Military actions in CNMI 'frightening' - say enviro group
Environmental groups in the Northern Marianas are moving to take two United States government bodies to court, over an alleged failure to comply with the Endangered Species Act.
Transcript
Environmental groups in the Northern Marianas are moving to take two United States government bodies to court, over an alleged failure to comply with the Endangered Species Act.
A coalition of eight environment groups wants to sue both the US Navy and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Twenty-three new plant and animal species has been listed as endangered or threatened in the Northern Marianas and Guam, but the US Navy has continued with its training.
Bridget Grace spoke with one of the founders of environmental group, Pagan Watch, Peter Perez about the move.
PETER PEREZ: The US Military has been making a move on the Mariana Islands, to use it for extensive, and I mean very very extensive live-fire training. And the way they did this is they declared five different projects. With all these projects that they have, I'm going to have to say I think they did that to sneak it by everybody. By looking at them, one at a time, they don't really disclose the cumulative impacts of all five programmes. They are really avoiding complying with the law by breaking it up into five. They've got three of them approved. In the EIS process they talk to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, scientists evaluate potential impacts. And when the military approved their project it was with agreement with US Fish and Wildlife that if any more endangered species, were to be declared in the area of their project, which is now 900,000 square miles all around our islands, that it would need to address those endangered species, to look to see what the impacts are to them. And decide if they need to modify their plans or if they need to cease their project. So since the military decided to ignore that requirement and is continuing with their training, and planning more training, and the training is getting more and more severe as it goes along. We have to remind them, wait a minute here, you're supposed to follow the EIS process, you're supposed to comply with the law. And we also have to ask the US Fish and Wildlife Service why aren't you enforcing this. We're really we're giving them 60 days to address it. Because honestly this whole thing it's pretty frightening that the Department of Defence can simply come to our territory, and say we're going to start using your lands and waters for live-fire training, we're going to drop bombs, shoot rockets, mortars, do live amphibious landings and tank exercises and shoot shells from airplanes, and from helicopters. We're going to do all this stuff and it's going to be our decision and you just, don't have any say. And the only thing that stops them from doing that is the EIS process. Because the EIS process tells us what are the potential impacts, and gives us the opportunity to say no what a minute you're breaking this law if you do that. And we also have the opportunity to simply get a look at the cumulative impacts, and then be able on a political level, to say to the US Congress, to the President, wait look what they are doing, they're going to destroy our islands. Look at the level of destruction that we can anticipate here, you need to step in and stop this.
BRIDGET GRACE: What they should have done is that once those were added to the list to October, they should have then re-consulted?
PP: In fact I'm looking at the notice in the federal register. When they announced the threatened species, they said these are the concerns we have, military activities. Everybody knew this was coming. The military knew it was coming. Everybody in this area involved in this knew these species were about to be declared. It's part of a pattern, of the military just trying to get around the rules.
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