Peter Galvin is the Conservation Director and co-founder of the Center for Biological Diversity, an organization that seeks to protect endangered species in wild places through science, law and activism. Founded in 1989, the center now has a staff of sixty-five, including sixteen lawyers and over a dozen scientists. It is supported by, or supports, 180,000 members and activists from all fifty states. The group has been extremely successful protecting endangered species and their habitat. As a result of the Center’s work, 390 species have been added to the list of protected endangered species. The organization has filed almost 500 lawsuits since inception, with a success rate of 87%. At any given time, it may have up to 50 legal actions underway.

Rod: Peter, please tell us about a project that you are working on these days.

Peter: In Okinawa, we’re working to protect a rare and endangered marine mammal called the Okinawa dugong from the construction of a U.S. military base. The US military wants to build the base right on top of their habitat and I’ve been working to prevent that for about five or six years.

The dugong is a sea cow—a distant relative of the manatee of Florida that actually looks a lot like a manatee. Both manatees and dugongs share a common ancestor—elephants. The dugongs are just amazing, gentle, and beautiful sea creatures. In fact, the myth or tale of the mermaid is believed to have originated from weary sailors seeing dugongs and imagining that they were mermaids.

I’ve been working on another project in Panama for quite a while that’s near and dear to me. I’ve been working with indigenous and environmental groups trying to get protection for a biosphere reserve called La Amistad, or friendship, as it’s known in Spanish. La Amistad is a large biosphere reserve that straddles the border between Costa Rica and Panama. It’s the largest low elevation protected rain forest in Central America. It will include a big national park and a world heritage site.

The Biosphere is threatened by a variety of incursions by primarily U.S. and European companies. In particular, there’s a series of hydro-electric reservoir dam projects that would flood out several thousand indigenous people and a significant part of the world heritage site. The Center has been working to support the indigenous environmental efforts there. The campaign has been going on for a couple of years and is very difficult. There are two major corporate interests involved: AES Electric, which is the company that is building the dam and is based in the U.S, and a Colombian utility company based in Medellín.

Panama has elements of an economic dictatorship. Activists get roughed up and jailed. Our partners have been regularly and severely harassed. The activists we work with there have needed physical protection. One woman was detained by goons who made her sign paperwork stating that she was going to sell her land for some paltry sum. They flew her by helicopter to a jailhouse—she wasn’t under arrest, they were just keeping her there so she could read the documents and decide whether she was going to sign them. Complete intimidation. We are involved in a lawsuit over these issues right now in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

It’s been a very interesting campaign because it’s a biologically fascinating place and we work with very interesting activists. One group that we’ve been working with is the Teribe (also known as the Naso) Indians, who actually have a monarchy. They’re the only monarchy in the Americas other than the countries in the British Commonwealth. We worked with the king and his advisors and received a proclamation from the king in their native language of Naso, which I can’t read, but it’s been described to me as thanking us for our work.

Rod: It’s interesting that the first two projects you describe are both in faraway places, though they have an American element to them.

Peter: They do have an American element. We have a small international program at the Center that’s been growing in the last few years. It’s still a relatively small part of our overall portfolio. I have a few hats that I wear at the center and one of them is the international program director. I’m helping to shepherd and grow the program. We’ve hired our first dedicated program staff. Jackie Lopez, a woman who used to work with us as a grant writer, took the bar at the end of July and will start with us. She’ll work mostly in the international program with me.

So yes, it is interesting that those first two projects I mentioned are far away. The vast majority of the center’s projects are in the U.S., but those are two that aren’t that I’ve been working on.

Rod: What role does litigation play in those two projects?

Peter: Litigation plays a role in the project in Japan because we have filed a groundbreaking lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense challenging the military base construction in Okinawa on the basis of the National Historic Preservation Act. This is a suit that I thought of and am kind of proud of. It is the first case against the U.S. government under the National Historic Preservation Act that applies to an international U.S. action. The NHPA, as it’s known, was modified in 1980 to incorporate the terms of the World Heritage Convention. That was while Jimmy Carter was president and the U.S. still actually signed international treaties.

