email: nvprojects@blm.gov
Re: Clark, Lincoln & White Pine Counties Groundwater Development Project Draft EIS
Dear Ms. Woods:
I have reviewed the above draft EIS and am very alarmed at the enormity of what is being proposed. The Southern Nevada Water Authority plans to drain vast areas of the southeastern and eastern Nevada desert as well as parts of Utah in order to import 57.6 billion gallons of water per year (176,656 acre feet/year). This is in order to fuel the rampant growth of the Las Vegas megalopolis, and the audacity of SNWA is proportional to its thoughtlessness! The proposed drainage of water would have a devastating effect on a vast and unique desert ecosystem and would cause water tables to recede by many feet. This would negatively affect all forms of plant and animal life, including many rare or threatened species such as endemic pupfish.
As well as affecting important traditional game animals such as black-tailed mule deer, pronghorn, bighorn, and elk, this water drainage project would have a very damaging effect upon the awe-inspiring wild horses and burros. As a wildlife ecologist and fourth generation Nevadan, I have observed, photographed, written about, and defended these wonderful presences throughout my life. They should be regarded as returned natives to North America, since the fossil record as well as genetic examination proves that they originated upon this continent and that when Europeans reintroduced them here they were in fact restoring the missing equid component to the life community.
North America is the true cradle of evolution for the entire horse family, Equidae, as all three extant branches (in addition to others now extinct) both originated and experienced their long-standing evolution right here, including Nevada. The horses and burros are a different type of herbivore; they are not ruminant, but rather post-gastric digesters. This makes them natural gardeners who fertilize the soils and spread intact seeds of a great variety of plants wherever they roam. This they do to a much greater degree than is the case with ruminant digesters, precisely because their post-gastric digestive system does not as thoroughly degrade their food as does the ruminant digestive system of cattle, deer, elk, bighorn and domestic sheep, etc. Also, wild horses and burros spread their grazing pressure over vaster areas, and these animals are capable of accessing remoter, steeper and rockier land than many ruminants, particularly domestic cattle and sheep. Also they do not camp on riparian, or stream/lake-side including meadow, habitats as do cattle, unless forced to do so by man’s fences, barricaded water sources, etc. These wonderful presences are restorers and healers of Nevada, yet they are being used as scapegoats for what is basically humans’ destructive doings, especially the overgrazing of livestock or the over promotion of big game species and the elimination of natural predators such as puma that goes along with our society’s overemphasis upon livestock and big game production. As builders of the humus content of soils through their feces, wild horses and burros make soils both more nutrient-rich and more water-retentive – and this has a major positive effect in enhancing the ecosystem and building up the “living sponge” watershed at all levels, low or high, in any given hydrographic basin. But we people must allow these animals to fill their respective niches. We must learn to value wild-horse-or-burro-containing ecosystems and let them realize their own internal harmony.
Such an ecosystem is a unique and special community of living beings and kinds that restores so much that is truly valuable here in Nevada as in our nation and world. As members of Homo sapiens, our challenge is to learn to live in harmony with this enhanced natural home. And we can start by finding within ourselves sufficient humility to objectively observe, read up about, and thus come to better understand the wild-horse-containing ecosystem. It is truly a God-send for our state as for the West in general, and I believe will prove key to restoring a wholesome way of life, leading us out of the destructive pitfalls of too much material indulgence and into a leaner but more spiritually awakened lifestyle and value system. The latter will heal and restore Nevada’s life community, mend its broken links, and avert it from its present blind and arrogant, “same-old, same-old” path to destruction.
As one who personally familiar with the potential for ecotours, believe me when I say that thoughtfully conceived, promoted, and realized ecotours to respectfully observe the returned native wild horses and burros together with all the other fascinating plants and animals of Nevada’s basins and ranges would prove itself to be an absolute powerhouse for positively transforming our society. I know there are literally thousands of people both here in the Silver State and in other states and nations who are dying to come see, listen to, and experience the wild horses and burros living as God intended in their natural freedom. These animals have done so much for mankind over not just centuries but thousands of years, but their truer place is realized when living free in the biodiverse world of Nature as they have for many millions of years past. Their ongoing life and unfoldment into the future is something awesome, indeed, of which to partake; and I highly recommend that you get yourselves in touch with Las Vegas’ vital organization America’s Wild Horse Advocates, which has members who could get wild horse and burro photo safaris, nature hikes, etc., going right away.
The lives of many wild horses and burros and their great draw for ecotourism would be terribly damaged by the proposed drainage of eastern Nevada’s water. This project would have a devastating impact upon the small remnant populations of wild horses and burros and the hundreds of other plant and animal species that go together with them. Many springs upon which these species depend would be adversely affected by the gigantic draw-down of the regional aquifer, and it is disingenuous on the part of those persons preparing this Draft Environmental Impact Statement to omit presenting maps and discussions revealing the Zero-to-Ten Feet groundwater draw-down this project would entail. This omission ignores the pervasive, large-scale, detrimental effect upon naturally living plants and animals in the region who would be deprived of at- or close-to-surface waters. Even a drawing of a few feet in a desert can drive many populations, marginally surviving subspecies, and even entire species to extinction. I know this draw-down of the regional aquifer would have a lethal effect on the scant remaining wild horses and burros here as well as hundreds of other species of interdependent animals and plants that form their natural community.
