Tired of ads? Subscribers enjoy a distraction-free reading experience.
Click here to subscribe today or Login.

By JIM VAN NOSTRAND; Times Leader Staff Writer
Sunday, August 07, 1994     Page: 1B QUICK WORDS: SIERRA CLUB

WILKES-BARRE — The Endangered Species Act is under attack, and the Sierra
Club wants your help to protect it.
   
The act, passed by Congress in 1973, is designed to keep plants and animals
from becoming extinct when their habitats are destroyed.
    Thomas McClure of the Endangered Species Coalition will present a speech on
Tuesday about the act’s successes. He hopes to get residents to lobby their
senators and representatives on the issue.
   
Jim will add paragraph tomorrow (Friday) explaining connection between
Sierra Club and Endangered Species Coalition. The coalition is apparently an
umbrella organization with the Sierra Club under its wing. Jim will get the
specifics tomorrow. You can hold the story or I’ll sub the graph on the page
tomorrow if you like.
   
McClure’s slide show and presentation, scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at the
Dorranceton United Methodist Church on Wyoming Avenue in Kingston, is part of
the Sierra Club’s “Woodlands, Wetlands, Watersheds and Wildlife” program
series. The public is invited.
   
He’ll also speak at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Scranton Public Library,
Washington Avenue and Vine Street.
   
Congress is considering four different bills to reauthorize the act, and
the fight over which one eventually passes will pit environmentalists against
farmers, ranchers and developers.
   
The bills endorsed by environmentalists are those sponsored by Republican
Sen. John Chafee of Rhode Island and Democrat Rep. Gerry Studds of
Massachusetts.
   
Beth Dorton of Clarks Summit, the Sierra Club’s state conservation
co-chair, said the Studds bill retains the act’s protections and allows the
government to preserve animal and plant habitats. Endangered species in
Pennsylvania include the Indiana bat, bald eagle, American peregrine falcon
and piping plover.
   
“It begins to look towards protecting the whole ecosystem, and not just
individual plants and animals,” Dorton said.
   
That ecosystem approach has sparked protests from landowners whose property
is affected by federal environmental regulations.
   
One well-publicized example has been the battle between loggers in the
Pacific Northwest and environmentalists who want to preserve old-growth
forests for the northern spotted owl.
   
Such organizations as the American Farm Bureau Federation, which has 23,000
Pennsylvania members, contend some landowners are being unfairly charged with
the cost of protecting species for everyone.
   
Bills sponsored by senators Richard Shelby, D-Ala., and Slade Gorton,
R-Wash., as well as Rep. Billy Tauzin, D-La., would amend the Endangered
Species Act to ease landowners’ concerns.
   
Without protections afforded by the act, Dorton says, many species in
Pennsylvania would go the way of the elk, pine marten, wolf and forest bison
— all now extinct in the state.
   
The number of nesting bald eagle pairs doubled in Pennsylvania in the
1980s, from four in 1981 to eight in 1989. Eight peregrine falcon pairs now
live in the state, after almost disappearing from the east due to pesticide
use.
   
And the status of the small whirled pogonia, one of two endangered
wildflowers in Pennsylvania, is improving. Plants are an important part of the
food chain, and they are covered by the act, too.
   
“Whether we want to own up to it or not, we’re part of that food chain,”
Dorton said.
   
COURTESY PHOTO
   
The number of nesting bald eagle pairs doubled in Pennsylvania in the
1980s, from four in 1981 to eight in 1989.