NEW RUSTY PATCHED BUMBLEBEE POPULATIONS FOUND NEAR THE PATH OF THE ATLANTIC COAST PIPELINE

I first became aware of the Rusty Patched Bumblebee through the enthusiastic advocacy of my good friend, conservation photographer Clay Bolt. Clay has worked tirelessly to raise awareness about the decline of this species through photography, film and even testimony before Congress. As a Virginia resident, I was excited to learn that a Rusty Patched Bumblebee had been spotted at Sky Meadows State Park in 2014, the first evidence that this bee had not gone extinct in this part of the country.

In the summer of 2017, a survey for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline found a lone Rusty Patched Bumblebee in mountainous western Virginia. Because of its proximity to the pipeline route, that sighting triggered the concern of the Southern Environmental Law Center. SELC, representing Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, and Virginia Wilderness Committee, argued that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had not complied with the law when it issued an Incidental Take Statement for multiple endangered species including Bombus affinis.

A closer look through my images revealed a Rusty Patched perched just below a butterfly!

In the summer of 2018, the 4th Circuit Court vacated the permits for the pipeline, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission temporarily halted construction of the pipeline.

Shortly before this ruling, I was contacted by private landowners (also impacted by the pipeline route) who thought they might have Rusty Patched Bumblebees living on their property in Bath County, Virginia, near where the bee was found in 2017. On July 28, I made the trek to the beautiful country home of Bill and Lynn Limpert. Bill informed me that a state agency had found a second Rusty Patched Bumblebee just the week before in the nearby George Washington National Forest. After a day of searching and photographing for RPBB with Bill, I thought I had come up a short, but a closer look through my photos of the Limpert’s back yard revealed a Rusty Patched perched just below a butterfly! The location of this individual was approximately 600 feet from the centerline of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

Bill and Lynn Limpert at Miracle Ridge, the area of their property slated for pipeline development.

I quickly alerted Virginia state agencies to this find on private land. In the following weeks, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation’s Natural Heritage Program initiated new surveys that turned up another twenty Rusty Patched Bumblebees! Bill was also able to photograph Rusty Patched Bumblebees on his property.

On September 11, 2018, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a Revised Biological Opinion for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline taking into account the new Rusty Patched discoveries. While the report acknowledges that individual bees may be killed and nests crushed, the agency maintained its assessment that the pipeline “is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the RPBB.” (20180917-3001 FERC PDF). However, the Southern Environmental Law Center counters that “the U.S. Fish and Wildlife reauthorized the pipeline despite new data confirming that critically endangered species will be significantly harmed by the project.”

As of September 22, pipeline construction is back on, but the Southern Environmental Law Center (advocating for Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and Virginia Wilderness Committee) is already mounting a new legal challenge with the hopes of protecting the Rusty Patched Bumblebee and other endangered species in this rugged and scenic area of Virginia.

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Rusty Patched Bumblebee photo by Bill Limpert.

Steven David Johnson is a photography professor and conservation photographer based in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. He is the Vice-President of Virginia Wilderness Committee.

PANELS, NOT PIPELINES: VIRGINIA’S RENEWABLE FUTURE

The coalition of citizens, naturalists, biologists, scholars, families, landowners, and forest-enthusiasts fighting our region’s natural gas infrastructure know that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) threatens the region as we know it. The ACP, if built, will pose an imminent risk to air quality, water quality, community and environmental integrity, as well as legal rights and constitutional due process. The ACP is slated to cross the George Washington National Forest, diminishing the widely documented value of contiguous forest land and directly putting human users and wildlife habitat at risk.

These matters are absolutely critical to the future of citizenship and public health. As we know, however, Dominion single-mindedly directs their energy to follow corporate financial reward. Thus, a crucial step in dismantling Dominion’s plans to construct the ACP is to prove that investment in renewable energy is not only a must for the future of the planet, but financially feasible as well.

