Eco-Activist Outfit
Files Flurry Of Suits

TUCSON, Ariz. — An Arizona-based radical environmental group has launched its latest round of attacks in court in connection with so-called "endangered" species.

The Center for Biological Diversity filed suit in federal district court in San Francisco to compel the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to make a final determination to protect 10 species under the Endangered Species Act.

The 10 species are Cagle's map turtle in Texas; the Great Basin population of the Columbia spotted frog in Idaho, Oregon and Nevada; the West Coast population of the Oregon spotted frog in Washington, Oregon and California; the California tiger salamander in California; and six species of springsnails in New Mexico.

The group has filed suit in federal district court in Portland, Ore., to make Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt list the Wenatchee Mountains checker-mallow as an "endangered" species. It is a plant of the mallow family that is native to meadows with surface water or saturated soil in the spring and summer at middle elevations in the Wenatchee Mountains of Chelan County, Washington.

The Center has also filed suit in federal district court in Honolulu against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to force the agency to take steps to protect the Blackburn's sphinx moth, Newcomb's snail, Kauai cave wolf spider and Kauai cave amphipod, which are found only in the Hawaiian Islands.

In addition, the group has announced its intention to sue the National Marine Fisheries Service to protect what it terms the "critically impaired" white abalone that is found along the Southern California and Northern Mexican Pacific coasts.

The Center recently won a habitat protection settlement in California for Peninsula bighorn sheep and San Diego fairy shrimp after filing two lawsuits against the USFWS in 1998.