New Cook Islands Shark Sanctuary proposed

Activists in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific are proposing a huge new shark sanctuary in the face of fishing pressures and the continued massive drop in shark numbers over the last decade worldwide. The Pacific Islands Conservation Initiative, or PICI, is working with local fishery authorities to craft the Cook Islands Shark Sanctuary to extend over the Cook Islands Exclusive Economic Zone, which covers almost 2 million square kilometers of ocean.

“It’s pretty exciting to see this idea start to unfold and to see the community get behind it, and to actually feel like we might accomplish something of measurable impact,” says Jessica Cramp, program manager at PICI, interviewed by phone from the Cook Islands.

PICI is a small operation, started by Steve Lyon, who owns Pacific Divers, a dive shop in Rorotonga. He is also president of the Tourism Industry Council there. Cramp is the only other volunteer so far, and has been involved for seven months.

Of the 18 known species of sharks in the Cook Islands, Cramp says, 15 appear on a “red list” put out by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, or the IUCN. That list is a widely recognized measure of species’ vulnerability to extinction, scaled from “least concern” to “extinct.” Five of the shark species in the Cook Islands are listed as being “vulnerable” or “endangered.”

The cause, of course, is soup. Sharks all over the world are finned in ever-greater numbers to feed a massive market for shark fins in Asia. A 2000 study by Shelley Clarke and other researchers estimated, after a program to genetically ID fins for years, that the fins of 38 million sharks were traded through the main Hong Kong fin market every year. It was noted that that estimate could range as low as 26 million or as high as 73 million.

Not only do large-scale fishing operations long-line specifically for sharks, but sharks are a very common by-catch in other fisheries, such as tuna, and the valuable fins are often used to pay the crew on those boats. The crew, then, have plenty of incentive to kill as many sharks as possible and not to return them to the water alive.

Until recently, the Cook Islands saw relatively little of this, and their biodiversity is quite good. However, the island nation recently signed an agreement with Chinese fishing interests that will soon begin to work in its waters, and this has PICI and others rushing to try to make the shark sanctuary a reality.

The nations of Palau, the Maldives, Tokelau, the Bahamas, Honduras and the Marshall Islands have already set aside shark refuges.

“Research studies have shown that the population of sharks have declined,” Cramp said. “Their biological characteristics make them unable to keep up with the fishing practices that are happening right now. They’re late to mature, slow growers and have very few pups -- they usually have about 6 to 10 pups, sometimes every two years.”

PICI has met with the prime minister and hopes to help write the sanctuary law with the Ministry of Marine Resources, and then to also put forward a separate Shark Act, to give the ministry two different laws that can be used to prosecute illegal shark fishing. Several shark-fishing regulations are already common on commercial boats, but the laws are easily skirted. Cramp says that, because of abuses, many organizations now are pushing for a zero-take, no-fin policy that bans the practice altogether.


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Top photo: Gray reef shark in the waters off the Cook Islands. Credit: Graham McDonald.

Bottom photo: Steve Lyon and Jessica Cramp of PICI. Credit: PICI.

San Diego water deal upheld, Salton Sea fight continues

A state appeals court Wednesday upheld the landmark water transfer between the Imperial Valley and San Diego County but left room for more legal wrangling regarding the Salton Sea.

A three-judge panel of the 3rd District Court of Appeal overturned a 2010 ruling by a Sacramento Superior Court judge that the water sale was improper because the Legislature had essentially signed a blank check to repair damage done to the Salton Sea.

So, the deal itself is now salvaged. But the same panel refused to decide the arguments that redirecting irrigation water to slake the thirst of San Diego decreases the amount of runoff into the sea, causing it to shrink. That, in turn, is imperiling birds and fish and creating toxic dust storms as ground laden with agricultural pesticides is suddenly exposed to the air.

