Wild Equity Institute News

May 22, 7:30pm: Brent Plater Discusses the Anthropocene with Shaping San Francisco

Join a challenging conversation some have dubbed “environmental communications in the Anthropocene” to discuss the problems with presenting complex ecological information publicly. Rose Aguilar from KALW’s Your Call radio, Brent Plater of the Wild Equity Institute, and environmental scientist and climate change activist Azibuike Akaba discuss and debate issues of scientific literacy, critical thinking, basic education, attention spans, buzzwords, guest selection, framing and definition of scientific issues, overcoming simplistic jargon, and much more!

Hosted by Shaping San Francisco, the show starts at 7:30 p.m. at the Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics, 518 Valencia St. (near 16th St.) in San Francisco.

Sunday, May 12, 10:00am: Hike Along the Coastal Trail with Wild Equity

Sunday, May 12, 10:00am to 2:00pm: You are invited to join Brent Plater of the Wild Equity Institute on a 5-mile hike along the edge of the North American continent. We will explore San Francisco’s beautiful habitats and learn about the endangered species that call the area home.

Meet at the Baker Beach North Parking Lot. Don’t forget to pack water, snacks, and sunscreen. Please RSVP on our event page.

Remember, you must have a free wildequity.org account and be logged-in to our site to RSVP.

Two Goslings Dead, Leash Laws Still Not Enforced at GGNRA

On April 18, San Francisco resident Mikiye Nakanishi—a bird lover and dog owner—was watching a goose family waddle into San Francisco Bay from Crissy Field lagoon. But before the goslings could make it over the waves, an off-leash dog attacked the goose family.

“Then another dog came running and grabbed one,” Nakanishi recounted. “A second dog grabbed another one. A third dog came and pushed them all out. The geese had no place to go. People were surrounding them. The dog owners were saying, ‘Oh, they’re not going to hurt them.’"

A gosling killed by off-leash dogs at Crissy Field, April, 18, 2013.

Two goslings were killed before the parent geese could lead their flock to safety. And while the stunned bird-lover was trying to understand what happened, the irresponsible dog owners fled the scene of the crime.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident: off-leash dogs consistently harm people, our pets, wildlife and park resources at the GGNRA because it simply isn’t safe to run off-leash dogs in the Park. According to the GGNRA, there have been at least nine incidents in which park visitors or employees were bitten by dogs so far in 2013. Last year was filled with one heartbreaking off-leash dog attack after the next.

And yet the GGNRA still has not enforced leash laws in the park.

At the Wild Equity Institute, we love our dogs. But we also love all other forms of life. We believe that to protect all of us, leash laws must be enforced at the GGNRA, and off-leash dog play areas must be fully enclosed with a physical barrier and located far away from sensitive resources and people.

If you agree, make your voice heard by contacting Howard Levitt, Director of Communications and Partnerships for the GGNRA, and tell him we need leash laws enforced today, and modern off-leash dog play areas that are fully enclosed and keep everyone safe. You can reach him at howard_levitt@nps.gov or 415 561-4730.

Urgent Action Needed on Wild Equity Petition As More Bird Nests Destroyed

In July of 2012, the Wild Equity Institute filed a formal administrative petition with the Obama Administration requesting that it repeal a Bush Administration interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act ("MBTA"), and provide full protection to migratory bird nests under law.

Pale Male in Central Park, New York, NY, awaiting protection for his nest. Photo courtesy of Lincoln Karim.

To date the Administration has not responded to our petition. But recent news stories suggest we can’t wait much longer for the Administration to take action.

For example, In Petaluma CalTrans recently erected exclusion netting on a construction site to prevent Cliff Swallows from nesting under a highway the agency wishes to expand. But the Cliff Swallows continue to attempt nesting there, and more than 60 swallows have been reported killed as they attempt to nest and get caught in the nets.

In early April the . Osprey first nested at Pier 80 one year ago, and at the time the birds were celebrated as the first Ospreys ever known to nest within San Francisco’s city limits. But this year Larry Elison’s America’s Cup yacht was being assembled at the Pier, and the Port wasted little time destroying the nest.

