FROM EarthJustice, two stories covering their campaigns to protect different parts of the environment, the people, flora and fauna involved and how we are and will be impacted depending depending on how these stories and actions play out. See more at the EarthJustice Action Center.....
After naturalist and author Doug Peacock served two tours as a Green Beret medic in Vietnam, he went into the American wilderness to confront his demons. There, he closely observed grizzlies across the west—an experience he says “saved his life.”
Below, Peacock talks about the government’s recent decision to delist grizzlies and why now—more than ever—we need to “fight like hell” to save them.
After serving in Vietnam, Peacock worked for the National Park Service from 1973 to 1982, which led him to the next chapter of his life—filming grizzly bears in the wild.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DOUG PEACOCK
JESSICA: Why did you start the “Save the Grizzly” campaign?
DOUG: It was something that needed doing and no one was taking it on. Back when the government was first considering delisting, I wrote a letter to President Obama that was signed by some of the world’s leading conservationists. I [also] formed the “Save the Yellowstone Grizzly” campaign so people could see the petition and take action.
I do not believe that, given the existing mortality rate of the Yellowstone grizzly population segment, grizzlies can endure a single season of trophy hunting. You won’t just have the people with hunting tags taking a bear. Everybody on earth will be shooting at grizzlies. And once they start killing grizzlies, it’s just going to continue.
JESSICA: Now that they’re delisted, what’s next?
DOUG: I’m keeping up the heat. Earthjustice has
filed a lawsuit, and the attorneys want testimony to make clear what is at stake in the case. I’ve prepared a statement that says my own life would be irreparably damaged if grizzly delisting stands.
Right now you’ve got an island population of six or seven hundred grizzlies. The number of known grizzly bear deaths is around 60 per year, with additional unknown deaths. If they squeeze even a single hunting license in, it could turn things around so fast.
For more than 15 years, Peacock lived in the remote backcountry of Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks where he spent his time observing and filming grizzlies in their natural habitats.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DOUG PEACOCK
JESSICA: Why come to Earthjustice?
DOUG: I had to do the lawsuit, with or without anybody. I’m old and I’ve been doing this for about 50 years, and just in case no one else was going to defend the grizzly, I will do it. But for me, to pick a legal group, there’s no contest. I trust Earthjustice.
JESSICA: Does climate change make the grizzlies’ situation worse?
DOUG: It’s causing havoc with the bears. With climate change, everything’s going to become endangered, not just grizzly bears in Yellowstone. It’s going to kick us all in the belly so hard. I know it’s going to come fast, but the upside is that we’re going to see that everything is linked and we’re all in this together. Nobody gets a free pass.
It’s all the more reason to fight like hell right now because you know what’s at stake.
Peacock was one of the first photographers to create such spectacular footage of grizzly bears in the wild.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DOUG PEACOCK
JESSICA: What do you appreciate most about grizzlies?
DOUG: It’s the one animal that shows us our own arrogance and our own absolute lack of humility in living in this world. You see a grizzly and you’re aware of your place on the cosmic food chain. You’re not on the top, you’re in the middle.
When you’re in grizzly country, you don’t walk down the trails thinking about your portfolio or your girlfriend or boyfriend. You’ve got something out there that’s much more powerful, and it’s kind of an instant humility. I find that a tremendously healthy place to be.
Peacock recalls the nine years he worked low-level backcountry jobs for the National Park Service as a golden time of bears and berries, including regular prolonged visits from his daughter Laurel and son Colin.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DOUG PEACOCK
JESSICA: When was your last encounter?
DOUG: I saw a couple of grizzlies in June when my daughter and I were in Yellowstone. We climbed to the top of a butte and the wind was roaring, so we huddled behind a big boulder, all scrunched down out of the wind. I looked at my daughter’s face, and I saw something change. Behind her was a mother grizzly and her yearling cub. I said to Laurel, “Don’t move.” The momma bear reared and kind of smelled the air and looked around. It took us a couple minutes to realize she was making up her mind about us and didn't perceive us as a threat. The mother proceeded to walk past us to the edge of a cliff with her yearling, and she laid back and nursed her cub. It was just a magical moment.
From the pagoda he called home at the top of Huckeberry Mountain, Peacock wrote Grizzly Years on his dad's old typewriter with his daughter Laurel on his lap.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DOUG PEACOCK
JESSICA: It sounds like she was acclimated to humans. Now that grizzlies are delisted , does their trust in humans make them more vulnerable?
DOUG: Yes, absolutely. Though that mother grizzly was not necessarily a habituated bear, that trusting situation was set up by the human behavior. This female grizzly and her yearling were only eight miles from the park boundary where hunting would take place in the national forest. If hunting is allowed, those bears would be gone in a day.
If people are allowed to shoot grizzlies, all these bears that have tolerated people are going to be betrayed by humanity in such a deadly way. It’s ugly.
