Environmentalists Join Forces

The new group is called WildEarth Guardians

Forest Guardians, a sometimes-controversial conservation group based in Santa Fe, is changing its name and broadening its mission.

Forest Guardians this month announced it was merging with Sinapu, a Boulder nonprofit group that works to protect and restore large carnivores in the southern Rockies. The new group is called WildEarth Guardians.

"We think our combined power will be better than acting singularly," said Nicole Rosmarino, who will direct the group's wildlife program.

Forest Guardians' focus was on national forests, endangered species and rivers in the Southwest. WildEarth will expand the mission throughout the American West in four core areas: wildlife, wild rivers, wild places and climate and energy.

Founded in 1989 by activist Sam Hitt, Forest Guardians has battled against cattle grazing on public lands, loggers, ranchers and even small-scale traditional Hispanic ranches central to northern New Mexico culture.

Forest Guardians has also worked to keep the Rio Grande flowing year-round to save the endangered silvery minnow and to recover the Mexican gray wolf. Recent efforts have included fighting a proposal to thin the Santa Fe municipal watershed and opposing a Houston-based oil and gas company's plan to drill on the Galisteo Basin south of Santa Fe.

WildEarth's climate and energy initiatives will fight fossil-fuel extraction and promote renewable and efficient energy, according to executive director John Horning, who previously lead WildEarth Guardians.

Horning said the West is primed for a clean energy campaign, with leaders like Gov. Bill Richardson supporting the cause, and a greater awareness that climate change could bring more droughts and higher temperatures to the region.

The group's work will also include the Sagebrush Sea Campaign, which aims to obtain Endangered Species Act protection for three grouse species as a means of protecting the ecosystems of the interior West.

WildEarth will employ its own legal team.

"The law is one of our most powerful tools to protect our public lands and endangered species," said Jay Tutchton, WildEarth's general counsel.

Horning said in the near future he anticipates litigation to require dirty coal-fired power plants to retrofit their facilities and to seek an injunction barring oil and gas companies from using a technique called fracturing during drilling.

WildEarth will have offices in Phoenix, Boulder and Denver, with its headquarters in Santa Fe.

Copyright 2008 Albuquerque Journal - Reprinted with permission

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