STANISLAUS CONNECTIONS

Working For Peace, Justice, and A Sustainable Environment

A Modesto Peace/Life Center Publication

September, 2001

Living Lightly

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By DAN and BARBARA POLLOCK

Dear Friends and Fellow Gardeners,

This year, as usual, Barbara has let her sunflowers grow randomly throughout the garden. They are laced with beans, squash, gourds, melons and other vegetables and, despite my concern, everything seems to be doing OK. I used to get upset with her planting sunflowers all over the garden, but if the plants are happy, and she is happy, then I am happy too.

Recently I applied compost as a mulch over beans and peppers. Usually I incorporate the compost into the beds prior to planting. However, if your annual veggies and fruits and flowers are suffering from dry soil and or lack of nutrients, don’t hesitate to use compost freely around them as a mulch. After the annuals have completed their life cycle, just turn the compost mulch under the soil.

Are you taking time to enjoy your garden? Sometimes the pace of living causes us to rush into everything we do. After a hard hectic day at work, eating fast food and driving on crazed freeways, it takes effort to slow down and let yourself be drawn into the myriad of life in the garden.

Why is it so hard to sit and do nothing but observe life in the garden? Are we so driven by our American culture that we feel guilty if we are not busy every moment of the day? No wonder heart disease is such a killer. I hope that your work in the garden is rewarded not just by the production of fruit and flower, but by a happy heart that is connected to your garden and the world that embraces it. Remember, we did not come from any other place or space; we are a part of the Earth, we came from it, we live in it, and we will end our life as a part of it. All of us on this planet must acknowledge our place on this fragile, beautiful Earth we call home.

Don’t forget: grow organic, buy organic.

Until next Month, Peace and Good Gardening

New Land Conservancy formed

The San Joaquin Valley Conservancy, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization founded recently, is locally based but has broad purpose and geographic coverage. A primary function is that of a land trust, able to facilitate and hold conservation easements — voluntary legal agreements that provide for land to be set aside for certain purposes, in perpetuity, in exchange for certain financial benefits.

Its mission statement reads:

“We founded the San Joaquin Valley Conservancy to protect, restore and conserve ecosystems, watersheds and agricultural lands in the San Joaquin Valley and throughout California. Balancing the equal claims of social, economic and ecological justice, we aim to improve the ecology, economy, culture, and scenery of our region and its historical, scientific, educational and recreational resources through our projects. We would include but not limit our projects to the acquisition of wildlands, watersheds, and agricultural lands and acquisition and holding of perpetual and other conservation easements on wildlands, watersheds and agricultural lands and the promotion of public events, scholarships, internships and seminars.”

Incorporated in the year 2000, activities have included sponsorships of a Watershed Tour on the Merced River and a CEQA workshop and the hosting of meetings of the East Merced Coalition (to open up the process of review and planning related to UC Merced). A conservation easement in Madera County was recently secured.

ACTION: Contact the Conservancy, (209) 723-9283; P.O. Box 778, Merced, CA 95341; email: sjvc@bigvalley.net.

When population growth comes home to roost

By JOHN FLICKER,

For thousands of years, birds have been one of our most important early warning systems.

Birds have predicted the change of seasons, the coming of storms, the presence of land at sea and the rise of toxic levels of pollution in the food chain.

Now birds are telling us something is terribly wrong with the environment.

More than 50 percent of migrant songbirds in vast sections of the United States are in decline. In Washington state populations of barn swallows, olive-sided flycatchers, orange-crowned warblers and rufous hummingbirds have plummeted over the last 20 years. Across the nation, warblers are in decline, as are painted buntings, bobolinks and dozens of other songbirds.

Scientists now think the decline of these songbirds is due to habitat destruction, both overseas and in this country, caused by rapid rates of human population growth.

Many of “our” songbirds spend four to nine months of the year in the tropical forests of Latin America and the Caribbean. These forests are being cut to the ground at record rates. In Central America, more than 40 percent of the forest canopy has been destroyed in the last 30 years as the population of the region has doubled.

Our population in the United States is increasing by more than 2 million people a year. Suburban sprawl consumes more than 500,000 acres of forest and farmland per year — more than 20 million acres since 1980. Put another way, this country is adding a population four times larger than Seattle’s every year while suburban sprawl is consuming an area 10 times larger than the city limits.