Those arguments, the panel said, should go back to the Sacramento Superior Court, thus preserving the chances that opponents will be able to scuttle the deal between water-rich but cash-poor Imperial Irrigation District and the cash-rich but water-poor San Diego County Water Authority.

“This is obviously good news, and it’s been a long time coming,” said Kevin Kelley, general manager of the Imperial Irrigation District, “but there’s still considerable work to do in turning this agreement into one that is environmentally sustainable for the Salton Sea and economically viable for Imperial Valley agriculture.”

Maureen Stapleton, general manager of the San Diego County Water Authority, noted that in water issues, perseverance is key. “We were confident we would persevere and prevail,” she said.

The deal, the largest transfer of water from farms to cities in the nation, was signed in 2003, after years of pressure on the Imperial Irrigation District by the federal government. The water sales have continued despite the Superior Court ruling that the Legislature lacked authority to make an open-ended agreement to save the sea.

Straddling Imperial and Riverside counties, the Salton Sea is dependent on agricultural runoff for replenishment. As more water is sold to San Diego rather than used to irrigate farms, runoff has decreased and the sea has shrunk.

The appeal court’s 156-page opinion could serve as a treatise on the complexities and feuding that are part of California’s use of the Colorado River. Its opening sentence tells the tale: “For the better part of 100 years, citizens of the American Southwest have been fighting over the right to water from the Colorado River.”

Imperial County enjoys the largest allocation of any agency in the seven states that depend on the Colorado River. Farmers were braving the valley’s boiling summer temperatures a century ago to pull water from the river, long before California coastal cities saw the river as a source of water.

San Diego County, blessed by nature with mild weather and a gorgeous landscape, is virtually devoid of groundwater. For nearly half a century San Diego officials have hunted for a way to get an “independent” supply of water and decrease the county’s dependence on the Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

Although the Legislature agreed in 2003 to help the Salton Sea, the state’s financial woes, and a lack of a political constituency for the sea in the power corridors of Sacramento, have largely kept the state from following through on its promise, a point that environmental lawyers are sure to make when the issue returns to the Superior Court.

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Photo: A tributary of the New River flows into the Salton Sea. Credit: Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times

Inupiat whaling, drilling at stake in recent Alaskan mayor’s race

Independent photojournalists Will Rose and Kajsa Sjölander were on Alaska’s North Slope in November to document traditional whaling by the native Inupiat people and found themselves at the height of a highly charged mayoral election season, with whaling and a gargantuan new Shell oil drilling project at stake.

Check out a fascinating photo gallery of images from their trip, exclusive to the Los Angeles Times.

The two were on hand as Charlotte Brower became the first female mayor for Alaska’s North Borough, a regional municipality that covers the north part of the state, a vast terrain with only eight small communities comprising about 10,000 mostly Inupiat Eskimos. The North Borough mayoralty, including the town of Barrow, has significant influence regarding federal decisions about offshore oil drilling and other resource uses affecting the area.

Royal Dutch Shell has already received some permits to begin drilling in the Chukchi Sea in 2012 but has been dogged by resistance such as a 2007 lawsuit by outgoing mayor Edward Itta that challenged the environmental effects of drilling and any potential spill –- all very real in the wake of the large Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989 and BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Drilling in Arctic waters is subject to many technical hurdles, but receding ice packs resulting from global warming have made drilling more enticing.

Though Brower is expected to continue to have relatively friendly relations with Shell, ConocoPhillips and other oil companies who are looking to drill off the coast, there were marked differences between her and the second-place finisher, former five-term mayor George Ahmaogak Sr. Notably, Brower made a point of declaring that she was anti-drilling and the borough needs someone to “stand up to the oil companies.” Her husband works with the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission. Ahmaogak, who says he too is against drilling but wants to make sure the community continues to receive millions of dollars in oil revenue, was a former Alaska community affairs manager for Shell. In the North Borough, however, lines of allegiance are quite hard to draw; Ahmaogak’s wife is a former head of the whaling commission. Subsequently, the race was tight, with Brower winning 1,022 votes to Ahmaogak’s 960.

