Letter From Major US Environmental Groups to Univ. of Minnesota and Univ. of Virginia

Center For Biological Diversity * Defenders of Wildlife
Sierra Club * Earthjustice * Endangered Species Coalition
Maricopa Audubon Society * National Audubon Society
Prescott Audubon Society * Natural Resources Defense Council

May 6, 2002

Mark Yudof, President University of Minnesota 100 Church St., SE Minneapolis, MN 55455

John T. Casteen, III, President University of Virginia P.O. Box 40024 Charlottesville, VA 22904-4224

Dear Presidents Casteen and Yudof:

We have recently learned that the astronomy departments in your universities are considering participation in the Mt. Graham, Arizona, telescope project.

We are writing to inform you of our opposition to this project and to urge you to join the more than thirty other institutions which have already abandoned or rejected it because of its adverse environmental impacts, its disrespect for Native American culture and religion, and because clearly superior sites for astronomy research are available in less harmful locations.

Mt. Graham is home to more life zones and vegetative communities than any other isolated North American mountain. It contains the southernmost spruce-fir forest in the United States; in fact the ancient, relict, boreal, summit spruce-fir ecosystem where the telescopes are and will be located is an irreplaceable, Galapagos-like cradle of evolution. The great Mt. Graham massif nurtures a unique convergence of Rocky Mountain flora and fauna and those of the Sierra Madre mountains of the neotropics. On Mt. Graham are located more than eighteen endemic animals and plants found nowhere else in the world which have evolved since the last glacial recession, including the endangered Mt. Graham red squirrel.

The telescopes recently built on Mt. Graham have already destroyed or damaged a significant part of this ecosystem, and if the project is allowed to continue, more of it will be degraded over the coming years. These facts alone are enough, in our judgement, to suggest that two of our nations greatest institutions of higher learning would not want to lend their good names and respected reputations to such a damaging enterprise.

But there are other objectionable features to the Mt. Graham project, which do as much damage to Native American religious and cultural traditions and beliefs as they do to the natural environment of the ancient forests at its summit. Known to the neighboring San Carlos Apache tribe as Dzil nchaa si an, Mt. Graham is considered a sacred place - the home of the ga'an, mountain spirits and a living locus of spiritual energy for their people. Along with just two or three other mountains, it is the most important boundary marker of their sacred geography.

These sacred attributes are the reason why, over the past decade, both the San Carlos and the White Mountain Apache tribal and cultural leaders have presented over 30 formal declarations or resolutions opposing the telescopes, and asking to have the existing desecrations removed and for all further construction to cease. The National Congress of American Indians, representing virtually all U.S. tribes, has also passed four resolutions of opposition to this ill-conceived venture.

How then, given these unique environmental and cultural attributes, plus the existing protection of the Endangered Species Act, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and the National Historic Preservation Act, could it be possible that such a project would ever be allowed to begin in the first place?

The answer is both simple and distressing. In the final days of the 1988 session of Congress, lobbyists for the University of Arizona succeeded in having a rider inserted into legislation bypassing our endangered species and Native American cultural protection laws-with virtually no public debate or public hearings. University of Arizona lawyers have spent millions more dollars in the years since arguing in court that this rider now exempts the University from any of the above laws, and others.

We suggest that a great institution of learning would not want to have its good name associated with a project so damaging, so disrespectful to the cultural beliefs of others, and authorized by such a dubious political procedure. Knowing that there are many, and better, alternative locations to pursue needed and important astronomy research, we respectfully urge you to reject any participation by your Universities in this venture at Mt. Graham.

Sincerely,

Kieran Suckling Executive Director, Center For Biological Diversity	Brock Evans Executive Director Endangered Species Coalition	John H. Adams President Natural Resources Defense Council
Mark Shaffer Senior Vice President Programs Defenders of Wildlife	Scott Burge President Maricopa Audubon Society	Karen W. O'Neil President Prescott Audubon Society
Susan Holmes Legislative Representative Earthjustice	Perry Plumart Director, Government Relations National Audubon Society	Rob Smith Southwest Regional Representative Sierra Club