And in the rest of the City reports are coming in that the Department of Public Works and the Recreation and Parks Department are cutting down numerous trees right now without first conducting nesting bird surveys. A simple survey could help the Departments know which trees they can remove immediately, and which they should leave standing through the conclusion of the breeding bird season.

The Wild Equity Institute believes that all of these actions are illegal absent Migratory Bird Treaty Act permits. The MBTA makes it illegal to kill migratory birds or destroy their nests—whether the nests seem active at the time or not—unless a permit is obtained from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service first. The Osprey and Cliff Swallows have clearly been harmed by one or both of these illegal activities, and the Fish and Wildlife Service should initiate enforcement activities because of it.

But instead the Service is hamstrung, because the Bush Administration interpretation of the MBTA requires the agency to determine if the nests were active or not at the moment of destruction—a completely irrelevant consideration under the original interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. If the Obama Administration were to repeal the Bush Administration interpretation and revert back to the original interpretation of the statute—which protected all nests regardless of whether there was a bird sitting in the nest at the time of destruction—more birds would obtain the protection they deserve and the Service saves resources by simplifying and streamlining its enforcement activities.

The Wild Equity Institute will be following up with these matters, and with the Obama Administration, in the coming months. To add your voice to our work, contact us today and we’ll help you help our Nation’s birds.

A Green Investment for You, Wild Equity, and the World

California members and supporters,

I’m writing to let you know about a unique clean energy investment opportunity we recently learned about. Mosaic is an online platform that enables individuals to invest in solar projects being developed across the country. Warren Buffett has invested $4 billion in solar energy and now, with a minimum investment of $25, you too can do well by doing good. Click here to begin investing in a clean energy future.

The Mosaic funding model aggregates our individual investments into complete solar projects.

Here’s how it works: You invest in high quality solar projects through Mosaic’s website. The solar project developers earn revenue by selling the electricity they produce. This revenue enables Mosaic to pay you back with interest.*

Mosaic is fundamentally changing the way clean energy is financed, no big banks or big bank accounts required. The more you invest, the more solar power gets generated and the greater your potential return. It’s a win-win for you and the planet. Bank on the sun with Mosaic and earn competitive returns.

We here at the Wild Equity Institute share Mosaic’s mission of democratizing clean energy and encourage you to check out Mosaic today.

Sincerely,

Brent Plater
Executive Director

P.S.—Watch this short video about Mosaic produced by our friends at Green for All.

Please visit joinmosaic.com to learn more about the project and to access the offering memorandum, which discusses the project, the terms of the investment and the risks associated with this investment.

For People and the Plants and Animals That Accompany Us on Earth

In late October of 2012, Wild Equity Institute Executive Director Brent Plater was invited to a weekend workshop to discuss the future of the conservation movement with luminaries in several environmental fields. The following essay is one of several products we’ve produced based on that workshop.

Back row, L-R: Michael Kellett, Brooke Williams, Michael Matz, George Wuerthner, Holmes Rolston, III, Phil Cafaro, Noah Greenwald, Dominick DellaSala. Front row, L-R: John Terborgh, David Johns, Michael Soule, Terry Tempest Williams, Ronni Egan, Brent Plater, Kieran Suckling, Brock Evans. Not pictured: Don Weeden, Helen Robertson, Charmayne Palomba, Eileen Crist, Andy Kerr, Tom Butler, Dan Doak, Jordan Fisher Smith, Gary Tabor.

In a recent issue of Around the Campfire, Dave Foreman—a co-founder of Earth First! & the Wildlands Project and author of Confessions of an Eco-Warrior—wrote a provocative essay titled The Myth of the Environmental Movement. In it he suggests that the conservation movement and the environmental movement are two distinct—and very different—movements.

The Wild Equity Institute believes Dave’s article is on to something—it’s true that our use of the words ‘conservation’ and ‘environment’ has become sloppy, and they can often mean conflicting things to different people.