Rose, who is English, and Sjölander, who is Swedish, have spent the last three years documenting the effects of climate change on the polar regions. They call their project 70°, because most of their work has turned out to be along the 70th parallel -– cutting through parts of the Arctic Ocean, Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States and north Scandinavia.

“The trip to Alaska seemed a logical progression, as Shell have received the preliminary permits to drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas in 2012,” wrote Rose and Sjölander in an email to The Times from their home outside Gothenberg, Sweden. “At the same time, the Inupiat hunters are noticing changes in climate, sea ice and increasing numbers of polar bears are coming to shore around Kaktovik.

“Every autumn, polar bears come to Kaktovik in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to feed on the remains of bowhead whales from the traditional Inupiat harvest, but in recent years they have come in much larger numbers. Scientists are using DNA from hair snares to determine which bears show up in Kaktovik, and for how long. This information can help wildlife managers minimize human-bear conflicts, and understand how the animals are faring as climate change reduces the amount of time they can spend on the sea ice hunting their preferred prey, seals.”

The Inupiat hunt bowhead whales and are allowed 80 strikes on the whales during the fall hunt. A strike is an attack on a whale, though an animal sometimes escapes. In 2010 the community took 46 whales, which they split among themselves for food according to traditional distribution formulas.

Environmental concerns and protection of the traditional whaling culture are definitely top of mind in the region. The two journalists found that the small town of Point Hope was particularly active in fighting offshore drilling plans.

“The tribal government of Point Hope, backed by a group of 12 environmental organizations and Earth Justice, have challenged the validity of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement’s conditional approval of Shell’s exploration plan. The decision has now been delayed in the courts again till December. The petition states that the BOEMRE decision violates the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Former president of the Point Hope tribal government, Caroline Cannon, has fought the offshore plans for over five years,” write Rose and Sjölander.
 
The pair penned a story about their travels in the region and the politics around the election, which may be part of their upcoming 70° website. In that story, Point Hope city Mayor Steve Oomittuk told them, “The animals make us who we are; they’re our clothing, our shelter, our food, our spirituality, a way of life that has been passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years. Without the animals, we aren’t who we are, we are not the people of Point Hope.”

Rose said he felt that an embezzlement charge swung the election. “I think that Ahmoagak’s wife, Maggie, being charged with embezzling $475,000 from the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission played a part,” he wrote. “She served as the group’s executive director for 17 years until 2007. When she got fired after the financial irregularities were uncovered, George was working for Shell at the same time. The Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission is supposed to protect the interests of the subsistence whaling community.”

The amount of money at stake is enormous. A Shell-commissioned study by consulting company Northern Economics and the University of Alaska Anchorage estimates that new drilling plans could generate $176 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue over a 45-year period from 2012 to 2057. Of that, $3.7 billion would go to the North Slope Borough.

Both Rose and Sjölander hope their futures includes a lot more snowy photos: “Our original idea was to circumnavigate the 70th parallel in 1 – 2 years, by skiing, sled or whatever means necessary. That sadly remains a dream, but we do our best by saving up and hoping to get commissions that allow us to continue with our project.”

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Photo: The Brower family of Barrow, Alaska, welcome community elders for a feast in their home after taking a bowhead whale during the fall subsistence hunt. Recent North Slope Borough elections reflected concerns over new proposed offshore oil drilling that could threaten sea life. Credit: Will Rose and Kajsa Sjolander

Doug Brinkley, Rep. Don Young squabble over Arctic refuge

Famed biographer Doug Brinkley has written exhaustively on the history of Alaskan wilderness, but Alaskan Rep. Don Young was having none of it recently when it came to the issue of drilling for oil at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The two men clashed bitterly last Friday as Brinkley, a professor at Rice University and the author most recently of “The Quiet World: Saving Alaska’s Wilderness Kingdom 1979-1960,” testified at a House Natural Resources Committee meeting regarding the effects of drilling in the refuge. Young interrupted Brinkley’s testimony, calling him “Dr. Rice” and saying his testimony was “garbage.”

