Alaska for Sale

According to the Alaska Wilderness League, several conservation groups have filed a lawsuit challenging the Forest Service’s plans to resume clear-cutting Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. At 5:30 p.m. on December 23rd the Bush administration sneakily announced a special exemption for the Tongass from the Roadless Rule which would open over 300,000 roadless acres to 50 logging projects affecting more than 2.5 million acres. The Forest Service loses up to $35 million per year providing roads in the rugged Tongass for logging companies.

The Tongass is our largest national forest, home to eagles, bears, wolves, salmon and other fish and wildlife. Over 450 hunting and fishing clubs have joined conservation groups in strong opposition to clear-cutting these roadless forests. The recreation industry creates over five times the number of jobs than the timber industry. Three major corporate users of wood products also oppose the exemption, noting there is so much wood on the market already that they don’t want or need this timber. But Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist, wants the Roadless Rule dismantled, and has suggested that state governors be given powers to remove protection from National Forests in their states.

The fight for Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) will heat up again, too. In 1980 President Jimmy Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, (ANILCA) extending protection to 103 million acres for new parks and wildlife refuges. In the fine print of the Lands Act, Section 1002 placed in limbo a coastal 1.5 million acres, a key part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Without that concession the Lands Act could not have passed. Not only “Big Oil” insisted on it, but 80% of the state budget would soon come from oil, and every Alaskan expected to be given about $2,000 annually, exempt from state taxes.

The huge Prudhoe Bay oil well complex lies west of the coastal plain. Oil from Prudhoe began flowing in 1977 through the 800-mile pipeline to Valdez. Prudhoe has almost 4,000 wells, 500 miles of gravel roads, and huge rectangular pits holding millions of tons of toxic drilling waste which nobody has figured out a way to get rid of. Oil spills occur constantly. Oil has brought conflict between the two native peoples, the Gwich’in who prefer their old subsistence culture, and the Inupiat who were persuaded to accept oil payments.

Why is the Coastal Plain so critical to Alaska’s birds and wildlife? The caribou come there to bear their young because they are safer from large predators and the winds discourage the voracious hoards of mosquitoes. The lichens and other vegetation contain exactly the nutrients needed by the lactating females and their young. Birds migrate here from Antarctica, New Zealand’s oceans, Africa, Southern South America, the U.S, Europe and China, mostly to make their nests on the ground and raise their young. They also find abundant insects and plants for their needs. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists 180 bird species, 36 land animals, 9 marine animals and 40 fish species that thrive in the region. Yet former Senator and now Alaska’s Governor Ted Stevens calls ANWR a “barren desert”. William H. Meadows, President of the Wilderness Society describes its Coastal Plain better: “It is a system of delicately balanced interdependence, where nothing is useless and nothing is wasted.” Jimmy Carter says, “To leave this extraordinary land alone would be the greatest gift we could pass on to future generations.”

Unfortunately David Brower was right when he warned, “Conservationists have to win again and again and again; the enemy only has to win once.”

Group Calendar

February 5: Conservation Committee will meet at Berge’s house, 1529 Crabapple Drive, Racine, at 7:00 p.m. Contact John at (262) 633-8455 for information.

February 6-7: Wisconsin Stewardship Network meeting in Stevens Point. See their website at www.wsn.org for details and reservation form or call John Berge at (262) 633-8455 for more information.

February 12: Southeast Gateway Group ExCom meeting, 7:00 p.m. at Messiah Lutheran Church, 3015 Pritchard Dr. Racine. All members are welcome.

February 19: Ronald Doetch from East Troy’s Michael Fields Agricultural Institute will speak about organic or biodynamic methods of farming. The Institute’s work focuses on farming using sustainable and resource-conserving practices. The Better Food, Better Behavior in Schools Project involving Natural Ovens and improved school menus is an example of their work. The meeting will be held at Messiah Lutheran Church on Durand and Pritchard in Racine at 7:00 p.m. Dinner prior to the meeting at the Olive Garden at 5:30 p.m. for those interested. The meeting is open to all members and the public.

February 21, 10:00 a.m.: Third Saturday Hike and Lunch at Big Foot Beach State Park in Lake Geneva on Hwy 120 just south of Hwy. 50. Depending on the weather, we will hike or cross-country ski/snowshoe in the park. Lunch at a local restaurant follows the hike. Meet at the parking area at the entrance to the park. A Wisconsin State Park Sticker, either annual or daily, is required for admission. Contact Dana Huck at (262) 639-0465 for more information.

March 1: Deadline for the April / May issue of the Southeast Sierran.

March 4: Conservation Committee will meet at Berge’s house, 1529 Crabapple Drive, Racine, at 7:00 p.m. Contact John at (262) 633-8455 for information.