But what creates fissures within the broader conservation/environmental movement isn’t found in the movements’ focuses—which Dave suggests are wildlife on the one hand, people on the other—but in their reason and rationale for existing: their ethical foundation.

The Wild Equity Institute illustrates this point concretely. We believe that stopping extinction is a moral imperative-–not because it is good for people, but because it is wrong to cause species to go extinct when extinction rates are exceptional. And today extinction rates are exceptional—orders of magnitude larger than the background rate of extinction. However, for others preventing extinction may be a utilitarian exercise: they may believe it is wrong to let species go extinct because this or that species may have some human use.

A utilitarian conservationist is likely to conflict with an ethical conservationist in many cases. For example, if a particular species has no demonstrable value to people or the ecosystem services upon which we depend, a utilitarian point of view might suggest we should allow the species to go extinct, even as the ethical conservationist argues the opposite point. Yet because the object of concern—other forms of life—is one and the same for both the ethical and utilitarian person, it seems logical, at first blush, to consider both to be part of the same movement. Indeed, the Endangered Species Act’s legislative history reflects both moral and utilitarian reasons for conserving wildlife and plants.

The same division exists within the environmentalists/conservationists that focus on human well-being. Some people advocate for improved quality of life because they believe it is wrong to cause harm to other people by polluting for profit. The environmental justice movement is the most obvious example of this ethical concern, but nearly any other segment of the environmental movement can be described as trying to protect those without political power (consumers, kids, etc.) from those with it (agribusiness, petrochemical companies, etc.). But there are also people who are involved in human health movements simply because they want to breathe clean air, or drink safe water, or ensure that they have a safe place to recreate. This is a very different—largely utilitarian—rationale for the same environmental concern.

What ultimately creates a fissure in the environmental/conservation movements is not the object of our concerns, but the reason for our concerns in the first place. If you are a conservationist by moral imperative, you will probably have more in common with those who are environmentalists by moral imperative than you would with a utilitarian conservationist. Similarly, the utilitarian conservationist and the utilitarian environmentalist are likely to have a lot in common with each other, and little in common with ethical environmentalists/conservationists.

We believe our own mission helps demonstrate how this is so. The Wild Equity Institute believes that the shared moral foundation in our movements is equity: the creation of a more just and fair world. Our equity-based concerns are easily seen in the environmental justice movement’s focus on the inequitable distribution of environmental hazards—and increasingly, its focus on the inequitable access provided to environmental goods like open space and parks. But the grassroots conservation movement also works to remedy an inequitable relationship: between our human communities and the non-human world. As we consume a greater share of the world’s finite resources, less remains for the plants and animals around us, driving thousands of species to the brink of extinction. While the moral consideration we owe to each other may be different in kind and scope to what we owe to other forms of life, in both cases the gap between what our moral foundation suggests we should do and how we actually act leaves us with a culturally isolated and biologically impoverished world.

The Wild Equity Institute’s purpose is to unite these movements into a powerful force that creates a healthy and sustainable global community for all. We accomplish this by working on projects that highlight and redress the inequitable relationships across our human communities while improving our relationship to the lands in which we live. In that sense, those who focus on equity-–inter-species equity on the one hand, and intra-species equity on the other-–are really part of single movement, regardless of whether their day-to-day work is focused on NOx emissions or invasive plants (and even those are interlinked, science now tells us).

In that sense, Dave Forman, who is one of country’s greatest ethical conservationists, has more in common with the late Luke Cole (the founder of the Center on Race, Poverty, & the Environment) than he does with Peter Kareiva (the Chief Scientist at the Nature Conservancy) who is currently attempting to obliterate conservation as we know it based on utilitarian arguments. Dave Forman and Peter Kareiva cannot be reconciled into one movement: even though both ostensibly are attempting to conserve wildlife. But Dave and Luke, on the other hand, could be reconciled into one movement—even though Forman focuses on wildlife and Cole on human-life—because at base they have the same moral foundation.

