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Newton County Wildlife Association
In 2010-11, our priorities include opposing herbicide spraying on utility rights of way in the national forest, participating with local activists and groups to enable landowners to stop electric power companies from herbicide spraying on private utility corridors; and most recently, opposing the expansion of hydraulic fracturing gas wells (“fracking”) in the national forest. We welcome your input and involvement in any of these issues, and thank all our members and friends for their past support! In 2010, NCWA joined local activists in several counties in an ongoing campaign to stop Carroll County Electric Cooperative (CCEC) from expanding their herbicide-based vegetative management plan. Board members and friends attended CCEC’s annual members meeting to voice opposition to: their large-scale environmental poisoning from herbicides; their institutional barriers for customer access to the “no herbicide spray,” list; the lack of democratic control of the cooperative; and lack of financial transparency. In order to spread the word of the “no spray” option and the dangers of herbicides in a karst topography, NCWA funded several advertisements in various newspapers and contributed letters to the editor and newspaper columns on the issue. NCWA and other environmental groups met with the US Forest Service supervisor and staff to oppose utility companies plans to start spraying herbicides along utility corridors in the national forests, and challenged the forest service’s current karst map (to be used by companies to avoid sensitive areas) as inadequate. Partly as a result of our efforts, one forest inholding was put on the forest service’s no spray list. Contracts with some power companies are still pending, so we will be monitoring the conditions and safeguards proposed by the forest service on these companies. In conjunction with the campaign against herbicides, it was most gratifying to contribute to the production of a documentary about the decade’s long campaign of NCWA activists and others to stop herbicide spraying in the forest service on public and more recently, power company rights of way everywhere. Interviews with past and present members and officers of NCWA, as well archival footage of past public protests, are featured. Titled The Natural State of America, the documentary was written and produced by Dr. Brian C. Campbell and directed by University of Arkansas/Conway students Terrell Case, Timothy Wistrand, and Corey Gattin. It will be available in the spring of 2011. For the most up to date, scientific information on the dangers of herbicides, we recommend: Pesticide Action Network’s new website at http://www.panna.org/ Dr. Theo Coburn’s' website In late 2010, we discovered that the forest service approved the Bureau of Land Management’s recommendation that the number of high-pressure hydraulic horizontal fractured gas well leases allowed in future years in the national forest be expanded from around 12 to over 1,700. The forest service decided there was no need for an Environmental Impact Statement, despite such a huge increase. As is fully documented in the new film “Gaslands” by Joshua Fox, the environmental devastation of even a single well (in terms of toxic waste, millions of gallons of clean water permanently poisoned, air pollution, etc ) is significant, much less expanding to 1,700. To read a more detailed account of the comment letter sent to the US Forest Service supervisor on why we are joining other environmental groups around the state in demanding a Environmental Impact Statement, please go to: For up to date information and ways to get more involved on this issue, please visit the websites and The Arkansas Conservation Alliance at http://www.arkansasconservation.org/ To join the on-line listserve for groups and individuals opposed to hydraulic fracturing in Arkansas, please send an email to fracalliance@googlegroups.com In addition to the above concerns, we continue to oppose prescribed burning in the national forest, sometimes as much as 2,500 acres on a given day. We want federal and state agencies to show public justification before conducting landscape scale burns which threaten public health, especially people of all ages who already have asthma, emphysema and other respiratory and heart problems. Smoke and particulate matter is expected to cause respiratory diseases including cancer in currently healthy persons. NCWA Board members and officers have spoken at public meetings, written to newspapers, and met with law makers about all of the above issues. N.C.W.A. GOALS N.C.W.A. ACTIVITIES Membership Please join today! NCWA contacts:
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