Interview excerpted in Issue 56:
Gratitude & Wild Rivers
Peter Galvin is the conservation director and co-founder of the Center for Biological
Diversity. Founded in 1989, the center now has a staff of sixty-five, including
sixteen lawyers and over a dozen scientists. The organization has 180,000 members
and online activists from all fifty states. As a result of the Center’s
work, 390 species have been added to the list of endangered species. The CBD
seeks to protect endangered species in wild places through science, law and
activism.
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, the Okinawa dugong, from the construction of a U.S.
military base right on top of their habitat. 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, and 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
straddles the border between Costa Rica and Panama. It’s the largest low
elevation protected rain forest in Central America. It would 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, which would flood out several thousand indigenous people
and a significant area of the world heritage site. The CBD 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 at play: 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 because the
area is very hostile to environmental protection work. One woman was detained
by goons who made her sign paperwork stating that she was going to sell her
land for some paltry sum. She wasn’t under arrest, they were just keeping
her 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 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.
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 were believed to be 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 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
stood up in court and started to kind of denigrate Japanese antiquities by saying,
“The Japanese have an heirloom breed of chicken and 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.” And 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. A lot of people from San Francisco also attended. At one point,
the judge said, “Goodness, this is a 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. 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 corse 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. 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.
Maybe a group that’s more influential will be able to just do outpatient
bypass, but for now it’s all very intensive.
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 talussnail 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. 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: I’ll give you an example. 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 something happen that wasn’t
part of the pre-existing agenda that they had set, or agreed to, or whatever.
That can make things difficult because 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.
So we see an environmental movement that I would describe as
basically having, for lack of a better term, the Stockholm syndrome. Some of
the big mainstream environmental groups have become so embedded in the system
and who are essentially captives of the system that they originally had set
out to oppose, and it’s very difficult for them to be effective. They’ve
become dominated by business. In order to run an environmental group, you need
a degree of business acumen, but nevertheless they are fundamentally different
than other businesses. It makes things tougher for us when we have to fight
against the bad guys and the good guys. It’s difficult enough to fight
these giant corporations and intransigent government agencies, which are largely
in the control of big companies and industries. 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 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 twenty 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
develop 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 in life in
general: 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.
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. You look at the situation,
you look at the trajectory and if you’re losing and you keep losing, eventually
you fire the manager and the general manager. But if the environmental movement
continues to lose ground, at the end of the day, the game will be over. In many
cases we even 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 fighting, 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.
The key is always to offer. You’ve got to fight for what
you want or you’re not going to get it. The fire in the belly is not there
in a lot of environmentalists and is 50 percent of the issue. I look around
and there are two criteria: do they have the fire in the belly and are they
intelligent enough and savvy enough to get the work done? 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. People like Dave Brower, who is a guy who got kicked out of at least two
different groups, one of which he started, because he never got to a point where
he said, “Oh, this is the best we can do and we’ll just take it
and declare victory.” The powers that be couldn’t deal with him.
But ultimately, at the end of the day, history will judge the Dave Browers and
say that was what we needed.