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Grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park
COURTESY OF TOM MURPH
Jessica is a former award-winning journalist. She enjoys wild places and dispensing justice, so she considers her job here to be a pretty amazing fit.
The San Pedro, the last free-flowing river of the Southwest, has had an unusual cast of champions. Ecologists, birders,
an emergency room physician—and yes,
even attorneys—have fought to save the desert oasis's wealth from being wholesale diverted to indoor plumbing and lawncare.
Then, at the turn of the century, came a group of misfits, putting their hairy paws in service to the San Pedro. They were Castor canadensis—the industrious engineer known as the American beaver.
Beavers were once found across North America in such ubiquity that the famed 18th century surveyor David Thompson was given to
remark that "this Continent … from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, may be said to have been in the possession of two distinct races of Beings, Man and the Beaver."
Thompson went on to note man's need to "procure clothing from the skins of animals," and indeed, an insatiable desire for beaver fur led to man trapping and hunting the aquatic animals (once thought to number more than 60 million) quite nearly out of existence.
Arizona's San Pedro River was itself once dubbed the "Beaver River," a nod to the numbers lodged among the meandering flows. But no sooner did fur trapper James Pattie bequeath the river's nickname, did San Pedro's beavers go the way of the rest of their continental brethren. The final holdouts and their slow-flowing ponds were dynamited out of river in the 1920s, accused (unjustly or not) of aiding and abetting malarial mosquitoes.
Bereft of the beavers and their dams, the San Pedro flowed fast and straight—when it flowed at all. Massive, unrelenting water withdrawals and overgrazing by cattle vastly diminished the river, with long stretches of it bone-dry and dusty for much of the year. Yet it is a testament to the San Pedro's greatness that even in these lean times, it continues to be a
ribbon of undeniable richness to species large and small, winged and scaled—a reminder of what we are poised to lose should this last desert river run dry.
Earthjustice and our partners have
fought for nearly a decade against groundwater pumping schemes that would serve the water needs of nearby communities—while leaving none of it for river and the wildlife it sustains. "The upper San Pedro River is the lifeblood of this region," said attorney
McCrystie Adams. "As this river disappears, all the animals and plants that rely on it are dying."
As Earthjustice works to protect the underground heart of the river, federal wildlife biologists drew inspiration from the past to help mitigate the river's current woes—and conceived of the beaver's return to the San Pedro.
Beavers are second only to humankind in their ability to shape the landscape around them. The animal's efficiency and cleverness in building dams customized just so to their particular stretch of water is legendary. The dams slow the water, and the resulting pond not only protects the entrance of the beaver's home, but provides ideal habitat for a range of species—and allows the pooled water to gradually seep into the ground and recharge dwindling aquifers.
One of the San Pedro recruits, hard at work.
SAN PEDRO RIVER EDUCATIONAL
A total of 15 beavers were drafted between 1999 and 2002. Beavers whose tree-felling, dam-building industriousness ran afoul of local authorities found themselves conscripted into the re-colonization project. One 57-pound fellow, making trouble for a Phoenix water treatment plant, was promptly signed up for the San Pedro after getting himself stuck in a water pipe. He was soon joined by others whose earnest efforts to dam livestock reservoirs and agricultural canals were spectacularly underappreciated by officials, who were all too happy to volunteer the beavers for the San Pedro project.
The beavers took to the San Pedro like they were never gone. Today, there are about a hundred beavers living along the San Pedro, with an average of 30 dams built a year. Some of the beavers headed south of the border (really, who can blame them?) and began building dams on the uppermost reaches of the river, while one traveled as far downriver as the Gila, at northern terminus of the San Pedro, earning him the moniker "The Surfing Beaver."
Ponded water behind a beaver dam on the San Pedro.
BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT PHOTO
Studies have found that the dams contribute to the vitality of the river and in maintaining healthy ecosystems; the deep pools created by beaver ponds have transformed parts of the river back into inviting habitat for diverse species. And as beavers gnaw down trees for food or building material, they double as a natural pruning service, improving forest stands for a whole host of their neighbors, including the endangered southwestern willow flycatcher. A keystone species, the beaver is a small cog with an outsized impact and critical importance on the broader ecosystem—as long as he has water to survive.
Some years have been better to the beavers than others. Nature is a wild and severe place, and beavers have seen their dams washed away by heavy monsoons or been preyed upon by their native predators. But the beavers move on and rebuild, and do their part to reshape the river closer to what it once was. They are thriving, and their return bodes a positive turn for the San Pedro's future, as Earthjustice works to ensure that the river continues to live so that its water can be shared fairly by all who rely on it—wildlife and humans.
Shirley undertakes sous chef duties on Earthjustice’s website, serving up interactive online features for our advocacy campaign and litigation work.
