Photo: Mark Gocke, USDA

If you’re a fan of big cats like me, a cheetah was the first contestant to come to mind. But the sprinters are short on stamina and like all cats, long on laziness:

9. Cheetah

The morning-line favorite. Having a fancy title like “World’s Fastest Land Animal” is going to get you a lot of betting action. But this isn’t a sprint—and the cheetah has no chance. Dr. Lindstedt estimates it would blast out of the starting gate, and after 20 seconds, would open up a 950-foot lead on the fastest thoroughbred. After that? You may find him napping in the infield.

Instead, scientists say a track star of the American West would finish far ahead of the Belmont’s thoroughbred horses:

8. Pronghorn

The wiseguy pick. They may not be as sexy as some of the other competitors, but pronghorns have an ideal mix of speed and endurance. Dr. Lindstedt says for a 1 ½ mile distance, they could likely reach a blistering pace of 50 mph. Added bonus: They are local, hailing from Western states like Wyoming and Colorado. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

But it gets even more interesting, according to Bruce Stein, the National Wildlife Federation’s director of climate change adaptation.

“The pronghorn’s blazing speed is apparently an evolutionary response to predation by the American cheetah, an animal that went extinct in the Pleistocene,” says Bruce. ”So in some ways, it truly is a race between pronghorn and cheetah!”

While pronghorns evolved their speed and endurance for outrunning predators and long migrations, today their biggest threats are cars, fences, and habitat loss. In fact, two subspecies – Peninsular pronghorns and Sonoran pronghorns - are on the Endangered Species List. Learn more about how the National Wildlife Federation is working to protect pronghorns.

And the fastest fish in the world? The sailfish, clocked in short sprints at up to 68 miles per hour.

Duck coated in Exxon Pegasus tar sands oil in Mayflower, AR, April 2013 (Photo: Lauren Ray)

In the days following the disastrous pipeline rupture, Exxon rushed to take control of the spill site and wildlife cleanup. But as Debra Hale-Shelton of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (sub. req.) reports, that urgency hasn’t carried over to Exxon’s safety investigation:

More than two months after an aging pipeline cracked open, spilling more than 100,000 gallons of heavy crude oil into a Mayflower neighborhood and a cove of Lake Conway, Exxon Mobil still has not provided federal regulators with even a preliminary cause for the break and has not requested approval to resume transporting oil through that pipeline.

Before Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co. can reopen the 850-mile-long Pegasus pipeline, which was built starting in 1947, it must comply with several corrective measures ordered April 2 by the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

Exxon Mobil has neither updated its April 26 accident report filed with the federal agency nor asked to reopen the pipeline, which spilled an estimated 147,000 gallons of oil March 29, leading to the evacuations of 22 homes, dead and injured wildlife, several lawsuits, and federal and state investigations.

Exxon’s “before” & “after” photos of the Pegasus tar sands oil spill in Mayflower, AR

“These photos aren’t before and after – they’re mid-disaster and mid-cleanup,” says National Wildlife Federation South Central Representative Geralyn Hoey. “What does Exxon plan to do for wetland restoration? Are they going to try to recreate what was a thriving habitat for waterfowl, beavers, and other wildlife?”

Exxon’s celebratory news release doesn’t say. Exxon has released few details about exactly how it conducted the cleanup. When Geralyn and I visited the Exxon command center and offered the National Wildlife Federation’s assistance, we were told we would not be allowed anywhere near the spill site and were told to stop taking photos of the spill by an Exxon contractor (we moved to another location and kept taking photos). Especially since this was heavy, toxic tar sands oil, it’s impossible to say for sure if the oil is gone without taking samples several feet below the surface.

“These photos are a horrible reminder of what the people and wildlife in Mayflower have gone through and the high price to America of serving as the middleman as oil companies pipe Canadian tar sands to the international market,” says Geralyn. It’s not just Arkansas – spills of toxic tar sands have fouled communities, waterways and wildlife habitat from Michigan to Missouri. A National Wildlife Federation-led coalition has asked two federal agencies to set stronger safety standards for tar sands pipelines.

Now the tar sands industry wants to build a massive new tar sands pipeline in Keystone XL. Spills are only part of Keystone’s threat – all of us would be on the hook for its massive amounts of climate-disrupting carbon pollution.

But just last week, officials with British Columbia’s government told national authorities that the province wants nothing to do with the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline that would bring tar sands west for export. Officials said the tar sands industry has failed to answer questions about the impact of spills on clean water and the communities and wildlife that depend on them.