The World Heritage Convention was amended to protect antiquities and cultural landscapes, and then the NHPA was amended to incorporate that modification. The modification stated that the U.S. would not destroy antiquities and cultural objects in other countries and would consult with the host nations and bind itself—and this is the kicker—to the host nation’s equivalent law. So the U.S. has to harmonize itself upward to whatever the protection that the host nation affords. And the U.S. military, for example, is in over a hundred countries around the world, so as you can imagine it is complicated. This lawsuit could affect a lot of projects down the road. In fact, I saw a presentation once that showed that the total land area that the U.S. military occupies around the world exceeds the complete land area of something like half the world’s countries. The U.S. military has millions and millions of acres in the U.S. of course, but that doesn’t include the bases we have over seas. It’s staggering.

Forty percent of the land and sea area of Okinawa is controlled by the U.S. military, including twenty percent of the actual land area. It’s been fascinating to learn about the cultural issues. Japan is a very cultural place and Okinawa is a very unique place within Japan. It’s almost forcibly part of Japan. It was its own kingdom until the mid-1800s. It was called the Ryukyu Kingdom and they one of the most peaceful people on earth. It was a very advanced, sophisticated trading society. As early as the 14th and 15th century, they had trade established by ship to Ceylon and other faraway places. The Ryukyu paid tribute to China for a long time as a lot of countries over there did. Then Japan started flexing its muscles in that area, so for a while they were paying tribute to both Japan and China. The taxation on the peasants was enormous. But anyway, they were a very peaceful people, had no weapons. In fact, someone, I think it was Napoleon, remarked at one point that he was thinking about taking it over as part of his global expansion, but then demurred saying that they were obviously people who shouldn’t be taken over because they were so peaceful.

Rod: It’s also a place where people live a long time, or used to anyway, based on their diet.

Peter: They live a really long time, although that is changing a little bit due to fried foods and Western packaged foods, but it is very interesting. I’ve been over there five times in the five year campaign. There are some young people involved for sure, but you know I was thirty-eight when I started working on the campaign, I’m forty-three now, and I’m still one of the youngest people involved. Many of the people I’m working with are double my age or higher and they’re still working on their properties and their gardens—they’re out there moving around. So spiritually and emotionally it has been a very gratifying campaign to work on.

The Panama project is different. The project in Okinawa has been incredible because it’s completely opened my eyes to a whole area of the world and history and geopolitical things that I had no idea about—all on the genesis of learning about this sea mammal. The dugong is considered sacred to Okinawan culture and that’s how the suit was brought to begin with. The dugong is considered a messenger of the gods. For instance, before tsunamis would hit, dugongs would appear in the harbors of the towns to warn people. So there is a lot of lore surrounding the dugong.

We’ve won two important rulings so far and are now in another phase. First, the government tried to say that we couldn’t sue them because it would interfere with foreign policy under the doctrine of comity. The judge rejected that. Then they started to get desperate. The government argued that everything is sacred in Japan, that our lawsuit was a farce and that the Japanese cultural protection law is a farce. The lawyer for the government started denigrate Japanese antiquities by saying, “The Japanese have heirloom chickens and a breed of pig that are considered culturally important. Where will it end? Everything is sacred over there. It doesn’t matter. It’s all just a list.” The judge seemed very upset.

Rod: Is litigation the primary thrust of your efforts in both countries? Is it a minor part of an overall strategy, or half of the overall strategy?

Peter: I’d say it’s half the overall strategy because in each case, the litigation—and this is something that is true across the board—is not only a means in and of itself to address the injustice, or attempt to address the injustice, it is the vehicle by which society can participate, observe and learn about the issue. In other words, in Japan and Panama, suing people is more of a big deal than it is here. People are suing other people all the time over here. In Japan it’s actually very rare. The fact that we’ve filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government is significant. The U.S. tries to present itself as this omnipotent force that cannot be challenged by anyone anywhere, so the fact that the judge has refused to reject the case is important. She’s ruled in our favor twice now and demanded to know the U.S. military’s plans. We’ve gotten thousands of pages of government documents released to the Japanese public. The Japanese government is highly secretive, much more secretive than even the U.S. government, believe it or not. We’ve been able to get huge amounts of information about U.S. military activities and how they affect the environment and civilian health and well-being. We’ve released that information to Japanese media outlets. So the lawsuit forms a very important role in the overall campaign. It’s media, it’s organizing, it’s mobilizing people, it’s getting people together. This campaign has brought together peace activists, environmental activists, and Okinawan sovereignty activists all at the same time. It’s helping to bridge gaps in social movements as well.