“Dr. Brinkley. Rice is a university,” Brinkley shot back. “I know you went to Yuba College and you couldn't graduate.”

Young, getting visibly upset, retorted: “I'll call you anything I want to call you when you sit in that chair. You just be quiet.”

"You don't own me," Brinkley said. "I pay your salary.”

Young sat through the testimony of several environmentalists at the panel, and when he got his chance to speak he noted in another YouTube clip featured on his congressional website that the Alaskan acreage they were talking about “is not the pristine area with wolves laying next to caribou, it’ll be a cold day in Saudi Arabia when that happens,” and added: “We’ve heard from environmentalists, and I understand their beliefs, but they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

After the exchange, he said he was “pissed” about Brinkley’s comments.

Brinkley got the last word when he expressed his surprise to “hear a congressman today say there’s nothing in his district. It’s boring. It’s flat. It’s not exciting. I don’t know a representative who doesn’t love their district. Every state in America’s landscape is beautiful if you love it. But some people love money more than their homeland or where they live, and I’m afraid that that’s why this fight has to keep coming up 50 years later, we’re still trying to tell people the Arctic refuge is real. It belongs to the American people.”

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Photo: Musk ox move across an area of coastal plain inside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that could be considered for oil exploration in Alaska. Credit: Associated Press/Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Court ruling keeps Yellowstone grizzlies on 'threatened' list

Conservationists won a major battle Tuesday in their campaign to protect Yellowstone grizzly bears when a federal appeals court ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service erred in removing Endangered Species Act protections for "one of the American West's most iconic wild animals."

The ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the wildlife agency's 2007 decision to remove the "threatened" designation for the bears under the Endangered Species Act.

Tuesday's ruling cited climate change as having accelerated a beetle infestation destroying the bears' vital white-bark pine food source. The grizzly is only the second wildlife species, after the polar bear, to earn protection in recognition of harm caused by global warming. Both are considered "threatened."

The three-judge panel embraced conservationists' warnings that the decline in the grizzlies' fodder would likely drive them to forage in more populous areas around the park, increasing incidents of confrontation between humans and the omnivorous bears.

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Photo: A grizzly wanders through open brush inside Yellowstone National Park. Credit: James Peaco / Associated Press

Peter Brown back onboard with Sea Shepherd

This post has been corrected. See note at bottom for details.

Peter Brown, the activist and filmmaker who recently released a warts-and-all portrait of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in his documentary film, "Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist," is rejoining the crew for its annual Antarctic anti-whaling campaign after a two-year hiatus.

"I'm really looking forward to it. Paul's been really great this year, helping with ['Confessions']," Brown said, referring to Sea Shepherd captain Paul Watson. "And we've been getting a lot closer. I'm looking forward to sailing with him."

The return is something of a surprise after Brown's acrimonious departure during Sea Shepherd's 2008-2009 winter campaign to stop Japanese whalers in the Antarctic. Those campaigns are the subject of the hit Animal Planet TV show, "Whale Wars," and in Seasons 1 and 2, Brown was made out to be something of a villain -– clashing with crew and camera people, and the subject of much side-interview sniping on the show. He left after a rope on a zodiac boat nearly cut his thumb off.

During two years off, Brown put together "Confessions," compiled from nearly 30 years of footage with the organization. It threatened to raise some hackles with the Sea Shepherd organization as it revealed how campaigns are improvised on the fly, including one incident in which Brown openly admitted he started a riot that resulted in Sea Shepherd officer Lisa DiStefano being dunked after indigenous Makah tribespeople pelted the two of them with rocks. Watson, however, has supported the film, saying his only beef is its name -– he doesn't like the comparison to terrorists -- and showed up for a premiere in Bermuda.