“If Canada doesn’t want to accept the risk of transporting Canadian tar sands, why in the world is Arkansas suffering for it?” asks Geralyn.

It’s time to say no to tar sands. Tell President Obama to reject the climate-disrupting Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

In a major victory for conservationists, the British Columbia government has rejected the proposed Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline. While the rejection isn’t necessarily the end of the road for the proposal, it puts up a huge new obstacle to its completion.

“Given the tar sands industry’s history of broken promises and disastrous spills, British Columbia has made the right call,” says Kassie Rohrbach, manager of the National Wildlife Federation’s campaign to stop dirty fuels. “British Columbia residents don’t want to take on the risks of toxic tar sands spills any more than American landowners from Montana to Nebraska to Texas want to have the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline running through their backyards.”

Why did British Columbia say no in its submission to the Canadian government? The tar sands industry failed to answer questions about the route and the impact of possible spills on clean water and the communities and wildlife that depend on them:

In a statement, Environment Minster Terry Lake said the submission follows careful study of the project proposal.

“British Columbia thoroughly reviewed all of the evidence and submissions made to the panel and asked substantive questions about the project including its route, spill response capacity and financial structure to handle any incidents,” Lake said in a news release.

“Our questions were not satisfactorily answered during these hearings,” he added.

“Today’s decision shows more clearly than ever that, contrary to the State Department’s deeply flawed report, the tar sands industry desperately needs Keystone XL to get its polluting product to the international market,” Kassie adds. “President Obama can keep his promise to protect our climate for this and future generations by rejecting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.”

Every voice counts! Tell President Obama to reject the climate-disrupting Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Fall River County Courthouse, Rapid City, SD (Jimmy Emerson/Flickr)

While the drill actually commenced at 12:30 p.m., things began early when a bus driver reported a suspicious SUV with several people following during his morning route. Next, a letter handed to a student at the Elementary School over the lunch hour is turned in to Principal. The letter threatens that “things dear to everyone will be destroyed unless continuation of the Keystone pipeline and uranium mining is stopped immediately.”

While the entire scenario was scripted, the use of pertinent and timely issues seemed to make it more realistic. Similar letters were scripted to have been sent to the other respective schools, each of which had slightly different scenarios presented to them. In preparation for the drill, and Emergency Operations Center (EOC) had been set up in the basement of the Fall River County Courthouse. The same doctrine was followed during the bomb threat that occurred at the school earlier this year.

“Realistic”? I’m no terrorism expert, but I can’t name one incident in recent years that was preceded by a foreshadowing letter laying out the attack’s motivations. Were the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and mining references about realism, or about inserting personal politics into a school safety drill?

Reasonable people can debate the best public policy, something the National Wildlife Federation and our state affiliates do every day with politicians of all political stripes. But trying to use a safety drill to indoctrinate our children that conservationists are terrorists? That’s cowardly and just plain wrong.

Politics have no place in school safety. If officials want to debate conservation and energy policy, they should do it in the public arena, not in the classroom. 

A pair of bald eaglets in West Newbury, MA (MA Energy & Environmental Affairs on Flickr)

Success Story

First, the good news. Massachusetts announced this week that bald eagles, once completely wiped out in the state, are now soaring to a strong comeback:

Officials from the Department of Fish and Game (DFG) verified 30 active nests in the Commonwealth, including eight nests along the Connecticut River, six at the Quabbin Reservoir and four along the Merrimack River during Massachusetts’ first Bald Eagle nesting survey. The survey, coordinated by the DFG’s Division of Fisheries and Wildlife (MassWildlife) and involving agency staff and 35 volunteers, was conducted on April 5, 2013.

In addition to the principal bald eagle nesting territories along the Connecticut and Merrimack rivers and at Quabbin Reservoir, other active nests were observed at Wachusett Reservoir, and in the towns of Framingham, Brookfield, Pittsfield, Webster, Middleborough, Fall River and Plymouth. One nest failure was reported at Assawompsett Pond in Lakeville, where the wind blew a nest and two eggs out of the nest tree in early April. Additional eagle sightings were reported in Arlington, Carver, Lunenburg, Russell, Sandisfield and along the Housatonic River.

Bald eagles, the largest bird of prey native to Massachusetts with a body length of about 3 feet and a wingspan of up to seven feet, have increased in numbers in Massachusetts since being reintroduced to the Quabbin Reservoir between 1982 and 1988. The species was down listed from Endangered to Threatened status in Massachusetts in 2011 and removed from the federal endangered species list in 2007.