The dichotomy between wildlife-people and people-people is unhelpful both because it prevents us from engaging allies and building power, and because it adds confusion to an area of our work that desperately needs clarity. It needs clarity because if we don’t know how and why we stand together, our efforts to address the systemic, cross-cutting threats facing people and the planet will likely be disjointed, slow, and rupture alliances. By drawing on our moral imperative, rather than the object upon which our movement is focused, the Wild Equity Institute believes we can avoid this outcome. Because our ethical foundation is where our commonality can be demonstrated most clearly, and from there we can build a more powerful movement for people and the plants and animals that accompany us on Earth.

Saturday, April 13, 10am: Explore the Antioch Dunes with Wild Equity

You are invited to join the Wild Equity Institute and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on a guided tour of the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge.

The Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge is home to three federally protected endangered species: the Lange’s Metalmark Butterfly, the Contra Costa Wallflower, and the Antioch Dunes Evening Primrose. Because of its small size and sensitive habitat, the Refuge is only open to the public on select days. While the butterfly doesn’t start flying until late summer, this trip provides a great opportunity to explore the Refuge while the endangered wildflowers are in bloom.

Meet at the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge Entrance Gate, 501 Fulton Shipyard Road, Antioch, CA 94509. Wear sturdy shoes for this sandy 1.5 mile hike. Please RSVP on our event page. Remember, you must have a free wildequity.org account and be logged-in to our site to RSVP.

The Antioch Dunes Evening Primrose, the Lange’s Metalmark Butterfly, and the Contra Costa Wallflower.

For more information or for carpool arrangements, please contact us at azehring@wildequity.org

Wild Equity Welcomes Back Laura Horton: as a Staff Attorney!

We’re excited to announce that Laura Horton, a long-time volunteer and law clerk, has joined Wild Equity as a Staff Attorney. She will be working with Executive Director Brent Plater and our amazing volunteers to help us unite grassroots conservation and justice movements to create a more equitable and sustainable world for all.

Laura Horton, Wild Equity Institute Staff Attorney.

Laura has been passionate about environmental issues for as long as she can remember. Over the years she has worked for various environmental organizations, including a legal internship at Wild Equity, and has been active in social justice issues. During law school Laura was a student leader in the National Lawyers Guild and the ACLU, and was the Managing Editor of the Environmental Law Journal. She has published articles on a number of issues including energy, immigration and disaster law, and eco-consumerism, and also currently serves as a volunteer writer/editor for both the National Lawyers Guild Review and the American Society of Legal Scholars.

Prior to joining Wild Equity, Laura received a fellowship to work with the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association in Harare, Zimbabwe, where she helped empower rural mining communities in asserting their environmental and economic rights. Laura holds a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and a J.D. from Golden Gate Law. She says she is beyond thrilled to return to Wild Equity as a staff attorney, and we’re honored to have her on board as well. Welcome Laura!

San Francisco Recreation and Parks Caught Illegally Armoring Sharp Park Beach

March 21, 2013

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts:

Brent Plater, Wild Equity Institute, (415) 572-6989
Bill McLaughlin, Surfrider Foundation, San Francisco Chapter, (415) 225-4083

San Francisco Recreation and Parks Caught Illegally Armoring Sharp Park Beach

Surfrider Foundation Letter Triggers the California Coastal Commission to Act
on Unpermitted Armoring at Sharp Park in Pacifica

SAN FRANCISCO— In response to notification by The Surfrider Foundation San Francisco Chapter, the California Coastal Commission determined that San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department (SFRPD) illegally expanded the seawall in front of the controversial Sharp Park Golf Course in Pacifica, in violation of California’s Coastal Act.

This armoring was unexpected because SFRPD’s Sharp Park Working Group announced in 2011 that “the seawall should not be further armored or heightened,” and because SFRPD’s public notice for the project stated that it would only grade the path on the seawall’s crown.

Unpermitted armoring of Sharp Park Beach by San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department, February 24, 2013.