"I don't do this stuff for TV," Brown said. "I'm trying to stop whaling. Paul asked me to come back and I accepted."

Brown is set to rejoin the Sea Shepherd crew Dec. 6 in the harbor city of Fremantle, near Perth in Western Australia, to prepare for this winter’s anti-whaling campaign. He will be first mate on the Sea Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin -– named after the Australian star of the nature program "Crocodile Hunter."

Brown is a veteran Sea Shepherd campaigner, having joined the group in 1981. He is also a veteran of TV, having produced and directed the proto-reality show "Real People" beginning in the 1970s. He was also an original producer for "Entertainment Tonight." 

A fifth season of "Whale Wars" has yet to be announced or confirmed, but Brown says it doesn't matter to him if the show's crew comes along.

"I think it's the end of the line for the Japanese whalers this year," he said during a talk outside a Santa Monica coffeehouse. "They really should have given it up last year. They went home early, they didn't get their quota."

"But instead of realizing that maybe whaling should be done forever, they go back and they have an earthquake, they have a tsunami, they have a nuclear accident. And yet, they're going to subsidize a whaling fleet to tune of $200 million to go down there again, plus $27 million more in extra security. And why? They don't want to surrender to Sea Shepherd. It's not that they need whales to feed people."

Brown said his next film project will be a "Roger & Me"-type documentary project in which he visits whaling nations and confronts them directly on their home turf. But, in the meantime, he's bringing that high-energy confrontation back to the boat.

"Paul knew the trouble 'Whale Wars' caused me, so it'll be much better this time. I won't be dancing around, worried about hurting people's feelings. It's on!" he laughed. "Hang on for the ride, you're on the Peter Brown show!"

[For the Record, 2 p.m. Nov. 23, 2011: An earlier version of this post stated incorrectly that Brown would be captain on the Steve Irwin. He will be first mate.]

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Photo: Peter Brown is set to captain the vessel Steve Irwin when the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society returns to Antarctic waters in December to fight the Japanese whaling fleet. Credit: Kelsey Stevens

Karen Dawn's Thanksgiving turkey rescue

This post has been corrected. See note at bottom for details.

Animal activist and author Karen Dawn makes a point of having turkey for dinner every Thanksgiving, but the birds are at the table, not on it. For the fourth year in a row, Dawn, the author of the book "Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way We Treat Animals," has rescued two turkeys from an L.A. slaughterhouse and is hosting them at her home in Pacific Palisades.

“They’re named Russell and Perry,” says Dawn, speaking from her home. “I had originally named them Russell and Katy, after Russell Brand and Katy Perry, who saw the movie ‘Forks Over Knives’ and Russell tweeted and said he was going vegan.”

After Dawn had bathed and blow-dried the birds at her home, as is her annual ritual, she noticed “Katy” had quite the snood -– the comb that hangs over the animal’s beak -– and that she was actually a he. So, she changed the name to Perry.

Dawn hosts two new birds each year, in what she calls her Palisades Pardoning, to raise awareness of the number of turkeys slaughtered each year for the annual holiday, and the conditions in which they are raised. Sherrie Rosenblatt, spokesperson for the National Turkey Federation, an industry group, says that an estimated 46 million turkeys will be consumed during Thanksgiving feasting in the U.S. this year.

According to information available on Dawn’s website, thankingthemonkey.com, the birds are often kept in overcrowded pens with their toes clipped back to remove their claws and beaks seared off.

Responding to such claims, Rosenblatt noted, “A turkey farmer’s No. 1 priority is ensuring the health and well-being of their flock. That’s how we can provide safe, nutritious and affordable food for consumers. Not only on Thanksgiving day but every day.”

Dawn’s other couples were originally named Bruce and Emily (after actors Bruce Greenwood and Emily Deschanel) -- later changed to Brucilla and Emily after a similar mix-up -- Monty and Marsha, and Ellen and Portia after vegans Ellen DeGeneres and Portia Di Rossi.