To report a bald eagle sighting in Massachusetts, email the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife’s Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program natural.heritage@state.ma.us.

Mercury’s Threat to Bald Eagles

Bald eagles, our national symbol & once common across North America, were pushed to the brink of extinction by the pesticide DDT, pollution from heavy metals like mercury, hunting, habitat loss, and other factors. While we stopped using DDT, banned hunting, and restored what Aldo Leopold called our land ethic, mercury pollution remains a major threat to bald eagles.

Heavy metals are emitted through the burning of fossil fuels and are washed to our waterways, then bioaccumulate in predators at the top of the food chain:

• If a small fish eats 50 mercury contaminated plants.
• And a large fish eats 100 small fish
• And an eagle eats 100 large fish.
• 50 x 100 x 100 = 250,000. The concentration of mercury in the eagle is 250,000 times larger than it was in the plankton.

It’s not uncommon for sick bald eagles to test positive for mercury poisoning.

Presenting Gina McCarthy, EPA Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation, with comments from NWF’s activists.

A Fighter for Wildlife

That’s why it’s so critical for America’s wildlife that Gina McCarthy is confirmed as Environmental Protection Agency administrator as soon as possible. She has a long track record of experience limiting mercury pollution at both the state and federal levels, working for both Democrats and Republicans. Appointed by Gov. William Weld (R-MA) to be executive director of the administrative council at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, McCarthy ran the nation’s largest pollution prevention program, called the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Program.

Then working as head of the Environmental Protection Agency Office of Air and Radiation, McCarthy oversaw development of the new Mercury and Air Toxic Standards (MATS) setting emission limits for power plants in order to reduce mercury, arsenic and other toxic air pollution. The MATS rule will not only protect wildlife, it will deliver huge public health benefits for Americans, preventing up to 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks and 130,000 asthma attacks every single year.

But polluter allies in Congress are working hard to block Gina McCarthy’s confirmation. Republicans on the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee refused to even show up for a vote, delaying McCarthy’s confirmation indefinitely. “Given Gina McCarthy’s long record of non-partisan public service, it’s inexcusable for her nomination to be politicized by senators prioritizing industrial polluters over public health protection,” said Larry Schweiger, president & CEO of the National Wildlife Federation. Some of those senators did, however, make time that same morning for fundraisers with lobbyists for big polluters like BP & Exxon Mobil.

Ask your senators to protect wildlife by giving Gina McCarthy a clean vote.

Dead bird covered in oil from Bouchard spill, Buzzards Bay, MA, April 2003 (MA DEP)

The National Wildlife Federation is joining the fight for offshore wind energy because we know the climate crisis is the biggest threat to America’s wildlife this century. Properly-sited, responsibly-developed offshore wind can cut our dependence on the dirty fuels that menace wildlife in its production, burning, and most visibly, in its transportation.

A Near-Miss & a Direct Hit

America’s 3rd-largest oil spill on record happened off Nantucket in 1976 when the tanker Argo Merchant ran aground, dumping 7.7 million gallons of fuel oil. Only favorable currents and weather conditions saved the New England coast from a horrific disaster, pushing the oil away from both the coast and key fishing grounds.

The area couldn’t avoid danger a second time in 2003, when the Bouchard 120 barge carrying oil for electricity generation ran aground off Buzzards Bay. It spilled 98,000 gallons of an especially thick, heavy type of oil, fouling fishing grounds for years to come, hurting an area already suffering from high unemployment. But the impacts on birds were even more severe. Hundreds of birds, many of them endangered, were killed in the spill.

“One species that was devastated by the spill was piping plovers, small shorebirds that breed along the Atlantic Coast on sand and gravel beaches,” reported Ariel Wittenberg of the New Bedford Standard Times on the recent 10th anniversary of the spill. “The birds were already endangered before the spill coated 85 percent of the Massachusetts population with oil. The spill also doubled the number of plover eggs that did not hatch that year.”

Far from rare events, oil spills are tragically common.

Researchers from Tetra Tech EC, Inc. & University of Maine installing wildlife monitoring equipment off of Block Island, RI (Capt. Jon Grant)

Turning to Clean Energy Solutions

Today, two projects in this same region are aiming to become America’s first offshore wind energy developments. Cape Wind is hoping to begin construction in a matter of months between Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Meanwhile, Deepwater Wind is looking to build several turbines off Rhode Island’s Block Island, which currently gets its electricity from diesel oil. Not only would the projects slash pollution and create hundreds of local jobs, but Block Island would see drastically lower electricity rates.