Rod: Is the judge an Okinawan judge?

Peter: No, we filed in U.S. court and the judge is a famous judge in San Francisco, Judge Marilyn Patel. It was the luck of the draw that we got her. She is a very well known judge who often doesn’t take the government’s word without reviewing things herself. The first hearing we had was in 2004. A few dozen people flew over from Okinawa and other parts of Japan for the hearing, including Japanese activists we were working with, all of our staff working on the project. A lot of people from San Francisco also attended. At one point, the judge said, “Goodness, this is crowded courtroom! How many people are here on behalf of the dugong?” Everybody raised their hands, and she said, “And how many people are here on behalf of the Department of Defense?” Three lawyers raised their hands. She said, “I’ve seen a dugong, and they’re beautiful creatures.” That was one of the first things she said, and we were like, “Yes!”

Rod: Obviously, the government would challenge the jurisdiction if it could. Did they just not even bother?

Peter: They tried, actually. They said it shouldn’t be in U.S. Court and it shouldn’t be in San Francisco. They tried every possible thing. But we had done our homework on where we were entitled to file suit, and we had a strong case. As a matter of fact, part of the research that I did on this case—the internet has made some of these things more possible now—involved finding a chat site for archaeologists who deal with the National Historic Preservation Act. I posted a question: “This section of the National Historic Preservation Act seems to say that we cannot harm antiquities abroad. Has anybody looked at this section?” Someone responded by saying, “Yeah, I always thought that we were vulnerable on that.” Discovering something like that is one of the most exciting parts of this work. You take a complex problem, and then put together your legal, administrative, and activism tools that could be useful. I sometimes think that I’m just channeling the solution rather than thinking of it. A flood of information comes toward you and I suppose it’s like a mathematician who sees an equation or a formula. All of a sudden it’s in your head and you see the way forward—the basis of a lawsuit that could be brought. Then there’s a lot of vetting and research and dealing with attorneys. I’m not an attorney myself; I’m a biologist by training. I’ve had to learn a lot of legal stuff and I’m now a paralegal. You come up with the idea and then you have to run it past the gauntlet of skeptical attorneys who work with us and who are trying to gun down your idea at every twist and turn just like judges do.

We’ve worked with Earthjustice on the dugong case, an environmental law firm we work with a lot on a lot of different cases. They’re very rigorous people. All the lawyers we work with are very rigorous, but Earthjustice is extremely rigorous. And they were extremely skeptical about this case and they kept emailing back with questions and barriers, and we got over each one. Some of them took a couple days to research. But, sure enough, we got to the end of the analysis and they had to agree and say, “We think you’re right. We think your analysis is correct. There is a case here.”

Rod: What percentage of your time is taken up with these two and other international issues?

Peter: I would say a quarter of my time. It varies with the time of year.

Rod: What percentage of the Center’s efforts, resources and energies are internationally focused?

Peter: Probably less than ten percent of our efforts are focused on international issues. We have another project now called the Global Owl Project, which we just took on early this year. It is a network of owl scientists and activists throughout the world, and it seeks to be a comprehensive owl protection network that protects all 225 species of owls in the world. The head of the project, David Johnson, is from Arlington, VA. He’s the only staff person of the Global Owl Project, which is part of CBD. In addition to him, there are about seventy-five volunteers in different countries. We even have someone in Bangladesh. We’ve gotten equipment donations from Patagonia and other places. If the volunteers need a new pair of binoculars, we’ll try to find some. The goal is to embed owl information and protection in every country in the world.

Rod: Could you tell us about a domestic project you’re working on?

