Crash Course

At this point the plane is stalling, and its computer thinks the crew is trying to land with the wheels up. “Gear not down. Gear not down,” shouts a recording with a heavy British accent.

“Try to get a re-light going,” continues the instructor. “You’ve got her from the front. I’m flying the plane. Okay. Ready to go?”

“I’m ready,” replies the student.

“We’re ejecting to the north; we have an engine failure,” the instructor radios the tower. Then, as the plane plummets, he addresses his student in the same calm voice: “Okay. Prepare to abandon aircraft. Eject! Eject! Eject!” (Both men survived.)

Ignorance got them here and arrogance keeps them here,” Carter remarked of the Navy, quoting the local shibboleth, as we sipped sweet ice tea at the Garden Spot Café in Plymouth. But it was obvious to me that something more than ignorance, arrogance, or even stupidity was at play here. Whatever the Navy’s deficiencies may be, it isn’t suicidal.

“Why isn’t the Navy worried about these birds?” I inquired. Canfield answered, and his explanation made perfect sense. By its own admission, the Navy plans to get rid of them. It will do so in two ways. First, it will require farmers to replace grain the birds depend on with crops they can’t eat—cotton, for example. Then, after pretending to implement “nonlethal control” (there is, of course, no such thing when it comes to keeping 100,000 wintering geese and swans out of the sky), it will implement “lethal control.” “Any supposition that the Navy can control these birds without eradicating them from the area is ludicrous,” said Canfield. This, then, is the trade-off the public is expected to accept and believe—i.e., that the global war on terror requires depopulating one of the planet’s most significant waterfowl sanctuaries.

But with all the flap about waterfowl it’s easy to lose sight of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge’s value to other wildlife. The refuge supports 200 bird species, 40 reptile and amphibian species, and 40 mammal species, including what may be the densest black bear population anywhere. Among the wildlife protected under the Endangered Species Act are red-cockaded woodpeckers and red wolves.

The refuge and the rest of the Albemarle- Pamlico Peninsula is the only place on earth where one has a chance to see and hear red wolves in the wild. There are fewer than 130, but finally they’re doing well. “We’re building territories from east to west,” says Bud Fazio, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s team leader for red wolf recovery. “Our goal is to fill up the whole peninsula, and we’re about two-thirds there.”

Until the final EIS, the Fish and Wildlife Service had consistently and strongly stated that the OLF would devastate the refuge. Then, after talking to Washington, it shut up. Now it’s an official “cooperating agency” on the court-ordered supplemental EIS. Still, the administration cannot prevent federal biologists from honestly answering questions from reporters. So I asked Fazio if he had concerns about the OLF. “Lots,” he said. “Last year we had 12 wolves using the preferred site. This year a pair had pups there. . . . Most of the alternatives the Navy proposes—especially chemically intensive cotton monoculture—are just flat out not good for red wolves. I have told the Navy for five years now that anything they do that lowers diversity in the area also lowers prey base and therefore habitability for red wolves. And I’ve repeatedly told them that activities there will be so intensive that I firmly believe wolves will not even be able to communicate with each other. Vocalizations are really important in terms of territorial defense, communication with family members in the pack, finding mates, and on and on and on. There are going to be entire nights when these jets are roaring in one after the other and the wolves just won’t be able to do what wolves do. Because of the experimental status of the red wolf under the Endangered Species Act, there is minimal protection, so the Navy is really not paying much attention. I’ve told them that if they build this field, I will be citing it as one of several impacts that are cumulatively affecting the species enough that we need to change its status under the act so it has more protection.”

Later one of my sources provided me with a copy of Fazio’s July 18, 2006, memo to his superiors, in which he wrote: “During 2005 and early 2006, we suggested the Navy begin consulting or conferencing with our agency on red wolf issues [as required] under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act. . . . To date, the Navy has not initiated any such conference with our agency, despite our attempts to convey red wolf concerns about proposed Navy OLF sites since 2002.