Polluters aren’t going down without a fight. William Koch, heir to a fossil fuel fortune and owner of Cape Cod estates, is one of several coal and oil barons pouring millions into stopping offshore wind energy.

That’s why the National Wildlife Federation is speaking up for wildlife. Catherine Bowes, the National Wildlife Federation’s senior manager for new energy solutions, works to educate lawmakers in DC and up & down the Atlantic Coast on the best policies to develop wildlife-friendly offshore wind.  As a resident of New Bedford, MA, I’ve testified at two local hearings in support of offshore wind. NWF has teamed up with dozens of national, state & local conservation groups to release our Turning Point report and partnered with offshore wind developers to protect endangered right whales.

Hope for the Future

A letter to the editor from New Bedford’s Allan Duarte on the anniversary of the Bouchard 120 spill summed up the case for New England clean energy:

I hope everyone in opposition to possible future wind farms and solar farms read the “Black Monday” story over and over and realize in their heart and mind that wind and solar farms will mean greener and better future for our children and grand children. I hope they read and realize that an oil spill can take place again anytime, anyplace. The longer we stay depending on oil, the more disasters we must face.

Some worry about spoiling the scenery from solar panels around them, while others study long-term effects from wind turbines. None could compare at all to the long-term effects such as the Bouchard oil spill.

We just don’t get it, do we? To get something in return, we must give something. With wind and solar farms as a solution, we won’t be giving up very much in comparison to oil tankers in the horizon, or smoke stacks in the sky. I would rather see solar panels in the fields, and wind turbines in the sky. Makes so much more sense.

The National Wildlife Federation will keep fighting polluters and we need your help to do it. If you live in southeastern New England, sign up to testify at a local hearing on offshore wind.

Donate today and help NWF continue to fight for wildlife-friendly clean energy

Oiled duck from Mayflower Ark. oil spill. Photo by Lauren Ray.

On Monday, I spoke again with Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC) for an update and they shared the following information with me. The main body of Lake Conway has NOT been impacted, only the adjacent cove/wetland. AGFC estimates approximately 15 acres has been impacted.

AGFC stated that Exxon acknowledged that they didn’t think there would be as much impact on wildlife and were thus not prepared to deal with the wildlife recovery until Tuesday April 2nd. A wildlife recovery center has been set up and the wildlife impact numbers are below (these are of course only the numbers of wildlife actually recovered – as we know from previous spills, most wildlife victims may never be found).  The public recovered numerous ducks the first few days and the HAWK Center took the majority of those.  Tuesday (2nd) they were all transported to the official recovery center to be treated.

Here’s a list of (this is not a comprehensive list but the total of 139 is current as of April 8th). 139 Total individual wildlife recovered

• 139 wildlife recovered
• 37 dead on arrival (23 birds, 5 turtles, 1 muskrat)
• 46 water moccasins euthanized on site due to safety concerns
• 2 raccoons
• 1 beaver
• 1 skunk
• 2 armadillos
• 22 total wildlife cleaned

The first release of recovered animals took place on Monday. Ten turtles and two raccoons were released at the nearby Bell Slough Wildlife Management Area.

How far down the size scale is the tar sands spill hitting? A Mayflower beekeeper had to move her hive after finding several dead bees covered in tar sands oil.

Previous coverage of the Exxon tar sands spill in Arkansas:

• Exxon Tar Sands Pipeline Ruptures in Arkansas, Forcing Evacuations and Threatening Wildlife
• As Arkansas Community Reels from Tar Sands Oil Spill, Wildlife Remain in Peril

Speak Up to Protect Wildlife from Tar Sands

It’s time for America to take a stand against tar sands oil –  the risks to our wildlife, communities and clean water are just too great. Please take a moment now to ask President Obama to say no to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

A homeowner’s photo of the Exxon Mobil Pegasus tar sands oil spilling through his front yard in Mayflower, Ark. (April 2013)

From that subdivision last Friday, the tar sands oil flowed down a storm drain, through a creek, and into a cove just before Lake Conway, a major sportfishing haven. Exxon Mobil crews are making a stand in that cove, hoping to keep the oil from flowing through a culvert under AR-89 and into Lake Conway. But that cove is also where tar sands oil-covered wildlife keep turning up — a fact Exxon Mobil can’t hide.

Community Hit Hard

Here in Mayflower, everyone’s happy to talk about how the spill has impacted them personally — but ask them to go on camera and they clam up. They know Exxon Mobil now has them over a barrel: the tar sands spill has left their homes somewhere on a scale between devalued and worthless, and an Exxon Mobil settlement is their best hope of getting that money back.