CCAN, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, released a stunning graphic (see end of post) this month to illustrate what would happen if the $5.1 billion it would take to build the proposed ACP were instead invested in clean renewable energy. Dominion, as well as their propaganda spin-off Energy Sure, have made various claims about the supposed necessity and benefits of the ACP, including fuel cost savings for consumers, “cleaner air,” and job creation across the region.  Additionally, Dominion purports that natural gas facilitates a transition to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. Throughout their promotional materials and social media platforms, the Dominion and Energy Sure campaigns have employed a misleading family-centric, business-minded approach that in actuality, speaks foremost to Dominion corporate profit.

Until now, Dominion has pushed the ACP using their seemingly winning numerical logic of job creation, increased tax revenue, and business relocation to states serviced by the ACP. While there might be some validity to these numbers proposed by Dominion, CCAN’s data refutes Dominion’s underlying premise that natural gas infrastructure is the means to reach maximum job and business growth. CCAN’s modeling shows that while the ACP would only bring 1,462 temporary construction jobs and 118 permanent jobs, a $5 billion investment in solar would bring 2,500 temporary jobs and 226 permanent. With an even higher return, a $5 billion investment in wind energy would bring 7,000 temporary jobs and 1,752 permanent jobs. The same $5 billion invested in wind energy would bring more permanent jobs than the ACP could even offer temporary workers.

Thanks to CCAN’s thorough research efforts, Dominion can no longer justify the ACP’s risks with the promise of jobs and business opportunities for Virginians. Dominion, you can balance corporate profit with corporate responsibility. Renewables unmistakably offer that future. As for Virginians, we’ll breathe easy, keep our lights on, and take in the majestic view of pipeline-free National Forests.

So here it is, CCAN’s comparison:

OBJECTIONS TO USFS LOWER COWPASTURE PROJECT

On September 14, 2015, Wild Virginia filed an objection to the Forest Service’s “Lower Cowpasture Project.” (Read the objection here.) While the U.S. Forest Service includes logging, biomass removal, controlled burning, and dam reconstruction in their idea of “restoration,” Wild Virginia seeks to instead restore wilderness, ecosystems, and habitat area to the Lower Cowpasture region.

This is an especially important project, as it sets management plans on over 77,000 acres  of National Forest land. This is the first Environmental Assessment in which George Washington National Forest officials have examined such a large-scale area to plan specific actions, in what they have termed a “landscape scale” project review.

Wild Virginia continually expressed concerns, throughout the review process, about practices we oppose or think need extra scrutiny. We have now renewed those concerns in the form of a formal objection, in accordance with federal regulations. Whereas the USFS has deemed the Lower Cowpasture Project as a project of “no significant impact,” Wild Virginia’s Ernie Reed contests in Wild Virginia’s formal objections that, “Labeling these [projects] as having “no significance’ is not based on objective data but instead is based on an arbitrary standard of “significance.”

Some prominent and troublesome issues include:

• a plan to perform “controlled burns” on nearly 12,000 acres, leading to degradation of air and water quality
• removal of “biomass,” consisting of debris from commercial cuts and and small “unmarketable” trees – an activity which will cost taxpayers but benefit just one entity, the WestRock paper mill (formerly Meade Westvaco) in Covington, VA, which it will burn to create power at the plant
• activities planned in this project may significantly alter the hydrologic cycles on and around the sites, including flow cycles in streams, tributaries, and downstream waters
• the USFS proposal only examines human-instigated management techniques of logging and controlled burning, without consideration of future natural disturbances such as insect predation, drought, windthrow, ice storms, floods, or natural fire
• the closest ozone monitor station is 32 km away from the Lower Cowpasture site, current air flow patterns may prevent this monitor from responding to ozone changes resulting from controlled burns at Lower Cowpasture

Wild Virginia contends that these and other activities proposed by the Forest Service are not supported by the best scientific findings or sufficient data. Therefore, we advocate improved monitoring and information gathering before the targeted activities may start and continual monitoring during and after the projects are done. We will keep you up-to-date on the status of our objection.

For further comments or inquiry, contact Wild Virginia’s Conservation Director, David Sligh:
davidwsligh@yahoo.com
434-964-7455