Federal Judge Removes The Last Pygmy Owls From Endangered Species List

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Only 30 pygmy owls that live in saguaros or organ pipe cacti as well as cottonwood trees still live!!! All these plant and animal lifeforms are being destroyed by humans who want to live in Tucson. I grew up in Tucson and I remember these birds very vividly. I can barely bear this news. The Desert is dying.

Associated Press:

A tiny desert owl is set to be taken off the federal government's endangered species list, drawing praise from developers but protests from environmentalists.

The cactus ferruginous pygmy owl is only about 6 inches long and weighs in at less than 3 ounces, but has been at the center of a battle between environmentalists and developers for more than a decade.

Environmental groups successfully sued to have it placed on the endangered list in the early 1990s. Developers countersued in 2001, opposing restrictions placed on land use to protect the bird. An appeals court ordered the government to reconsider the listing and the habitat designation.

The owl is set to be removed from the endangered species list next month, a move that also will rescind critical habitat designation for 1.2 million acres in Arizona.

I lived on Catalina Highway back, forty years ago, more than that...when we were the only people for miles and miles. And miles. I went into the desert not only every day but at night, too. I knew all the plants and animals there from the smallest flowers that came out only for three weeks during the summer thunderstorm season to the graceful giants, the huge, slender, human-like saguaros and on the Palo Verde river banks, the great cottonwoods.

This is a vanished world. It is so gone that when I tried to show my husband where I grew up, I couldn't find the ranch! We drove on big highways all over the place, past malls and zillions of houses, car dealerships, schools, finally, I found it. It was frightful.

The desert was gone. It still was there but it wasn't there. I knew every saguaro by name, each had a history. The first one to die was Old Man Saguaro, He was hundreds of years old. He had been graced by repeated lightning strikes over His long reign on the foothill He dominated. People would drive into the desert on dirt bikes and throw rocks at His great girth and being First Father, He only had a soft, flexible pale green skin, easily scratched. The rocks would lodge in His flesh and He would bleed. Saguaros protect themselves by growing a scab over wounds. The pygmy owls lived in these wounds. They didn't make them, lightning or other shrike birds would make them, these became the warm nests that were protected by the cool water the cactus stored in its limbs and it was warmed by this in the cold winter nights. Year round, the owls lived inside their home cactus.

I had one saguaro who was very special to me. She was at the very top of the foothill's ridge and she stood out in thunderstorms, her arms raised to heaven, the rain splashing off of her, the spines sang in the wind, a soft sigh on winter's evenings, a song of water and life in summer when the rain poured down her channels. She had no spines on her lower legs and I could hold her in my arms, and pressing my ear to her, could hear her call to the quail in the sagebrush, beacon to the cactus wren, commiserate with the Inca dove's sad song, she looked up to the vultures as they circled at noon, but most of all, she summoned her pets, the bats, who would come on the warmest night of the year, the Summer Solstice was when She was Crowned with White Flowers, waxen, shimmering in the moonlight, the scent would call the bats who flit cautiously to Saguaro Woman's bouquets which she held out with every hand, all around herself.....

And I would sit there in the dark, listening to the high chittering squeaks of pleasure of the bats as the tiny, dark, furry animals clasp the flowers and drink the nectar and in the day, the hummingbirds would arrive, ruby chests glittering in the hot sun, dark green bodies surrounded by a gray blur of the wings which buzzed. And She was happy and she set the stage for each change of the season.

And she is dead. She is not only dead, her children are dead. They are all gone. The People of the Desert used to pray to her. They made pottery nearby, white with black paintings, the crooked lines of lighting with pictures of the Pygmy Owl and the Bat. Pictures made by wise women hundreds and hundreds of years ago, they watched for all this as the fruit of the cacti was part of their diet as well as the fact that lightning hits saguaros, lightning equals rain and always, the summer rains come after Saguaro woman's flowers open and she calls to her, all the animals of the desert, to enjoy her sweets in the very moment when everything is driest!

And then, as soon as her flowers fade, the rains come! All the other desert plants flower but not her, she begins to nurture her seedlings, all black little babies, sleeping inside her sweet fruit and the wise women of the desert would then use saguaro ribs to knock the fruits down and when preparing to eat the fruit, put the seeds on the ground. And they would grow. They only grow where there is a bush already growing. The palo verde or mesquite trees would shelter the child saguaro until it grew to adulthood and then it would take over and continue the long reign of its kind.

And this is going, fast, very fast. Saguaros have an extremely limited environment. All the animals that are one with the saguaro are facing extinction thanks entire to humans. Not merely pollution is responsible, not just removal of habitat, it is everything. These great beings breathe through their entire outer bodies! And they are very tender and easily killed. And I have campaigned for years to explain to people why they shouldn't harm these wonderful creatures.

Eventually, they will all become extinct. This is just too upsetting. Saguaro Woman has just as much a soul as I.

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Comments

[mark abbott]

You have given these noble creatures an exquisite elegy.

I've visited Tucson (30 yrs ago) and seen the saguaros in the national preserve east of town (is it still there?!). It's true, they're very alive and present and individual -- very different from so many other plants.

Now how in the HELL can a population of just 30 be taken OFF the Endangered Species List?! What's next, open season on whooping cranes? (Scratch that, don't wanna give Biggus Dickus any ideas.)

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

We should send Cheney on many hunts with lobbyists.

And yes, I grew up next to the Saguaro National Monument, rode Socksie there all the time. But the saguaros were all across the entire foothills back then, they are gone, all gone! Totally! It is horrible. Only the park is left and they are too few and too harrassed. They really don't like people bothering them.

[Orane]

Badly need your help. You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.
I am from United and also now teach English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "Murakami won the draft team."

Thanks for the help :-), Orane.

[red sole]

Thanks, I'm going to have nightmares tonight.

[mulberry bags outlet]

I thank thee that I am none of the wheels of power but I am one with the living creatures that are crushed by it.