After I talk to Downs, I read over Crowley Jr.s emails. One moment he says that the ESA goes too far in protecting a subspecies. But then he says that the subspecies is not in danger.
If Crowley Jr. believes so strongly that his group can manage the Kearney buckwheat on which the blue butterflies depend, then why does he also deny that the butterfly is even being harmed? It seems he is saying, there is no evidence that the blue butterfly is in decline but here is our plan to save them. And why does he, the unofficial mouthpiece of the OHV community, have such bad words for the people who live in the area he wants to recreate in and...organize the protection of?
Still, I want desparately to believe him. So I give a call to Jon Crowley Jr.'s ultimate foe - the guy who he calls an 'Environmental Extremist' The one man who is most responsible for driving the off-roaders off the sand dunes of America. The press calls Kieran Suckling a warrior against the Department of the Interior. Gray Wolves, Sea Otters, whatever - he has been a thorn in Washington D.C.'s back for years. My logic: maybe Kieran Suckling is as irrational as Jon Crowley Jr.?
Kieran Suckling is the embodiment of the unrelenting environmentalist. He is the policy director at the renowned NGO: the Center for Biological Diversity. Suckling leads a team that has been successful in helping 329 species gain federal protection. Despite what Gale Norton may think of him, Kieran Suckling has just been invited to the White House.
It all started in 2004, when staff from the Department of the Interior fed the news of the butterflies' destruction to Daniel Patterson, the desert ecologist and program director for the Center for Biological Diversity. Around the same time, Patterson emails me, " I also talked with Rochanne Downs....about their very valid concerns about off-road destruction of Sand Mountain values." In response, Patterson visited Sand Mountain to study the shrinking habitat of the Kearney buckwheat.
I ask Suckling what's his beef with the off-roaders. And "is this really more of a culture war between two very different social groups?"
"The offroaders might see that there is a culture war, but we certainly don't see it that way. We don't have anything against any group. We work to protect the nation's most important species wherever and whatever they are. Polar bears in Alaska, beach mites in Florida, butterflies in Nevada. The only principle that governs where we seek to protect endangered species is where endangered species are located. The problem is that there are certain kinds of ecosystems – coastal, beaches, old growth forests and sand dunes that invite the kinds of problems we have with threatened species."
He continues, "That’s why its not surprising that there are endangered species battles at Algodones Sand Dunes in California, or the Coral Pink Sand Dunes in Utah or at Sand Mountain in Nevada. These are small, isolated ecosystems that are easily disturbed."
"So you mean a place like Sand Mountain is maybe like an island?"
"An island that is a shifting habitat that changes as the wind blows, the structure changes over time. One thing that's important for conservation purposes is that it's not really sufficient to say that there is one area you need to protect, you have to deal with ecosystems processes such as wind. That’s why we're involved. I don’t have any particular beef with the offroaders."
I ask Suckling about Jon Crowley's Jr.'s plan in which off-roaders will save the Sand Mountain blue butterflies from extinction by adopting Kearney buckwheat communities and protecting them.
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