Peter: There are two that are particularly interesting for me. One we’ve worked on for several years that just went into effect two days ago is a ban on lead bullets in the range of the California condor. Lead poisoning is a huge problem for condors. It’s actually a huge problem for other birds, too, such as golden eagles and bald eagles. But in the last couple of years, at least half of the condors in the wild have had to be brought in for blood transfusions because of high lead levels. Several have died. People are theorizing that, over time, the lead exposure is creating a less intelligent, mentally and neurologically damaged condor population.

Condors are carrion eaters. A lot of animals that are shot are not recovered or their remains aren’t properly buried. The proper thing to do is bury any part of the animal you don’t intend to carry off, but because that’s a lot of work, people just leave it out there. Sometimes an animal is shot and wounded but not killed, and it wanders off and dies. A condor will then find it and eat it. So it’s a massive problem for condors, and in fact condor recovery efforts cannot move any farther without dealing with this issue.

Rod: And who would you sue in that case?

Peter: We worked for years, actually, developing a litany of people to sue and who could be sued. Each person was of course blaming the other. The state government blames the Forest Service saying, “Oh, these are on Forest Service lands, so they must be responsible.” The Forest Service blames the state because they say, “It’s the state that regulates wildlife and hunting.” Or they blame the Fish and Wildlife Service. They all point their fingers at each other.

Rod: You sued the whole bunch of them?

Peter: We did. The first one, and the one I was most eager to sue, was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. It’s not a goal at the center, but we’ve joked that we’ve sued so many people that, at some point, we will have sued every federal government agency. Then a couple years ago I wondered, “How many federal government agencies are there and how many have we sued?” I looked it up, and you would be amazed at how many government agencies there are. There are just hundreds and hundreds. Some of them I had never heard of. So I got a book of all government agencies to make sure that I knew what they all were. And sure enough, we have now sued two thirds of them. We have sued the CIA. We’ve sued the FBI. We’ve sued almost all of them for not meeting their obligations to purchase alternative fuel vehicles. That was a great case. We sued the CIA, but they couldn’t figure out how many alternative fuel vehicles they had purchased. So we asked, “What do you mean you don’t have the information? You’re the CIA!”

Going back to the condor case, we sued the Department of Fish and Game in California under the Endangered Species Act. It was a federal law suit against the state. The legal basis for the case was that the state had authorized hunting regulations and permits, and condors had died from lead poisoning from bullets that were left in the field as a result. So we sued and, during the process of the suit, we also worked with legislators in California to get a bill introduced to ban almost all lead bullets in the range of the California condor. The pressure of our lawsuit ultimately led to the passage of that bill, which took effect July 1 of this year. We’re still in court over ‘22 use, which is unfortunately not entirely covered by the law.

The condor case was a very volatile issue because we knew, like a lot of environmental problems, one of the reasons nothing had been done was that there was a strong lobby trying to prevent reform. In this case, it was the National Rifle Association. A lot of the work that we do involves analyzing the political landscape to determine how best to proceed because, while we’re motivated by science and our love of the wild, we can’t ignore the geopolitical factors. In fact, in many cases, the barriers to protect the environment are often more related to political and bureaucratic factors than to scientific factors. That’s one of the things that we pride ourselves on doing: we take the best available science and force it into the public policy process. In theory, it’s seamlessly flowing from one end to the other, but in reality it isn’t. There’re arterial blockages that prevent the correct information from getting to the brain as it were, the agency. The Center bypasses arteries.

Rod: At the talk in Burlington, you mentioned an eighty-seven percent success rate, excluding filings related to forest plans.

Peter: Right, because we’re making a distinction between litigation actions and administrative appeals. The difference being that with administrative appeals, you appeal to a higher level of the same agency, and of course that makes your odds of prevailing a little low.

Rod: Have you reached conclusions about approaches, tactics, or even types of projects that are more successful and those that are less successful in the kind of work you do.