Joined by David Carruth, an Arkansas resident and member of the National Wildlife Federation’s board of directors, we walked into the local Hess gas station/bait shop to see if local sport fishermen had any insight into how local wildlife was faring. The man at the counter told us he lives on Starlite Drive, ground zero of the tar sands spill. He’s staying in a Holiday Inn Express in the next town over on Exxon Mobil’s tab while the cleanup continues.

Homeowner photo of a bird coated in tar sands oil after the Exxon Mobil Pegasus spill in Mayflower, Ark. (April 2013)

I mentioned that Exxon Mobil and other tar sands transporters haven’t been paying into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, claiming the provisions only cover conventional oil, not tar sands oil. He shook his head sadly. “My father landed on Omaha Beach. Back then, folks had a sense of civic duty.”

Wetlands Coated in Tar Sands Oil

From there, we headed to the cove to get a closer look. A homeowner pulled out her phone and showed us photos she’s taken of oiled birds and a muskrat in her backyard. She said she called state officials to report the oiled wildlife but was told they didn’t have the resources to respond. She then called the HAWK Center, which rescued several ducks. Yesterday — four days after the spill — Exxon Mobil finally set up its own wildlife rehabilitation center with an oiled wildlife hotline (1-800-876-9291) and took over cleaning wildlife from HAWK.

Marsh coated in tar sands oil from Exxon Mobil Pegasus pipeline spill, Mayflower, Ark., April 2013 (NWF photo)

We pushed through the marsh around the edge of the cove, seeing a steady stream of oily spots and finding some tar balls. We then came upon a huge area of oiled marsh with cleanup crews working to remove as much tar sands oil as possible.

Two workers approached David and I thought for sure they’d tell us to scram. But it turned out they were wildlife rescuers asking if we’d seen any oiled wildlife. “I can’t believe how thick this stuff is,” one told David. “It’s like road tar — it’s nothing like motor oil.”

They estimated wildlife rescuers had found about 30 oiled ducks and other birds, a half-dozen oiled venomous snakes, and an oiled muskrat. They’d also spotted an oiled beaver out in the marsh, but said it was impossible to catch.

The sight of the heavily oiled marsh was a tragic reminder that cleaning 100% of this thick, sticky tar sands oil will likely be impossible; the impacts will be felt for months and possibly years to come.

The National Wildlife Federation will continue to monitor the impacts of the Arkansas tar sands oil spill. See more photos on Flickr and keep checking back to Wildlife Promise for updates.

Take Action

It’s time for America to take a stand against tar sands oil –  the risks to our wildlife, communities and clean water are just too great. Please take a moment now to ask President Obama to say no to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Exxon Mobil pipeline oil spill, Mayflower, AR, March 2013 (AJ Zolten)

It’s unclear exactly how much oil spilled, but as we saw in the early days of BP’s Gulf oil disaster, the number is growing exponentially each day. “Exxon Mobil officials said the total amount of water and oil pumped out of a Mayflower subdivision nearly tripled Sunday, reaching 12,000 barrels, or 504,000 gallons, compared with estimates on Saturday that crews had pumped 4,500 barrels,” reports the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette this morning.

The spill comes just days after a National Wildlife Federation-led coalition called on federal agencies to develop stronger safety standards for pipelines carrying heavy, corrosive tar sands oil. “It’s clear we need tough new standards to protect wildlife, our natural resources and public health,” said Jim Murphy, NWF’s senior counsel. “Until the right standards are put into place, we shouldn’t be exposing more communities and resources to tar sands risks.”

Watch this clip taken by a man who lives in the Mayflower, Ark. neighborhood where the pipeline ruptured:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Those storm drains head towards Lake Conway, a huge manmade reservoir stocked with bass, catfish, bream and crappie. Local authorities built several earthen dams to try to keep the tar sands oil out of Lake Conway, but if the water is fouled, it won’t just threaten the fish, it will threaten the area’s recreation economy.

As Reuters reports, the Arkansas spill comes at a critical juncture of America’s debate over whether to accept the risks inherent in transporting Canadian tar sands:

The 848-mile pipeline used to transport crude oil from Texas to Illinois. In 2006 Exxon reversed it to move crude from Illinois to Texas in response to growing Canadian oil production and the ability of U.S. Gulf Coast refineries to process heavy crude.