“Much of the public’s beach in Pacifica is already buried under piles of boulders. Adding new armor to protect a nearby golf course is just not appropriate,” says Bill McLaughlin, who chairs the Erosion Committee of the Surfrider Foundation San Francisco Chapter. “Sea level rise and long term coastal erosion patterns are a looming threat to all our regional coastlines. If beaches like Pacifica’s are to survive, shorelines need to be able to migrate landward.”

“Either SFRPD’s internal environmental review procedures failed, or SFRPD’s description of the project was misleading,” said Brent Plater, executive director of the Wild Equity Institute. “In either case, we expect the Coastal Commission to ensure that the beach is preserved for future generations to enjoy.”

The Coastal Commission has now demanded that the City apply for an after-the-fact permit, which will come before the Coastal Commission at a future public hearing. Surfrider will work to ensure that the illegally dumped rip-rap is removed, and any future construction on the site is limited to grading the path at the top of the berm, and not an incremental armoring project of berm.

Background

In late February, Surfrider learned that the seawall fronting Sharp Park Golf Couse would be closed for “renovation” from February 23-25. Surfrider was told by SFRPD that the renovation work would consist of re-grading a path on the crown of the berm. However, observations made at the site showed that additional boulders were placed on the beach. This new armoring was done without proper permitting or environmental review, which precluded the public from weighing in on the project.

The Surfrider Foundation is concerned about the cumulative impacts of coastal armoring on beaches throughout the region. Placing large boulders on a beach covers otherwise usable beach with rock, and the armoring tends to result in the loss of the beach due to erosion. The shoreline of Pacifica has already experienced extensive beach loss due to the effects of armoring.

This is not the first instance of unpermitted armoring by San Francisco. Back in July 2011, Surfrider went before the California Coastal Commission to argue against after-the-fact permitting of a rock wall at Ocean Beach. The powerful state agency unanimously rejected the project, in part because Commissioners believed an alternative to armoring known as managed retreat warranted serious consideration. Managed retreat is the landward relocation of development so that beaches have the space to migrate inland and to respond naturally to coastal processes.

Despite the predominance of coastal armoring in Pacifica, managed retreat has been successfully implemented here before. The San Pedro Creek area at Linda Mar State Beach is the site of such a project, which included restoration of beach, wetlands, and the estuary, as well as the relocation of commercial and residential infrastructure to more sustainable locations. Managed retreat is also part of the restoration vision advocated by Surfrider and others for Sharp Park Beach. The lack of critical infrastructure or development near the ocean make this site an ideal location to implement managed retreat.

For more information on shoreline armoring, please visit the Surfrider Foundation’s Beachapedia page.

For more information about the campaign for a better public park at Sharp Park, please visit wildequity.org.

About Surfrider Foundation

The Surfrider Foundation is a non-profit grassroots organization dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of our world’s oceans, waves and beaches through a powerful activist network. Founded in 1984 by a handful of visionary surfers in Malibu, California, the Surfrider Foundation now maintains over 250,000 supporters, activists and members worldwide. For more information on the Surfrider Foundation, visit www.surfrider.org.

The Wild Equity Institute is building a healthy and sustainable global community for people
and the plants and animals that accompany us on Earth.

http://wildequity.org

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Congratulations to Erica Ely, 2012 Endangered Species Big Year Champ!

Erica Ely, a student at San Francisco State University, was crowned the 2012 Golden Gate National Parks Endangered Species Big Year champion for seeing and saving the most endangered species during the course of the competition. She is the youngest person to ever win the overall competition.

Erica Ely poses with prizes from the Sports Basement
and Patagonia’s San Francisco store.

Erica won the competition by seeing the largest number of the Golden Gate National Park’s endangered species, and then taking the most actions that help those species recover. As the 2012 champion she earned a $100 gift certificate to the Sports Basement and a backpack and clothing from Patagonia’s San Francisco store.

Congratulation Erica, and thank you for helping us save our imperiled neighbors!

Keep an eye out for your chance to win prizes for seeing and saving endangered species in 2014, when we run our next public Golden Gate National Parks Endangered Species Big Year.