March 11: Southeast Gateway Group ExCom meeting, 7:00 p.m. at Messiah Lutheran Church, 3015 Pritchard Dr. Racine. All members are welcome.

March 18: Mukwonago River Watershed. Eric Howe will present information about the Nature Conservancy's Lulu Lake Preserve and the surrounding watershed near Eagle, Wisconsin. Eric, a volunteer with TNC, will share the importance of the watershed, restoration work that volunteers are involved with, and photos. The 7:00 p.m. meeting will be held in the Daimler Chrysler Room at the Kenosha Public Museum, 5500 First Avenue in Kenosha. Meet for dinner at 5:30 p.m. prior to the meeting at Villa D’ Carlo at 5140 6th Avenue in Kenosha. The meeting is open to all members and the public.

March 20, 10:00 a.m.: Third Saturday Hike and Lunch at Bushnell County Park, 32100 Bushnell Rd., Burlington. This Racine County Park is on Hwy 142 south of Hwy. 11. We will hike, then lunch in Burlington. Meet at the first parking area inside the park. Contact Dana Huck at (262) 639-0465 for more information.

March 22, 7:00 p.m.: One Bird – Two Habitats. Bill Volkert will present this free program at the Kenosha Public Museum 5500 First Ave. See related article on page seven.

April 1, 7:00 p.m.: One Bird – Two Habitats. Bill Volkert will present this free program at the Golden Rondelle, 1525 Howe St. in Racine. Reservations are required, call (262) 2620-2154. See related article on page seven.


Group Officers Elected

Southeast Gateway Group officers for 2004 were elected at the January 8 ExCom meeting. Barry Thomas was elected Group Chair and Dennis Flath was elected Vice-Chair. Both are from Kenosha County. Nancy Hennessy was reelected Secretary and Jeffrey Sytsma was elected Treasurer. They are both Racine residents. Barry Thomas was also elected to serve as the Group’s Representative on the John Muir Chapter’s Executive Committee with Nancy Hennessy as Alternate Representative. The other members of the ExCom are John Berge, Roselyn McHugh and Gustav Hauser. Their positions and telephone numbers are listed on the back page of the newsletter.

The ExCom adopted a draft budget for the Group with projected income of $4,730 and projected expenses of $5,170 for a possible deficit of $440. A deficit of $203 was projected for the year 2003, but since committees usually do not spend all of their allotted budgets, the Group ended the year with a positive balance. The larger projected budget deficit this year will mean that we will all need to support our group with greater sales in our fund raising or more donations. The budget will be finalized after the Group’s Planning Meeting on January 17.

At the end of the meeting, the ExCom thanked Dian Sorenson for her service and leadership as Group Chair this past year. She did not choose to run for another term on the Executive Committee.

Hauser and Flath Named to ExCom

Two vacancies on the Southeast Gateway Group’s Executive Committee were filled on January 8 by the remaining members of the ExCom, following the procedure outlined in the Group Bylaws. Gustav (Gus) Hauser of Pleasant Prairie was elected to fill the two-year term resulting from the resignation of Robert Venn. Dennis Flath was elected to fill the final year of Richard Rodenbeck’s term. Dennis served on the ExCom for two years in 1992 and 1993. This is the first such service for Gus.

Robert Venn of Kenosha, who was on the ballot for election last year, had notified Dian Sorenson that he would not be able to serve on the ExCom because of other commitments. Richard Rodenbeck also of Kenosha, who has served as the Group Treasurer for the last year, submitted his resignation in December because the imminent take-over of the bank for which he works will require increased work and travel and possibly a transfer. The ExCom unanimously expressed their appreciation for his work as treasurer and thanked him for agreeing to complete the Group’s annual financial report to the John Muir Chapter and the Sierra Club.


From the (Outgoing) Chair…
by Dian Sorenson

We have a new Executive Committee (ExCom) to lead us through the coming year. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Frank Egerton, Vera Boone and Rich Rodenbeck for serving on the ExCom, donating their time and talents, and to wish them well. I am also leaving my post but will be around, attending monthly meetings and helping in other ways. You will be seeing or hearing from me from time to time. We need to insure protection for our wildlife and their habitats, for the air and water, and for our forests, parks and green spaces. It is a constant struggle, so keep up the good work. It’s our environment, let’s take care of it!


March 18 Program Notes…

March 18: Lulu Lake is located near East Troy, Wisconsin. It is an 86-acre kettle lake in the rich marshes of the upper Mukwonago River watershed. This watershed comprises one of Wisconsin’s highest quality natural areas. The Nature Conservancy owns 438 acres which include high quality streams and wetlands with oak openings. This provides habitat for rare fish, mussels and plants. Eric Howe, a volunteer with Nature Conservancy, will present information about animal, plant life and ecology of the area.