Peter: Definitely. There’s a variety of patterns that one sees, but having a very committed local partner—a scientist or a local group, for example—is often an integral part of the recipe for success. Let’s say we’re trying to protect an endangered species. In San Antonio, Texas, Wal-Mart was going to build a giant super center on the habitat of these cave-dwelling, blind spiders. In many cases, an obscure a wildlife issue also happens to be related to another issue that’s important to people. In that case, these cave-dwelling, blind spiders live in the water recharge area of the San Antonio aquifer. So the Wal-Mart parking lot, the pollution and the run-off of the oil and all the stuff that goes with development would directly drain into the water table. We worked closely with a local group in San Antonio that knew about every aspect of the project, and when there was a meeting or hearing, they would get twenty or thirty people to attend. It was really a great partnership. When we needed information on what was going on out there, they had someone who could send an email and digital photos within an hour.

Good partners can also be eminent scientists. Some of the species we deal with are very obscure like the blind cave spiders I mentioned. The Mexican garter snake and the Kootenai river population of the white sturgeon are also very obscure species or subspecies. We worked on the San Xavier talus snail and the expert on this species, Dr. Hoffman, is an F16 mechanic for the Air Force. He’s the world expert on desert land snails. He just does it in his spare time. So you come into contact with fascinating people who are often extremely strong advocates and highly knowledgeable about a particular subject. Often they are the world’s authority on that subject.

Someone whose knowledge is unimpeachable and who has impeccable credentials can make the difference. A lawsuit never exists in a vacuum. It’s always part of a campaign. Even if most of the campaigns involve a lawsuit, it’s not just a lawsuit. It is its own screenplay. You have to cast the characters and the tenor. You learn over the years who to work with. You develop relationships and partnerships in the environmental community. Some people you work with well, others not so well.

We have a lot of rainmakers. Our people look around, take stock of the resources around them and find people who are motivated to get where we need to go. One of the great things about this kind of work is that as soon as people figure out what you’re doing and what you’re about and that it’s for the greater good, all kinds of resources and energy are made available. And then when people figure out that you have a track record of success and that there’s some chance that if they help, you are actually going to succeed in their goal—that motivates people.

Rod: Sure, absolutely, because there’s so much discouragement in much of this work

Peter: Areas where you have a lot of what I’ll call genteel environmental groups--sometimes you can face a situation where you have well-intentioned groups that either always were, or have essentially become, part of the power structure. They don’t like it when someone comes in and tries to make things happen that weren’t part of the pre-existing agenda that they had set, or agreed to, or whatever.

Rod: Are there any common characteristics other than a lack of a good local partner that underlie a significant number of the times you’ve tried things and they haven’t worked out well?

Peter: If you’re operating in, for example, Oklahoma, where there aren’t a lot of environmental groups, you’re able to find who your allies are quickly, and your opponents are almost caricatures of themselves. They’ve set themselves in such an extreme place that it’s hard for anybody to take them seriously. That’s a situation in an area without a lot of environmental infrastructure and with a somewhat despotic political atmosphere. That can be an excellent operating environment because you have people like Senator James Inhofe, the leading Republican Senator from Oklahoma. He is the Ranking Minority Member on the Environment and Public Works Committee and he doesn’t believe global warming is occurring.

We are working on another project at the Tejon Ranch, which is the largest area of private land in California. Our group and a number of other groups are working to try and see if there is a negotiated settlement that could be reached to preserve as much of the land as possible. Unfortunately, some of the other environmental groups struck a deal that we feel wasn’t strong enough, and now we’re fighting with the consequences of that.

I have the utmost respect for those other groups, but when you have influential environmental groups who are afraid to rock the boat, afraid to be more strident than they are, it can be difficult to encourage good policy.

Basically, the system throws the environment a bunch of crumbs every now and then, and sometimes the crumbs are bigger and taste better than the others. But let’s face it, relative to the operating of our governmental and corporate structures, what we’re being thrown is crumbs. Sometimes the crumbs are exciting, like when we get a national reserve or a national park. These are exciting, critical and important victories, but this is a football game that we are losing. If the clock continues to run down at the rate it’s running and the score remains the same, we will lose. It’s not enough to just lose by less, right? There’s no glory in losing by less. You either lost or you didn’t lose. And in our case, it’s survival of our species and the planet itself that either happens or doesn’t happen at the end of the game.