“People are very good at compartmentalizing: animals that you eat versus the animals that you pet,” says Dawn. “So I do something that makes it harder for people to compartmentalize. A lot of the neighbors will not eat turkey at Thanksgiving after meeting these guys.”

Curious neighbors come over to Dawn’s house to cuddle with the birds, which quickly habituate to human company and enjoy the attention.

“Friday, the little boys next door asked: ‘When are the turkeys coming?’ And I said ‘tomorrow’ and they literally jumped up and down with delight,” adds Dawn.

The birds will stay with Dawn through the Christmas holiday, then in January they’ll move to their new home at Farm Sanctuary’s Animal Acres in Acton, where Sunday visitors can see Russell and Perry and many other animals.

[For the Record, 6 p.m. Nov. 21, 2011: An earlier version of this post used a photo and a video that were from 2010. Both have been changed.]

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Photo: Karen Dawn blow-dries the feathers of one of her birds at her Pacific Palisades home. Credit: Hugh Slavitt

Christo river wrap gets BLM approval

Christo, the controversial artist whose works involve wrapping or hanging fabric over buildings, canyons and even entire islands, has won federal approval for a massive new project in Colorado.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Bureau of Land Management announced Monday that it had released a Record of Decision approving Christo’s “Over The River,” a temporary art installation. The giant project has encountered serious and organized local resistance but the artist has mitigated several threats to Colorado wildlife.

Several state and local permits are still required.

“Over The River” comprises eight huge, silvery fabric panels spanning 5.9 miles directly above the Arkansas River where it flows through Bighorn Sheep Canyon and the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area. The panels will be deployed at various spots along a 42-mile stretch of the river, which, according to a Colorado State Parks spokesperson, is the most popular commercially rafted river in the United States.

The temporary work of art will be displayed between Salida and Cañon City in southern Colorado, currently scheduled for two consecutive weeks in August 2014. The project is projected to bring in 300,000 to 400,000 visitors and generate $121 million in revenue, according to the BLM.

“This is the most significant milestone yet in completing 'Over The River,' and we can now get to work applying for the few remaining permits that we still need,” Christo said in a statement on the project's website. "We are much closer to finally realizing this work of art that Jeanne-Claude and I first envisioned many years ago. Although our team is still reviewing the [federal approval], I am confident that we can now move forward so we begin construction in the summer of 2012.”

Christo, 76, who is Bulgarian by birth but lives in Paris, and his wife Jeanne-Claude worked as a team on their monumental works. Jeanne-Claude died of a brain aneurysm in 2009. Their “Valley Curtain” project draped a huge orange curtain across a valley in Rifle, Colo., in 1971.

According to Tina Brown, a spokesperson for the BLM, Christo and Jeanne-Claude first began making verbal inquiries about the project in 1996, and then made a formal proposal in 2006. An all-volunteer Colorado group called Rags Over the Arkansas River, or ROAR, sprung up to raise concerns over the effects on threatened wildlife such as bighorn sheep and bald eagles, increased river and road traffic, a potential drain on local emergency services and other issues. With the release of the Record of Decision (ROD) on Monday, the opposition group pointed out that there was still a long road ahead.

“The ROD does not affect the fact that the State Parks Board's decision is illegal under state law,” noted Cathey Young, the ROAR board secretary. “This release from the BLM does not affect the state lawsuit that ROAR has over the Parks Board Memorandum of Agreement. Christo needs both to do his project.”

She added that “ROAR will make a statement at the appropriate time.”

Indeed, “Over The River” still faces several hurdles. Approvals have already been obtained from the Colorado State Parks Board and the Colorado State Land Board, but permits are still outstanding from Fremont and Chaffee counties, the Colorado Department of Transportation and the Colorado State Patrol. ROAR is suing the State Parks Board over an agreement it made with the artist and his OTR Corp., which was set up to build the massive project.

Colorado State Parks could not comment on the ongoing lawsuit.