The Southeast Gateway Group Executive Committee for 2004:

It’s Time to Share…
by Dana Huck

…Time t o share your favorite places with the Group. As organizer of the Third Saturday Hike and Lunch, I’m always looking for interesting places. If you have a favorite hiking spot you would like to share, please give me a call at (262) 639-0465 or send me an email at dana_1 @ execpc.com. Of course, we hope you would join us to show us how special your favorite place is. Thanks.

Bush Push on NAFTA/CAFTA
by Lila Berge

Ten years ago the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) transferred power over environmental and worker safeguards from our government to multi-national corporations and global market forces. George Bush (the first) claimed last year that NAFTA had created two million jobs from 1993 to 2002. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), that ignores the jobs lost due to import growth. The United States actually experienced a net loss of 900,000 jobs during that time, most of them in manufacturing.

According to a press release by Daniel Seligman of the Sierra Club’s Responsible Trade Program, the United States was sued by a Canadian gold mining company to escape cleanup and reclamation of a California mine, and a U.S. toxic waste handler sued Mexico after a local community interfered with plans to dump industrial waste where it would poison their water supply. The Bush administration recently waived U.S. clean air standards in order to allow Mexican trucks to haul freight on our highways. Poor sanitation in Mexican farm fields caused food-borne illnesses from fruit and vegetables imported to this country to soar. The list goes on and on…NAFTA without universally high environmental and worker protections is a bad deal. Now the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) as negotiated by the Bush administration would require food-importing countries to accept “on faith” the standards of the exporting country…a new meaning to Bush’s “faith based initiative, according to Seligman. For years we have banned the use of several pesticides on our food crops, while selling the same pesticides to countries without such bans.

Does this make sense? Bon appétit.

Recycling Setback in Kenosha
by Barry Thomas

Kenoshans received a surprise when they opened their property tax bills in December. An enclosure informed them that the City of Kenosha would no longer be recycling glass. Citing reduced demand for recycled glass, city officials said they believed it would be more cost effective to landfill glass containers than to recycle them. Those wishing to continue recycling will be allowed to bring used glass containers to the recycling center themselves.

Since glass containers are banned from Wisconsin landfills, a Department of Natural Resources (DNR) waiver was required to allow Kenosha to dump glass. The DNR has apparently approved the change and views it as “an interesting pilot project”.

The DNR has calculated that at least 57 percent of glass containers are now being recycled in Wisconsin. They brag that Wisconsinites are throwing away less than Iowa and Minnesota for almost all materials banned from Wisconsin landfills. If other communities are allowed to replicate Kenosha’s “pilot program”, we will soon lose those bragging rights.

There are a number of things that should be considered before abandoning glass recycling. When glass is buried in landfill sites it will last forever and will not decompose like other waste. By recycling glass we are reducing the amount of waste that goes into landfills and reducing disposal costs. As landfill space disappears, tipping fees will increase.

Glass can be recycled over and over without any deterioration in quality and recycling glass requires 30 percent less energy than making it from all new materials. It saves energy because crushed glass melts at a lower temperature than the raw materials used to make glass. Recycling a glass jar saves enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for four hours.

There are other benefits to using recycled glass. When a glass bottle is recycled, 20 percent less air pollution and 50 percent less water pollution are produced than when a new glass bottle is made from original ingredients.

Recycling raises public awareness of waste management issues and can also create jobs. When Michigan created a bottle bill (a system designed to promote recycling), it led to a net increase of 4,500 new jobs.

If we factor in increased pollution, energy consumption and dumping costs then add to it the inconvenience, gasoline consumption and pollution related to individual recycling, are we really saving money?

If you are concerned that Kenosha’s “pilot project” could spread to your community, contact:
Cynthia Moore, Recycling Coordinator
Wisconsin DNR
P.O. Box 7921
Madison, WI 53707


Fluorescent Lamp Recycling

Starting with the February 19 general meeting of the Southeast Gateway Group, please bring your burnt out fluorescent bulbs to the meeting for recycling. Each bulb has mercury in it, which would be released into the environment if it were put out in the trash. With the compaction-type trucks used in most municipalities, the bulbs are probably broken before they leave your neighborhood.

Linear, compact and circular bulbs will be collected in a box and delivered by volunteers to Mercury Waste Solutions in Union Grove.

“This should be much more efficient and fuel saving than each of us making the trip with one or two bulbs. We will test out this idea in the next few meetings to see whether it is of assistance to our members and the environment,” said John Berge, Chair of the Conservation Committee. “It seems a logical interim step in our Household Hazardous Waste Campaign.”

Bird Conservation Education Project in Nicaragua

During the first two weeks of September, Bill Volkert and three others traveled to Nicaragua to conduct a workshop on neotropical migrant bird conservation education. This project was supported through a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The other members of the education team came from Wisconsin, Colorado and Colombia. Their objective was to conduct a week-long workshop to exchange information and train environmental educators to organize and conduct a series of workshops for various audiences in the country about the issues facing neotropical migrant birds.