Some of the big mainstream environmental groups have become so embedded in the system and are essentially captives of the system that they originally had set out to change, and it’s very difficult for them to be effective. They’ve become dominated by business.

It makes things tougher for us when we have to fight against the bad guys and the good guys. It’s difficult to fight the giant corporations and intransigent government agencies, which are largely in the control of big companies and industries, but it’s doubly hard when you have to go up against your own allies. That’s very unpleasant.

Rod: So that brings up the next question. Do you have a view of the role of goodwill in your work—the role of goodwill in the environmental or wilderness protection movements—as a whole as contrasted with confrontation?

Peter: It’s interesting to compare and contrast those because I was going to respond by saying, “Oh, goodwill, that’s essential to what we do. That is what we do.” And what I mean by that is that the success of the Center over the last 20 years has been that our word is our bond. We have goodwill within the environmental movement. We’ve had a few run-ins with some of the bigger outfits over the years, but the bottom line is that we’ve figured out who the appropriate local partner is and we’ve developed relationships with people that last decades. We give people the credit that they deserve when they do something great. You can have a spat with someone, but then you kiss and are friends again. And that’s goodwill: honoring your relations and honoring those around you who’ve helped you get to where you are. That’s a strong part of what the center has done.

A second aspect of goodwill is the intentions behind your actions. The same action done with different intentions can produce a different result or ripple in the universe. We do what we do out of love—love of life. It’s true that through that one develops certain antipathies toward those who are destroying life. But that isn’t the essence of why we do what we do. We do what we do out of love: love for the Earth, love for the critters, and love for our community.

Now, to answer the question in the way you apparently asked it. I believe in a multitude of approaches. I believe environmental education is one of the most important investments that we can make in our society. And I mean those sixth grade science camps and all that stuff that’s not glamorous. Nobody’s getting sued so you’ll probably never hear about the people who do that. But it’s so important.

Let’s go to the issue of the confrontation approach versus the “can’t we all just get along?” approach. Do you think that when Exxon starts their board meeting, they think to themselves, “Gosh, how can we get along with our neighbors and partners? How can we be a good corporate citizen in the universe and make the world a better place.” No! They go in there and think, “How can we get as much as we can for as little investment as we can?” If they have to negotiate with us, they will, but they really don’t want to.

In our society, what we’re dealing with is a free-for-all on a policy level, and the environment is losing. If you own a professional sports team and you’re losing and you think that you’ll likely keep losing, eventually you fire the manager and the general manager. If the environmental movement continues to lose ground, at the end of the day, the game will be over. In many cases we claim a victory to save face, but we all know that things are getting worse in terms of global warming or species extinction—you name the issue.

The bottom line is that, as Leo Durocher, the baseball coach, said, “Nice guys finish last.” Spiritually, that’s a repugnant statement, but in practice it’s entirely correct. The corporate governments of our society understand one thing and that’s power. And one has to figure out how to shift the balance of power because there’s a time for negotiation, there’s a time for confrontation and there’s a time to reach an accord. If you reach an accord when you’re at a weak leverage point, you’re not going to get a very good accord.

You’ve got to fight for what you want or you’re not going to get it. It’s like on the back of the airplane magazine where they have that guy who says, “ You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.” And that’s the deal with the environmental movement. The fire in the belly is not there in a lot of environmentalists and is 50 percent of the issue. There are two criteria when considering a local partner: do they have the fire in the belly and are they intelligent enough and savvy enough to get the work done? The fire is bred out of us in gentility and meetings where everybody’s talking about destroying some ecosystem, but doing it in muted tones. It’s all part of the game of numbness and removal from the actual situation.

The environmental movement has been far too “nicey nicey” over the last 30 years. There have been some amazing successes and victories and I look up at the people who started this thing, the greats, and owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to them. They didn’t say, “Oh, this is the best we can do and we’ll just take it and declare victory.” Ultimately, to actually make the progress we need to make as a culture, we need to stand firm on the things that really matter.

Rod: Thank you Peter.

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