Tom Stehn of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service transports one of the 23 Cranes that died in Texas during the winter of 2008-2009. (Photo: PRNewsFoto/The Aransas Project)
From Green Right Now Reports
An environmental group called The Aransas Project said it filed a federal lawsuit today in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas against officials of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in their official capacities for violation of the Endangered Species Act.
The officials are being sued for illegal harm and harassment of Whooping Cranes at and adjacent to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in violation of the Endangered Species Act. The defendants named in the suit in their official capacities are the three TCEQ Commissioners, the agency’s executive director, and the TCEQ’s South Texas Watermaster.
The Aransas Project group said the Whooping Cranes that winter on the Texas coast have suffered increased deaths as the result of the TCEQ’s mismanagement of water rights.
“The harm that the Whooping Cranes have experienced is a direct result of TCEQ’s failed oversight of its water rights permit programs in the Guadalupe River Basin where too much water is being taken out of the Guadalupe and San Antonio Rivers, especially during low flow conditions,” TAP attorney Jim Blackburn said in a statement.
The group said a lack of freshwater inflows to the bays from the Guadalupe and San Antonio Rivers, especially during times of low flows, has resulted in very high salinity levels and depleted food and water sources for the Cranes. The 2008-2009 year was the worst in recent history for the Whooping Crane, the group said. It reported a death toll of 57 birds, a loss of 21.4 percent of the flock—of which 23 deaths, or 8.5 percent of the flock, occurred in Texas during the birds’ winter at Aransas.
The Aransas-Wood Buffalo flock of Whooping Cranes that winters on the Texas coast is the only natural wild flock remaining in the world, the group said. The flock had increased from 16 birds in the early 1940s to a high of 270 in the spring of 2008.
This is the latest salvo against the TCEQ for what many see as failures in its environmental oversight role. The City of Fort Worth recently stepped in to manage its own air tests of natural gas wells because the TCEQ has been slow to do so.
Blackburn said that TAP had been hopeful that an alternative to litigation might emerge during that time, but TCEQ has failed to act. “It’s become apparent that the only way we’re going to see any water left for the bays and the Cranes is through a plan ordered by the court,” he said.
The environmental group said its membership has continued to grow during its fight with TCEQ, adding more than 20 new member organizations including all four local governmental entities in Aransas County, both the Republican Party and the Democratic Club in Aransas County, as well as statewide and national organizations that include the International Crane Foundation, Environment Texas, Texas Conservation Alliance, the American Bird Conservancy, and three Texas chapters of the Audubon Society.