The workshop was held just south of Granada on top of the Mombacho Volcano, where a reserve has been established. The reserve is where the workshop was held. This is a beautiful place covered in cloud forest and has a pleasant climate because it is located 4,200 feet above the rest of the land, which is hot and humid.

The Nicaraguan participants consisted of ten of their top ornithologists and environmental educators. The instructors included Susan Gilchrist of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and author of the One Bird – Two Habitats curriculum about neotropical migrant birds; Sue Bonfield, of the Partners in Flight project for neotropical migrant bird conservation; and Jorge Botero, researcher and educator from Colombia working on bird conservation in coffee plantations.

The workshop provided a forum for the exchange of information and educational programs related to bird conservation. During several days of working together, the Nicaraguans identified their priority audiences, important messages to communicate in their education programs and various means for conveying this information to the different audiences. They then developed the outlines and detailed agendas for six different workshops targeted at these audiences which they plan to conduct over the next several months in order to share their concerns and various conservation issues with the people of their own country.

In the end, all of our efforts to develop comprehensive conservation programs in the U.S. to protect our summer nesting songbirds will be to no avail unless the people in the tropics complement these efforts through sound land management and habitat protection programs. After all, our neotropical migrant birds spend more time in a year on their wintering grounds than in Wisconsin. Certainly, North America is important as being the nesting ground for these birds, but they only spend about four months here. The remainder of the time is spent in Central or South America with a few months needed to make the annual journey.
This experience provided all participants with a unique opportunity to share ideas and work with concerned scientists from across the hemisphere. Essentially, they have the same problems and challenges that we have here: that is, to use the land wisely while protecting essential habitat for the wildlife with which we share this planet.

Elementary students singing a song about their local birds and conservation concerns.	Donation of educational materials to the conservationists and teachers in Nicaragua.
Donation of binoculars and scopes to the scientists for conducting their research and bird education programs.	Sharing education activities with the Nicaraguan specialists that they can use in their schools.

For more information, contact Bill Volkert, Wildlife Educator / Naturalist, Horicon Service Center, N7725 Hwy. 28, Horicon, WI 53032, (920) 387-7877, william.volkert @ dnr.state.wi.us .


Administration Plans To Downsize The National Park Service
by Lila Berge

The Bush administration is moving forward on their controversial plan to replace up to 70% of the National Park Service (NPS) career employees with contract laborers. Of the 20,000 people who work for the NPS, seven out of ten jobs are potential targets for “outsourcing” including historians, archaeologists, museum curators, engineers, ranger speleogists (cave scientist/explorers), security rangers and maintenance/firemen crews with day laborers.

Unfortunately, the NPS falls under Gale Norton, appointed by Bush to head the Interior Department. Norton, a protegee of the infamous James Watt, is a strong advocate of privatization, as is OMB director Mitch Daniels who called the Park Service “the world’s largest lawn care service”. President Bush’s campaign pledge not to grow the federal government became impossible after 9/11 when federal agencies hired over 135,000 new full time civil service employees for homeland security jobs. The already underfunded NPS is a prime target for downsizing. A favorite ploy of Republican lawmakers is to tie funding to meeting a privatization target.

Nearly 60% of all persons working in our National Parks are already employees of the private companies that run the restaurants, service stations and hotels. The other 40% who wear NPS uniforms have decreased in numbers by 16% (permanent career rangers) and 24% (seasonal specialists) since 1980. At the same time, the number of visitors to the national parks and monuments has increased by 10 million. Park acreage grew from 77 million acres to 84.5 million acres, with 62 new units added.

The NPS operating budget is nearly 40% less than what is needed, according to the National Parks Conservation Association. Rocky Mountain National Park, an International Biosphere Reserve, with 3 million visitors annually, gets $3 per visitor per year. That has to keep up the roads and buildings, protect plants and wildlife as well as provide ranger-led educational programs. Acadia National Park is so underfunded that it lacks rangers to patrol fragile offshore seabird nesting islands. Century old museum quality artifacts sit in boxes awaiting cataloging and preservation work. There are no complete surveys of the rare or endangered plant species at many parks.

Many parks suffer from airborne pollution and noise from motorized thrill craft. Efforts to protect Yellowstone and other parks from off-roaders creating hundreds of miles of unauthorized trails were vetoed by Gale Norton. Rangers’ lives are often endangered when taking part in rescue attempts, fighting fires, and confronting vandals, poachers and other lawbreakers. Their jobs require not only un-usual dedication but specialized training and the knowledge gained by veteran NPS rangers. Would day laborers have the conservation ethic and people skills of NPS rangers? Would the parks and visitors suffer? Absolutely!