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Early April Updates

By Pete Lavigne | April 06, 2005

Glen Canyon National Park Proposal

My inbox continues to be bombarded with the multiple daily updates from our friends at the Glen Canyon Institute. Great work by GCI Executive Director Chris Peterson and his staff along with many volunteers and numerous members of the GCI Board of Directors has unleashed a firestorm of publicity about GCI's proposal to keep the Glen Canyon/Lake Powell reservoir at its current low level. Many wondrous sites long buried by the reservoir have now reached daylight for the first time in 40 some years and GCI is campaigning to protect the wonders of Cathedral in the Desert, archaeological treasures like Fort Moqui and native sacred sites from the harmful effects of temporary raising and lowering of the reservoir. GCI has formed a new Coalition to Protect Glen Canyon. Initiators of the Coalition include:

Glen Canyon Institute
Dine Medicine Man Association, Inc.
Rivers Foundation of the Americas
Great Basin Foundation
Wilderness Medicine of Utah
Natural Resources Defense Council

You can also sign a petition to Interior Secretary Gale Norton here.

Among the many press hits on GCI's work ABC's Nightline has a half hour show ready to run in the next few days on the Park Proposal, GCI and the drought. ABC World News Tonight broadcast a two minute story last week as did Good Morning America. GCI's clean up trips to various areas of the Canyon are now completely booked and GCI is encouraging people to sign up for the National Park Service Trash Tracker program and the GRIT Graffitti removal programs.

Ott Watch April Update

According to Riki's assistant, Lisa Marie Jacobs, Riki has been in California for the past couple of weeks, with stops in San Francisco, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Pt. Reyes, and Berkeley. Next week she will go to Cincinnati to speak to NIOSH/Centers for Disease Control, then off to Sun Valley and Jackson, WY.

Lisa reports that

Riki spent the 16th anniversary of the spill in Santa Barbara, where she made some terrific connections thanks to the hard work of some great folks there. The Santa Barbara Independent did a mighty fine article on Riki's work.

Scroll down the page to the second story on this link.

ExxonMobil issued its first response to Riki's book on the Grist Interactivist web site. It was a surprisingly careless letter, even for Exxon, speaking from my humble vantage point. Grist also published Riki's response. It's worth the read. In a side note, a Cordova high school student wrote directly to Exxon's PR executive Tom Ciriliagno in regards to his letter and received a scathing reply. It certainly helped this young man form some additional opinions, to say the least.

See Exxon's and Riki's letters here.

The Chicago Tribune picked up an Op Ed piece Riki wrote for "April Fuels Day", as did the Juneau Empire. Betsy Rosenburg did an interview for Air America. There were a number of other events and thanks to all of you who helped make them a success.

Rivers Foundation Premieres Film Passion for Rivers

Thanks to award winning filmmaker and RFA board member Dennis Burkhart, owner of Encounter Video, we premiered a new promotional film about RFA entitled Passion for Rivers at a Jacqui Reisner Bostrom house party last week. The film features a few of the people and places we work hard to fund and protect . We will be using it in fundraising engagements all over the country. Thanks to Nancy Jacques, Dave Wegner, Rich Ingebretsen, Charles Hudson and Riki Ott for their starring roles in the film. We hope to have it up on this website soon.

Explore Our Watersheds

Copper River

The Copper River Delta has the largest concentration of nesting shorebirds in North America, is an important nursery for prized salmon and other fisheries, and is a relatively unspoiled wilderness area with keystone predators including wolves and grizzlies.

Columbia River

The Columbia River watershed is a critical link in the mega-linkages of the Pacific flyway and predator migration corridor. It is the nerve center for salmon restoration, and one of the world's most highly manipulated great river systems.

Colorado River

The Colorado River system flows 1,450 miles through nine states and Mexico; the Grand Canyon was created by its waters. The aridity of most of this region has made its water into a valuable commodity, and the fragile desert, canyon, and delta ecosystems it supports have suffered as a result.

RFA Programs

Clean Water, Biodiversity, and Environmental Justice Initiative

This initiative links RFA's policies of supporting indigenous peoples, drumming home the common sense linkages between clean healthy water for human use, strong biodiverse and healthy ecosystems, and environmental justice for indigenous peoples and economically disadvantaged people throughout the Americas. Continue reading below for more about this initiative, or go to Global Water Policy Initiative to learn about RFA's other main initiative.

Global Water Policy Initiative

This initiative works at the heart of water policy issues, especially the global debate on the privatization of fresh water resources and growing water supply controversies throughout the United States and the hemisphere. We believe that all children and all people deserve clean water, and that access to a subsistence level of water is a basic human obligation. Continue reading below for more about this initiative, or go to Clean Water, Biodiversity, and Environmental Justice to learn about RFA's other main initiative.

Donating to RFA

The Rivers Foundation of the Americas is a public foundation dedicated to promoting and funding the protection and restoration of rivers in the Americas. Your passion for environmental preservation and social justice is a passion shared by all RFA board and staff members and by the organizations the Rivers Foundation helps to fund.

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