Whether the birds are flying north or south, they are being hammered by rapid rates of population growth. But it’s not just the birds.

For thousands of years every monarch butterfly east of the Rocky Mountains has flown thousands of miles to overwinter in a small forest in Central Mexico. Scientists discovered the forest only in 1975.

Now those same scientists say the last days of the monarch may be in sight.

The reason is rapid deforestation of the high-altitude fir forest where the monarchs overwinter. This forest is the only place that provides the rare microclimate necessary to keep the eastern monarch dormant until spring. Aerial photographs of the forest show that 90 percent of the trees in the region have been cleared in the last 30 years. The largest tract of forest remaining today is five times smaller than the largest tract that existed just 15 years ago.

What’s happening to birds and butterflies in America is happening to wildlife habitat all over the world — to tigers in Asia, chimpanzees in Africa, and jaguars in South America. And while many of the world’s creatures are in peril now, the real trouble lies ahead.

Across the globe, more than a billion teenagers are entering their reproductive years — the largest cluster of teens in world history. The choices these young people make in the next decade will determine the fate of our natural world for generations to come.

If birth rates remain at current levels, demographers say the world will add more people in the next 50 years than it has in the previous 500,000 years.

The good news is that most of these young people want to do the right thing: They want to have smaller families. Across vast parts of Latin America, Africa and Asia, however, the kind of basic family planning services that you and I take for granted are simply unavailable: The people are too poor, the family planning options not understood, the access to birth control limited or non-existent.

One reason for this is that the United States has done so little to help. While world population has climbed 60 percent since 1970, U.S. family planning assistance, as a percentage of total federal budget outlays, has declined by 40 percent. And while we joined 179 other nations in Egypt in 1994 in pledging specific support for international family planning efforts, this country has actually made good on less than one-third of that commitment.

Population growth is about more than the environment, of course. It’s also about dizzying rates of infant and maternal mortality, crushing unemployment rates and rising levels of social and economic instability in the developing world. Most experts agree that no single investment in human health, environmental protection or political stability can ever match investments made in international family planning.

Yet, here we continue to act as if population growth never comes home to roost.

The birds tell us a different story, however.

They remind us that long before there were multinational corporations or fiber-optic cables, birds connected us to the larger world and served as barometers of environmental health.

Now, like a canary in the coal mine, they warn us of the price we may yet pay, in our own back yards, for failing to adequately fund family planning services in the developing world.

The author is president of the National Audubon Society. For information, visit www.audbonpopulation.org.

UC Merced Environmental Review underway

By STEVE BURKE

The proposed UC Merced project has just begun its first scrutiny under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), offering the public the opportunity (some would say the responsibility) of commenting on this massive project and its impacts.

Two Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs) are in circulation for two aspects of the overall project. One is for the Campus itself, or the Long Range Development Plan (LRDP), with the University of California as lead agency (responsible for the processing and approval of the EIR). The second is for the associated community, or the University Community Plan (UCP), with Merced County as the lead agency. Contact information for accessing the EIR’s is at the end of this article. The comment period closes September 27, 2001.

The purpose of the EIR’s is to examine all of the environmental impacts of the project(s) and provide mitigations for them. It is an informational document designed to provide the public, as well as elected officials, the necessary information to make a decision on the project: whether it should go forward and how it is defined and formed, if so. EIR’s are in essence, regional planning tools and a powerful means for the public to participate in the planning and environmental review process. CEQA is the most thorough environmental law in the United States, which we Californians are blessed to have. The responsibility of upholding its integrity falls to the public as well as the elected officials.

This is a HUGE project; not simply a benign little campus tucked away somewhere, but a new town larger than Riverbank and Oakdale combined. Population projections have been over 60,000. Land mass covers thousands of acres, with the induced growth. Impacts to water supply and quality, air, agriculture, transportation, storm water, wildlife and plant species and habitat, and so on, are potentially staggering. The last UC campus was built with minimal review, in 1965, before the creation of CEQA, the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, the federal National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), etc. This review process for this campus development is unique and the outcome unknown, dependent on, among other factors, the input of the public.