The Arkansas spill drew fast reaction from opponents of the 800,000 [barrel per day] Keystone XL pipeline, which also would carry heavy crude from Canada’s tar sands to the Gulf Coast refining hub.

Environmentalists have expressed concerns about the impact of developing the oil sands and say the crude is more corrosive to pipelines than conventional oil. On Wednesday, a train carrying Canadian crude derailed in Minnesota, spilling 15,000 gallons of oil.

“Whether it’s the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, or … (the) mess in Arkansas, Americans are realizing that transporting large amounts of this corrosive and polluting fuel is a bad deal for American taxpayers and for our environment,” said Representative Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat.

It’s not just Keystone XL – there’s also the Enbridge pipeline in Michigan that spilled into the Kalamazoo River in 2010 as well as the proposal to reverse New England’s Trailbreaker pipeline to carry tar sands from Canada to Maine. As NWF reported in 2010, oil disaster’s aren’t rare – they’re tragically common.

The National Wildlife Federation is working with staff, partners and our state affiliate, the Arkansas Wildlife Federation to monitor the impacts of the Arkansas oil spill. Keep checking back to this post and to Wildlife Promise for updates.

Take Action

The risks to our wildlife, communities and clean water are just too great — tell President Obama he should say no to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

UPDATE: The Helping Arkansas Wild Kritters (HAWK) Center is posting pictures of oiled birds to their Facebook page.

Lauren Ray, a University of the Ozarks student, sent NWF this photo of one of the ducks that was treated at the HAWK Center. According to Lauren, “This duck had already been washed multiple times, yet the oil was still very apparent.”

Oiled duck from Mayflower Ark. oil spill. Photo by Lauren Ray.

Despite decades of pledges to protect the panther, today only about 100 survive in Florida’s dwindling wilderness areas. That’s because, while politicians like to hold press conferences declaring their commitment to protecting the beloved panther, they rarely – if ever – say no to developers who want to bulldoze panther habitat.

The story of Florida Gulf Coast University is a prime example. Craig Pittman of the Tampa Bay Times spent years chronicling the ultimately fruitless effort to protect the panther habitat:

In the mid 1990s, Florida politicians wanted to build a new university on swampy land near Fort Myers that was owned by an influential campaign contributor who wanted to develop all the land around it. Their plan involved destroying 75 acres of wetlands, which required permission from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. After months of study, the corps had not made a decision.

Col. Terry Rice, who ran the corps in Florida, was on an airboat in the Everglades when his cell phone rang. The caller, Rice recalled, began “cussing me out” for delaying the permit for Florida Gulf Coast University. The caller: Connie Mack, then Florida’s Republican U.S. senator.

“He used some terms over the telephone that weren’t very flattering,” Rice said. “It wasn’t a pleasant conversation.” [...]

Mack’s call wasn’t unusual. Public interest is supposed to drive the corps’ decisions, but politicians often lean on the corps on behalf of private interests. Politicians from the president on down say they want to preserve wetlands. But when a well-connected constituent wants help to destroy wetlands, elected officials are quick to oblige.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which spends more than $1.2 million a year on panther protection, has not blocked a single development that altered panther habitat,” reported Pittman in his exhaustive 2010 two-part report on the panther. Read part one and part two.

The National Wildlife Federation and the Florida Wildlife Federation, our state affiliate, have spent years fighting to protect the Florida panther. In cases where we felt federal officials used flawed science to allow developers to wipe out critically-needed panther habitat, we’ve gone to court, winning two lawsuits to protect Florida panthers from reckless permitting.

As Pittman has reported, at one point officials even claimed there were too many panthers – that the 78 living panthers were 28 more than needed to sustain the population. That claim was used to justify an expansion of Ft. Myers Airport into panther habitat. The biologist who wrote that report later said his bosses pushed ahead even though the claims were “known by the entire scientific community to be wrong.”

Florida panthers are solitary creatures who require a huge amount of territory – 200 square miles for males, 75 square miles for females. The panthers can be beneficial to people by hunting animals that otherwise breed unchecked to the point of nuisancy- white-tailed deer, feral hogs, armadillos, raccoons and small alligators.

Florida Gulf Coast plays the University of Florida on Friday night at 9:57pm ET and despite having Florida in the final of my bracket, I’ll be rooting for FGCU. How can you not? But I hope that their rise brings renewed attention to the need to protect the Florida panther habitat that their school was literally founded on.

Take Action

Ask President Obama and your members of Congress to protect the Florida panther and other endangered species nationwide  by supporting investments in crucial wildlife conservation programs.