What would our already abused Nevada look like after this project? Take a trip to the Near or Middle East and you will see just what a barren and relatively lifeless wasteland a once healthy desert can become! And this devastating effect would not be just for Nevada but also for significant parts of Utah including at least five wild horse Herd Management Areas: Choke Cherry, Confusion, Conger, Kingtop and Sulfur, the latter of which contains a rare Spanish barb population stemming from the early Spanish explorers who came here in the 1600’s. Herds affected in Nevada would include many I have visited, including the twelve of the Caliente Complex, which though unfairly zeroed out by BLM Ely District in 2009, legally could and should be restored; the Eagle complex of HMAs, the Pancakes, and the Triple B Complex of HMAs, as well as Antelope East HMA. These contain remnants of the historic Shoshone herds and their further diminishment due to the major depriving of water by the Groundwater Development Project would strike at Nevada’s very soulful quality of life. With the draw-down being contemplated, there simply wouldn’t be enough water left for these herds, and the federal authorities would simply opt to zero them all out. As usual, it would be the horses and burros who would continue to be set up for elimination – those who offer the most for truly restoring the lands. This must not be allowed!
The affected areas of the Groundwater Development Project would encompass ca. 20,000 square miles, an area about the size of Vermont, would affect 35 hydrographic basins, five National Wildlife Refuges, four State Wildlife Areas, several State Parks and two National Parks including the Great Basin National Park. It would jeopardize 305 springs, 112 miles of streams, 8,000 acres of wetlands – the vital lifeblood of the desert and home to the majority of its biodiversity – and destroy 191,506 acres of shrub land wildlife habitat, including areas that are of vital survival value for the threatened Great Basin Sage Grouse, Desert Tortoise and Pygmy Rabbit. It would cause the regional water table to drop anywhere from ten to 200+ feet over two centuries and much more during the five ensuing centuries. It would have a parching effect on the Earth’s surface resulting in enormous quantities of dismal, pore-clogging dust particles and sand storms. The dust alone would increase by 34,742 tons per year. (For those wishing more information on these kinds of life-smothering effects, ask for me for my “Overgrazing Is By Mankind.”)
BLM officials must reject this ecologically insane proposal by SNWA by selecting the No Action Alternative and denying Rights of Way for the project. This they must do in fulfillment of their legal duty to protect the Public Trust.
Please extend DEIS comment period to 90 days as befits such a gargantuan proposal. Also please order a supplemental EIS addressing impacts from specific wells, disclose project costs, and assess the purpose and need for the project, for the latter has been seriously overlooked in the DEIS. You should delay your decision, because SNWA possesses no water rights, no well locations, and neither is there a shared water agreement that involves both Nevada and Utah, the two states that would be enormously affected by this project. I again emphasize that this DEIS has failed to sufficiently analyze the many adverse impacts by the project on wildlife including wild horses and burros and how this would impact our quality of life both in the short- and long-term. All species are related.
With Global Climate Change, or Warming, increasing, the DEIS must analyze how this project will exacerbate its effects. This DEIS notoriously fails to examine this life-threatening global process that has been brought on by humanity’s pollution of the atmosphere and for which we must ALL accept responsibility and respond accordingly.
The Clark, Lincoln, and White Pine Counties Groundwater Development Project is an arrogant, ignorant and backward-thinking proposal that represents an extreme of hubris and disregard for the living world of Nature, its processes and its future on Earth – and for the crucial changes that are now needed to prevent tragic catastrophe for all of life – not man apart. It is blind tradition at its worse! What is needed instead is a bold new proposal to curb humanity’s reckless addiction to unending expansion upon and exploitation of the Earth’s life community including it so-called inanimate foundation in all of the very rocks, mountains and waters, all of which are inter-tied. Obviously, more water conservation is absolutely essential for Our Common Future as is energy conservation and eating less highly on the food chain, meaning less animal products. Also I view adversely the promotion of massive solar energy projects upon our Public Lands both in the Great Basin and elsewhere in the West. Many of these operate on water evaporation and consume enormous quantities of water. Instead, photovoltaic panels should occupy our rooftops by the thousands not our precious Public Lands! The latter need to be restored to Nature. Also, this way the common individual and ordinary citizen will get a piece of the revenue pie for energy sales generated above his/her head on his/her vacant rooftop. Our decision here is a no-brainer!
What is so urgently needed today is a new direction based on a new value system, though ironically this newness involves going back to the basics of what sustains life and the common sense logic that will preserve life on our planet. And here we have much to learn from the natural lifestyle that was practiced for thousands of years by Native Americans, e.g the Paiute, the Shoshone … We need to develop a lifestyle that consumes less and expands less into the domain of Nature. We must redefine our notion of progress to mean a greater refinement of our lifestyle and value system that establishes a greater harmony with all the Rest of Life and a restoring of its indispensable freedom. And by this word “freedom,” I mean, not the liberty to destroy that far-righters have claimed but the liberty of each individual and its kind to realize their own unique and indispensable place in all of creation – and the mutual respect – yes, the charity, the true love – it takes to make this happen. May God help us all in honorably meeting this crucial challenge.
Sincerely yours,
Craig C. Downer, Wildlife Ecologist
President: Andean Tapir Fund (also dedicated to saving wild horses/burros in the wild)
P.O. Box 456, Minden, NV 89423-0456. T. 775-901-2094; email: ccdowner@yahoo.com
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