Take advantage of this opportunity to make your observations and comments on this huge and far-reaching proposed project. The EIRs, including comments and responses are critical, and are large part of the foundation for any potential legal action concerning the project. Note that there are other legally required processes of review and planning (see above) that the proposed UC Merced project must go through, despite the rhetoric and assurances commonly found in the press and other PR publications. These processes, carried out legally and thoroughly, could easily take eight to fifteen years. Also note that, in the opinion of many (myself included) there is a violation of CEQA with the very issuance of two separate EIR’s on this project.

For information about any and all aspects of UC Merced, please access the web site at www.vernalpools.org. Documents, letters, news articles, links to other relevant sites (including ones facilitated by the proponents), discussion board, etc. are all available there, in a site that has set a standard for public advocacy on the internet.

For all official inquiries, contact:

Mr. Robert Smith
UC-Merced Development Office
3351 “M” Street, Suite 240
Merced, CA 95348
(209) 725-370
rsmith@co.merced.ca.us

Mr. Rick Notini
Environmental Manager, UC Merced
1170 W. Olive Ave., Suite 1
Merced, CA 95348
(209) 724-4428
ric.notini@ucop.edu

Feel free to contact me for assistance in commenting, or with any feedback or questions: Steve Burke, (209) 523-1391; sburke@ainet.com.

Angels for animals

By SALLY MEARS

As my “inform the public “ campaign nears its fourth year, the message of Cruelty-Free Consuming appears to have reached some concerned citizens in this county and beyond (as far as Maryland!) They took that step to become more informed about the products they buy and consume, the entertainment and recreation they choose, and the medicines they take. My contact information will be at the end of this article if you would like to know the ‘other’ story they don’t tell you.

This article is about some of the many wonderful, compassionate people I’ve been so lucky to meet and hear about. There are scores of angels living right here in Stanislaus County. They leave themselves open regularly to heartbreak and heartache, yet see and respond to help others that are suffering. They are present in many, many aspects of life: Hospice, helping the homeless and disabled, joining Big Brothers/Big Sisters etc., but because of what I’m involved in I get to hear about the angels helping our non-human companions.

They volunteer at the pound and give love and affection to the condemned animals — giving these poor discarded pets the basic respect and attention they should’ve received their whole lives from a responsible family, rather than in their final days and hours. How hard it must be for volunteers, knowing the grim fate of so many and still giving them comfort!

Another type of angel (and they span the county) are people doing their own rescues. Their hearts will not allow them to comply with arbitrary ‘maximum per household’ pet restrictions and regulations*, if a rescue needs to be done.

Still another kind of ‘nosy angel’ takes the time and responsibility to report abusers, and see the process through to the end. This is a daunting, discouraging task since animal abuses are usually low priority and the accuser is the one many times who has the ‘burden of proof’ job. They must play detective, spy and recorder, and sometimes take the risk of being found out as snitch. (Dog fighting and cock fighting promoters don't necessarily live moral, non-violent lives.)

Protect the angels. If you see someone taking time to write a letter about an injustice gone unpunished, or just something you agree with, write a response commending them. Give them support publicly. It really does matter, and it takes so little time.

Support legislation that will give witnesses of animal abuse more support to confirm their allegations and lower the civilian risk for exposure and possible retaliation (especially if it’s a neighbor).

Become an angel yourself. I will list a few organizations** below you may wish to volunteer at or lend support to with supplies, services or cash gifts. They can always use a steady supply of angels, maybe even a little more today with higher costs.

If you see any animal abuse, including neglect, lack of shelter/water, apparent malnutrition, call local law enforcement immediately (be persistent). If you see possible farm animal abuses (this includes chickens, turkeys, etc.) call local law enforcement as well as the USDA (Modesto Div. 491-9320).

ACTION: FOR FREE INFORMATION ON CRUELTY-FREE CONSUMER AND SHOPPING GUIDE, WRITE TO : S. E. Mears, P O Box 111, Hickman, Ca. 95323; email: salamndr@earthlink.net

Local organizations accepting volunteers:

* This does not mean I am condoning the behavior of severe abusers of animals by hoarding cats, dogs etc. My defense of certain rescuers occasionally exceeding the maximum allowable is that they also actively foster the pets out, they take care of them and more than provide the space, food, and care needed.

Please note that the new Yellow Pages have a "smart Coupon" in that green section (p 3) for discounted spaying or neutering of pets.

** I am not affiliated with these organizations, just ‘passing along the information’