The project’s hefty environmental impact study showed that threats to native wildlife were many and complex. The huge steel cables required to hang the fabric would stretch from bank to bank, for instance, requiring heavy construction to install. Several mitigation measures were required to protect bighorn sheep, which live and breed in the canyon (hence the name), including construction restrictions from April 15 to June 30 every year. Also, OTR agreed to build habitat improvements and water developments to allow the sheep access to water and new habitat, and to create a fund that would continue to look after the sheep for years after the project is dismantled.

Migratory birds and eagles also required modifications to the project. The large cables will be festooned with “avian diverters,” which are colorful sleeves meant to give the birds visual evidence of the cable, for as long as they hang over the valley.

“We’ve heard a lot about traffic and about the bighorn sheep,” said Brown, speaking about the issues encountered by the project. “Those were the two major ones. But working with those cooperating agencies, I think we came up with some good mitigation measures to alleviate those problems.”

OTR is required to work with the state to keeps lanes open on U.S. Highway 50, which runs up the valley, and to develop a boat scheduling system to efficiently handle the expected glut of rafters and kayakers who will want to see the project from the river.

“If you want to get the entire scope of the project, on the river would be the best place to see it,” added Brown. “People driving along the road will be able to experience it, but the rafters and the kayakers will be able to see it in a unique way, and to see the sky up through the fabric.”

The ROAR website lists a host of other issues with the project, including the increase in litter and human waste in the canyon, permanent defacement of the riverbanks and damage from the cable installations, the hindrance of eagles hunting under the fabric, the complete disruption of angling in these prime fishing waters, and negative effects on regular commercial and recreational highway users in the area.

Mitigation measures and the environmental impact report on this project are available online.

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Photo: A rendering of “Over the River” as drawn by Christo in 2010. Credit: Christo

Protection zone established for endangered black abalones

Federal wildlife officials on Wednesday issued a final ruling designating about 140 square miles of critical habitat for endangered black abalone along the California coast.

The hard-shelled, edible marine snails were once abundant in rocky intertidal areas from the state's northernmost waters down to the tip of Baja California, but their numbers plummeted in the 1980s, mostly due to a bacterial disease called withering syndrome.

The decline may have been worsened by warming coastal waters, power plant discharges, overfishing and poaching, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service.

Black abalone was listed as an endangered species in 2009, which requires the government to set aside as much critical habitat as possible to aid their recovery.

In the areas, which stretch from Del Mar Landing Ecological Reserve in Sonoma County south to the Palos Verdes Peninsula and Catalina Island, projects that go before federal agencies or receive federal funding will be reviewed to make sure they do not threaten black abalone habitat.

The rule will take effect next month.

Excluded from the designation was an area of rocky habitat from Corona del Mar State Beach to Dana Point.

That was because "the economic benefits of exclusion outweigh the benefits of inclusion, and the exclusion will not result in the extinction of the species," according to a NOAA news release.

Black abalone are one of seven abalone species that live in California waters, typically wedged between rocks near the shore.

Their commercial harvest dates back to the 1800s and peaked in the 1970s. The fishery was closed in 1993 after landings plunged by 95%.

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Photo: Black abalone cluster together in a rocky, intertidal crag on San Nicolas Island. Credit: David Witting / NOAA Restoration Center.

Graphic: Black abalone critical habitat. Credit: NOAA

Fungus causes white-nose syndrome in bats, researchers find

Researchers say they now have proof that a fungus discovered in 2007 is responsible for white-nose syndrome, the devastating infectious disease that has killed more than 1 million bats in North America.

The confirmation is a significant step toward developing strategies to moderate effects of the disease as it continues to move westward along migratory flyways, the researchers reported Wednesday in the online journal Nature.

“We can now focus our research on managing one pathogen as the cause of this disease and the environment that brings animals and this pathogen together — caves,” said senior researcher David S. Blehert, a microbiologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis.