This saguaro, standing like a sentinel in silhouette, is among the "iconic, charismatic mega flora" that could be endangered by climate change, says a scientific panel's recent report.

Friday marked the third annual national Endangered Species Day, a day set aside to recognize our nation’s efforts to safeguard our rarest fish, wildlife and plants.

But this year, one fact is clear: Global warming is changing everything we know about protecting wildlife and natural resources.

Luckily, thanks to U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva and other members of Congress, we also have an opportunity to finally tackle global warming and ensure that our wildlife heritage is protected for future generations of Americans.

In our warming world, habitats around the globe are shrinking and being destroyed while plants and wildlife are forced to adapt, migrate – or perish.

While the iconic polar bear gets most of the press, few species are immune, and many are in peril – including Arizona’s trademark saguaro cactus.

A recent report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program warns that due to the warming climate “. . . the probability of loss of iconic, charismatic mega flora such as saguaro cacti and Joshua trees will greatly increase.”

The world-class scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change have summed up the challenge in stark figures:

Without strong, rapid action to address global warming, 20 to 30 percent of the world’s plant and animal species will be at increased risk of extinction.

Stopping extinction is more than the right thing to do – it’s the smart thing to do. By safeguarding wildlife and natural resources, we keep our communities healthy and sustainable.

We all depend on diverse eco-systems for many life-sustaining services. These “ecosystem services” help produce and maintain clean water and air, and supply a variety of foods and medicines.

In arid Arizona, for example, our water flows in part from the healthy forest ecosystems along the Mogollon Rim and in the White Mountains.

Birds and insects pollinate our crops at no cost – just imagine what it would cost to do this by hand!

Wildlife activity are not only essential for our well-being, but also are an enormous boon to our economy.

According to the newest National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife Associated Recreation, 87.5 million Americans spent more than $122 billion in 2006 on wildlife-related recreation.

This spending supports hundreds of thousands of jobs. In Arizona, for example, it is estimated that hunting and fishing contribute $1.3 billion to the state’s economy each year.

We rely upon nature, and nature relies upon us. But we need to act fast to make sure that we don’t lose our wildlife and the natural resources we all depend upon.

By taking steps to curb our nation’s carbon pollution, we begin the transition to a sustainable green economy by lifting the burden off taxpayers and placing it squarely upon the polluting industries responsible for causing global warming.

But there is more to be done. Comprehensive climate and energy legislation must also include funding and strategies specifically aimed at safeguarding our wildlife and natural resources.

Grijalva has recently introduced a bill, the Climate Change Safeguards for Natural Resources Conservation Act of 2009 (HR 2192), that will help bolster the resilience of natural ecosystems in the face of global warming.

The legislation would create strong, coordinated national and state plans to put the best possible tools and strategies in the hands of state, federal and tribal land managers.

The bill would also boost scientific capacity to ensure that management decisions are informed by the best available science and monitoring.

Of course, it’s vital that Grijalva’s bill be backed with enough funding to do the job right.

Congress should dedicate 5 percent of the total revenues generated by a federal climate program to safeguard wildlife and ecosystems in a warming world.

It’s a small investment to ensure that the world we leave our children is as close as possible to the one that we have been fortunate enough to inherit.

The phrase “extinction is forever” is a potent reminder of what we have to lose and what must be done.

We all rely on nature for survival, so we must strengthen our efforts to address the negative impacts of global warming.

When we reduce pollution that contributes to global warming and invest in ways to safeguard nature and wildlife, we are not only helping nature, we are helping ourselves.

Scotty Johnson, a native Arizonan and Tucson resident, is the senior outreach representative for Defenders of Wildlife – a national conservation organization. For more information about the effects of climate change on wildlife and natural resources, see the Defenders’ new report “Beyond Cutting Emissions” at www.defenders.org.

Scotty Johnson

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ON THE WEB

Climate Change Safeguards for Natural Resources Conservation Act of 2009 (H.R. 2192): tinyurl.com/qv3wum

Sunflower Electric Cooperative's coal-fired power plant churns out electricity in Holcomb, Kan. Coal-fired electricity is one of the country's primary contributors to greenhouse gases. But more than half the country's electricity is produced from coal.

The pending decision by the Environmental Protection Agency to designate greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, as a threat to human health and welfare probably marks a point of no return.

One way or another, the United States is going to regulate greenhouse gases.

To the extent human-caused global warming is a real problem, this can be a step forward. It will, however, expose the lie that a transition to a less carbon-intensive economy will be painless or even enriching.

Despite proclamations about the limited nature of its finding, EPA can hardly designate greenhouse gases as a threat under the Clean Air Act without regulating them under the act.

Nor can the agency, as a practical and legal matter, limit its regulation to automobile emissions.

The regulatory structure of the Clean Air Act is technology focused. EPA sets air quality standards. Areas that don’t meet them have to come up with plans that include all reasonable measures that could be taken to come into compliance.

Businesses that emit regulated pollutants have to obtain operating permits and get agency approval of the control technologies they will use.

There are several problems with using this approach to regulate greenhouse gases. In the first place, the problem they cause is global, not local. So, how does the agency set a local standard?

Second, they vastly exceed in volume any other pollutant the agency regulates. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that more than a million businesses would be subject to technology-focused regulation if greenhouse gases are regulated under the Clean Air Act.

The act’s regulatory structure would be simply overwhelmed.

Clearly the Obama administration wants to use the EPA’s finding to prod Congress into enacting a cap-and-trade program as an alternative to regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

Under cap-and-trade, the government would set a limit on the total quantity of greenhouse gases that could be emitted. Pollution rights could then be traded.

President Obama has proposed that all pollution rights be sold at auction and the proceeds used to pay for making his payroll tax credit permanent and subsidizing alternative energy sources.

Now that it’s for real, however, Congress has discovered an inconvenient reality. If a price is put on carbon, someone has to pay it.

Coal-fired electricity is one of the country’s primary contributors to greenhouse gases. But more than half the country’s electricity is produced from coal.

The prospects of significantly higher electricity bills for average consumers and significantly higher operating costs for energy-intensive manufacturers have spooked even some Democratic members of Congress.

So, they are proposing that some of the pollution rights be given away for free, and proceeds from selling them be used to subsidize utility rates.

This, however, defeats the purpose of the exercise. If carbon doesn’t have a price that hurts, less of it won’t be emitted.

Simply put, if greenhouse gases are to be reduced, those who produce them have to be disadvantaged and those who don’t advantaged. This, however, will mean wrenching changes, within and between industrial sectors, and within and between geographic regions.

Green jobs won’t make the pain go away or be all better.

I am not a global warming denier. I favor a revenue-neutral carbon tax.

A carbon tax eliminates the uncertainty and avoids the bureaucratic and equity problems inherent in the issue of distributing pollution rights under a cap-and-trade regimen. I would use the tax proceeds to reduce payroll and income taxes, so there is no net drain on the private sector economy.

The benefits, however, wouldn’t be distributed commensurate with the costs. They can’t be, if greenhouse gases are truly to be reduced.

If carbon is to be reduced by putting a price on it, someone has to pay the price and not be reimbursed for it.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

Macho B: a symbol and proof of Arizona's unique biodiversity.

The death of the jaguar Macho B has left an enormous void in Arizona’s wild lands, but another jaguar may be moving in to fill that void.

Large cats cover large areas, and when one departs, another often takes up residence.

There also may be wild jaguars elsewhere in Arizona we’ve not yet seen. So we must not have a repeat of the recent tragedy. We must be ready for Macho C or Hembra A. We must do better.

Macho B was the name scientists used to identify the jaguar first photographed roaming southern Arizona’s sky islands in 1996. He was so named because he was the second male jaguar photographed and identified by researchers.

And Macho B became a symbol and proof of Arizona’s unique biodiversity. He represented hope for conservation of jaguars in the U.S. and put focus on the need to preserve wildlife core habitats and connecting corridors in the region.

Over the years, dozens of remote-camera photographs of Macho B helped researchers learn about his territory, ecological interactions, survival skills and communication in the wild.

Trapped by the Arizona Game & Fish Department in February, he was fitted with a radio collar and released. Twelve days later, data from the collar showed he was not moving as he should. Macho B was recaptured, found to be in medical distress, and euthanized.

The loss of this jaguar is a tragedy – one that must not be repeated.

The Sky Island Alliance calls on state and federal agencies, other environmental conservation groups, and our fellow scientists and citizens to work together to preserve jaguars and to avoid a repeat of the Macho B tragedy.

Specifically, we call for:

• Withdrawal of the non-binding Jaguar Conservation Assessment document drafted by the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Recently, the U.S. District Court ruled that jaguars deserve the full protection of the Endangered Species Act. A real Recovery Plan makes the assessment document irrelevant and insufficient.

• Prompt creation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of a true and effective recovery plan for jaguars and a jaguar recovery team that includes full and meaningful participation of conservation organizations and scientists.

• Dissolution of the Arizona-New Mexico Jaguar Conservation Team, which for the past decade has failed to include all stakeholders (non-agency scientists, conservation groups, landowners), has failed to make progress on many of its goals, and has failed to improve conservation of jaguars.

• Accelerated preservation of jaguar habitat. Macho B has shown us what good habitat looks like, and scientists have modeled where good habitat likely exists; the time is now to preserve that habitat.

On private lands, working with individual landowners is essential. On public lands, appropriate management practices and special designations such as wilderness must be put in place.

The best recovery process will not matter if habitat loss and fragmentation continues. No habitat means no jaguars.

• Preserve habitat in Mexico and landscape connectivity across the international border. Macho B likely came from a known breeding population of jaguars in northern Sonora; the connections to the population in the south are critical for long-term survival of the species in the United States.

• Increase what we know about jaguars, habitat and conservation; increase access to information; and do this in the safest, smartest ways possible.

We need increased funding, support, and use of noninvasive research techniques (such as remote cameras) across the region. We need to be looking more, in more places, with more comprehensive, cohesive and collaborative research.

The life of Macho B symbolized the rich biodiversity and glorious beauty of our region.

Macho B gave us hope: Magnificent wild creatures still roam. We can coexist. The world remains whole and sacred.

His death was tragic and has touched many. We must not lose that hope; we must not let that death be in vain. We must do better, and we must do it now.

Sergio Avila has worked on wildlife research and conservation in northwest Mexico and the U.S. Southwest for more than 12 years; he is coordinator of the Northern Mexico Conservation Program at Sky Island Alliance.

SERGIO AVILA

UA’s partnership with APS Energy Services will reduce the university’s use of fossil fuels and save the school money as well.

While APS will pay for and operate the project for UA’s benefit; Tucson Electric Power Co. will provide financial incentives for the switch to meet its mandated standards for renewable energy production.

As UA adds thermal and photovoltaic solar energy sources, it will radically increase its use of renewable energy sources from 5 percent now to 10 percent.

If more large institutions would adopt this approach to energy use, our dependence on Middle Eastern oil and our release of greenhouse gases could be radically reduced in short order.

Macho B, killed after he was captured and collared by the Arizona Game & Fish Department in February in southern Arizona, was the last wild jaguar known to inhabit the United States.

In all of the sound and fury surrounding the death of Macho B, the last known U.S. jaguar, some larger truths have emerged that invite reflection on Earth Day 2009.

Multiple investigations now under way should address at least some of the many questions and inconsistencies that have arisen in the wake of the tragic death of this wildest of cats.

But whatever we may learn of the mistakes that were made in the handling of Macho B’s capture and the conservation of jaguars in Arizona, we may have already learned something larger about ourselves as human beings and our relationship to what is left of the wild in our world.

Macho B touched many hearts, and more than a few nerves, in a way that few individual wild animals ever do. In his death, he has become more than a solitary cat that prowled the tangled canyons and high crags of our beloved Sky Islands. He is now a symbol of a wild Earth that is fading before our eyes.

It is a place to which we are still fundamentally and inescapably connected, notwithstanding our busy, technological lives. And his was a life with which we somehow feel a kinship, despite how little we know of it.

Moreover, it would seem that we humans still harbor a deep need to feel this connection, and that it is profoundly unsettling when life itself is so obviously diminishing around us.

This is an amazing and hopeful phenomenon, considering how disconnected most of us are from the wild Earth in our daily lives. Macho B was photographed 80 times by remote sensor cameras in southern Arizona over the last 13 years, but only seen by a few people.

Other species in our region may be slightly less rare, but no less mysterious. The Tucson shovel-nosed snake hides its beautiful colors beneath the desert floor, figuratively swimming through the sand in search of spiders and scorpions for its next meal. It emerges infrequently and is rarely seen, though it has felt the effects of our ever-expanding footprint on its home.

The cactus ferruginous pygmy owl, despite becoming a media star at the center of a controversy that wrongly pitted schoolchildren against their natural surroundings, was a secretive bird that few ever had the pleasure to see in its native habitat. Now it has virtually disappeared from the Northwest Side of Tucson, crowded out by our exploding population.

The irony is that these wild, mysterious species now largely depend upon us for their survival.

Sadly, our habits are landing them on the endangered species list and diminishing their numbers to the point of crisis. But the hope that emerges from our reaction to Macho B’s death is that we no only have the tools and capability to protect and recover these species, but also have it in our hearts to care enough to make the effort.

Since the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, more than 99 percent of the species it lists for protection have survived, and some have recovered and flourished to the point of being removed from the list. That makes it one of the most successful environmental laws ever passed.

The original vision of the act is rooted in the wisdom that we humans are utterly dependent on functioning ecosystems and other species for our own survival. Its premise is simple: No species is so small or unimportant that it can be sacrificed without conscience, consequences or an effort to save it.

Unfortunately, one of the final acts of the Bush administration last fall was to seriously weaken the act by declaring new rules that remove some of the most important and effective facets of its legal mandate.

The Bush rules also prevent the act from being employed to address the gravest threat to our world’s biodiversity – catastrophic climate disruption due to a buildup of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.

Our world is shrinking, in more ways than one. The best available science has made it clear that our habits not only affect the hidden cats and snakes and birds of our Sonoran Desert home, but also polar bears and seals and penguins struggling to survive in their melting homes thousands of miles away.

New Interior Secretary Ken Salazar should use his authority to rescind the Bush rules before the rapidly approaching May 9 deadline. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service should give the jaguar full protection of the law.

And the rest of us should spend this Earth Day thoughtfully reflecting upon our place in this mysterious world and the responsibility we bear for keeping it healthy and whole.

Randy Serraglio is a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity and has lived in Tucson for almost 20 years.

The tiny cactus ferruginous pygmy ow

The Tucson shovel-nosed snake

This mother polar bear and her cubs were photographed on the shore of Hudson Bay near Churchill, Manitoba, in 2007.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency saluted environmental heroes Thursday, including two Tucsonans whose work well deserves the kudos.

Ann Marie Wolf, executive director of the Sonora Environmental Research Institute Inc., was given an award for reducing pollutants in the Tucson area and improving environmental health for us all.

Tucson City Councilman Rodney Glassman received an award for pushing through ordinances for rainwater harvesting and use of gray water.

At Wolf’s institute, an EPA grant has been used to address environmental health.

Her staff, with community members it trains, has done more than 2,000 home visits and 300 business visits.

They check older homes for lead and refer families to Tucson’s Lead Hazard Control Program, and they develop asthma action plans and help families identify and remove air toxins and other asthma triggers.

The Sonora group has overseen the removal of more than 129,000 pounds of solvents from auto-body shops, and it also visits nail and hair salons and print shops. And it’s now testing our air for beryllium and other metals.

But Wolf is quick to note that these undertakings are a team effort.

“We really have a lot of involvement from the community,” she says, “the University of Arizona Department of Atmospheric Sciences, the Tucson schools, the Amphitheater School District, the Pima County Department of Environmental Quality, the Tucson Fire Department, the state and county Health Departments.

“It’s truly a partnership.”

Glassman, who flew to San Francisco at his own expense for the EPA’s 11th annual Environmental Awards Ceremony, had vowed during his campaign to get water conservation measures enacted. And he did – both with 7-0 votes by the council.

The nation’s first Rainwater Harvesting Ordinance calls for rainwater capturing systems to be part of any new commercial building erected after June 1, 2010.

The Gray Water Ordinance requires that homes built after that date be plumbed for gray water irrigation systems – having a drain for sinks, showers, bathtubs and washing machines separate from drains for all other plumbing, to allow for installation of a gray water system.

An estimated 45 percent of our local water use goes for landscaping. By using gray water and rainwater for irrigation instead, Tucsonans soon will be saving untold quantities of drinking water.

The EPA lauded its award winners for “superb efforts to protect and preserve our air, water and land, and increase awareness of the environmental challenges we all face.”

We salute Wolf and Glassman, too. Thanks to their efforts, Tucsonans will breathe easier and drink better.

Reach Billie Stanton at bstanton@tucsoncitizen.com or 573-4664.

Rodney Glassman accepts an EPA award at a San Francisco ceremony.

Tuesday marks the first Earth Day in eight years that engenders hope instead of despair.

Whatever one’s opinion of the Bush administration, no one can deny its anti-science, pro-business approach wreaked havoc on our environment.

President Bush for six years denied even the existence of global warming, and his 2001 refusal to have the U.S. sign the Kyoto treaty outraged environmental and government leaders worldwide.

Indeed, the Bush administration even bucked a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2007 that greenhouse gases must be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

Not until Friday was the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finally free to report that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases endanger public health.

This step toward reality, just in time for Earth Day, explains the new hope Americans harbor as President Obama and a Democratic Congress work to speed America’s fight against global warming and accelerate our use of renewable energy sources.

Corrections are critical in other areas as well:

• The Bush administration eviscerated the Endangered Species Act, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar should right that wrong straightaway. The famed Center for Biological Diversity, based in Tucson, is in the vanguard pushing for that fix. (See article below.)

• The National Park System has suffered myriad onslaughts, from permission for uranium drilling beside Grand Canyon National Park to attempts to weaken air quality standards in parks; allow park visitors to carry loaded, concealed guns; and lift the snowmobiling ban in Yellowstone, where the government also let 1,167 bison be slaughtered in 2008.

• The Bureau of Land Management made cleanup at oil and gas drilling sites purely voluntary, and it opened Colorado’s Roan Plateau to such drilling despite local, state and congressional opposition.

These examples, however, only skim the surface of deep damage to our public lands, air and water quality and overall environment.

Now Mother Nature gets a second chance, and all Americans should join forces to heal her wounds and produce real reasons to celebrate Earth Day.

Protesters wearing rubber masks of (from left) U.S. President Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy demonstrate below the Prague Castle (background). The protest was staged by European and American environment activists while Obama was meeting the European Union leaders in the Czech capital on Sunday.

BONN, Germany – With a digital clock ticking in giant red numbers, U.N. climate negotiators ended another round of talks this week, nibbling at the edges of a new climate change treaty but frustrated – again – at failing to reach the heart of an accord.

After 16 months of talks by thousands of delegates from some 190 countries, it’s time to try something else.

Later this month, the spotlight shifts from the unwieldy negotiations involving nearly every country on earth to the world’s 17 most powerful economies. Among them, they are responsible for most of the man-made greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are causing the Earth to overheat.

The aim is to draft a new agreement to regulate carbon emissions, replacing the 1998 Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012.

The new accord is due to be concluded at a U.N. conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December, which begins – according to the digital countdown – 242 days, 12 hours some minutes and seconds after the talks in Bonn adjourned Wednesday night.

Haggling over every detail and concept, the U.N. talks are drawing the general outline of a Copenhagen agreement. But they have made little headway on the core issues: fixing mandatory emission reduction targets for industrial countries, setting objectives for developing countries to rein in their own rapidly expanding emissions, and raising some $100 billion a year to help poor countries adjust to changing climate conditions.

A deal requires political decisions from both industrial and developing nations, but each group is waiting for the other to put its cards on the table.

So last month, President Obama announced he was reviving a Bush-era gathering of the key players on both sides, now called the Major Economies Forum. The first meeting is scheduled for April 27-28 in Washington, with more leading up to a July summit in Italy.

The idea of the more intimate forum is to “try and generate a new level of political will,” said Jonathan Pershing, the new chief U.S. delegate to the U.N. talks.

“We look at the last couple of years in this negotiation. It has made only very modest progress,” Pershing told reporters.

Environmental activists, who monitor U.S. moves with a critical eye, agree the smaller group holds out some hope for a breakthrough.

“Because it’s a heads of state forum, and they can bring in finance ministers and other players . . . perhaps they can break the logjam,” said Alden Meyer, of the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists.

Among those invited are the swiftly developing economies of China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia and South Africa. Korea and Japan join the U.S., Russia and several European countries from the industrial world, as well as representatives of the European Union. Denmark won an invitation as host of the decisive Copenhagen meeting.

Possibly of equal importance, the world’s two biggest polluters will go head-to-head on climate issues when Obama visits Chinese President Hu Jintao in the second half of the year.

But what about the rest of the world?

“We’re confused,” said Kevin Conrad, the delegate from Papua New Guinea. “Does it help the negotiations? Or is it a distracting side show?”

Conrad said Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, first summoned the major economies meeting to skirt the U.N. process.

Although Obama has announced ambitious domestic plans to reverse Bush’s laggard climate change policy, he has yet to establish his international credentials, said Conrad, who is a vocal advocate for small island countries that will be among the hardest hit by climate change.

If the major political decisions will be made by what’s becoming known as the MEF, what will happen to the U.N. talks?

They go on at an even more intensive pace. Delegates in Bonn decided to add two more sessions to the two previously scheduled rounds before convening in Copenhagen. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also has called a climate summit to coincide with the annual General Assembly meeting in September.

No matter where the deal is struck, it all has to come together in Copenhagen.

“None of us cares what the MEF agrees. They still have to bring it back here,” Conrad said.

The U.S. doesn’t disagree.

“Our intent is to use this process, the U.N. forum, to create an agreement,” Pershing said.

Arthur Max of The Associated Press has covered climate change negotiations since 2000.

Macho B in February

U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva is to be commended for requesting a federal probe into the death of Macho B – the last jaguar known to have lived within the United States.

And we applaud the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for undertaking that probe last week.

By most wildlife experts’ accounts, a highly endangered animal such as Macho B should not be captured and fitted with a radio collar; rather, it should be left to live freely and naturally in the wild.

While the movements and behavior of such a rare and majestic beast certainly provoke curiosity, we believe the Arizona Game & Fish Department officials who captured this cat should have known better.

A Game & Fish snare intended to snag bears and mountain lions instead trapped Macho B on Feb. 18.

State officials fitted him with a radio collar before freeing him, then recaptured him 12 days later after his movements slowed, indicating the aging cat may have been sick.

A Phoenix Zoo veterinarian believed Macho B’s kidneys were failing and euthanized the jaguar.

Stress can cause kidney failure in large cats, and some experts say Macho B’s capture and collaring undoubtedly stressed the majestic animal.

“It was a high-risk activity, and they knew that,” said Randy Serraglio, a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Amid such controversy, the state agency’s promise to investigate its own actions is insufficient and lacks credibility.

So the probe now being conducted by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is logical and necessary.

Fish & Wildlife has jurisdiction over listed species, in any case, and Macho B was as highly endangered as an American animal can get without being extinct. He was, by all accounts, the only one of his kind.

Grijalva underscored other concerns with this case, citing allegations that “a thorough autopsy of the animal’s remains was not performed because of a desire to preserve the animal’s hide for public display.”

“If this is true,” Grijalva noted, “it goes against the public’s right to know what occurred in this case.

“If the animal’s remains have not been destroyed, I requested that Fish & Wildlife Service perform a thorough autopsy, so that an objective determination can be made about the true cause of death and whether euthanization was necessary.”

We second that motion. This gorgeous creature’s unnatural death casts serious doubts on the professionalism of a state agency and its handling of endangered species.

We deeply lament the death of this impressive jaguar, and we hope the federal probe ultimately helps to prevent further tragedies like this one.

These mule deer, photographed in or near the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in late 2007, clearly won't be able to go farther, whether to reach food, water, other members of their herd or a known haven from predators.

A notorious waiver that allowed Homeland Security to run roughshod over pristine areas, ignoring every clean air, water and environmental law, marked its first anniversary this week – on April Fools’ Day, appropriately enough.

But the lawbreaking waiver is worse than foolish; it has been extraordinarily expensive and extremely injurious.

The unprecedented free pass to ignore longstanding U.S. laws was pushed through by Michael Chertoff, former Homeland Security chief.

He was determined to erect a high wall along our border with Mexico, and damn the consequences.

And what consequences have been wrought?

At least 601 miles of border fencing have been erected to date – at a cost averaging $3.9 million per mile. That’s more than $2.4 billion, and intrusions into our country continue unabated.

Migrants hoist one another over the fence regularly and even a Border Patrol official quipped, “The border fence is a speed bump in the desert.”

Alas, while it may be a mere speed bump for migrating human beings, it’s a deadly blockade for migratory species, including one of Arizona’s most endangered animals.

In the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, overlapping ecologies result in some of the richest biodiversity in the world.

But Chertoff fended off protests a-plenty to ensure that a 15-foot-high steel border wall would bifurcate the officially recognized conservation refuge.

That wall has stranded mule deer, javelina, mountain lions and others from reaching their water source or other destinations, photographs show.

Indeed, wildlife biologists report, the border enforcement infrastructure and activities now join our long-running drought as the top two threats to Arizona’s endangered Sonoran pronghorn, the fastest land mammal in North America.

The problems aren’t confined to Arizona. El Paso, Texas, officials have urged President Obama to tear down the wall that bars endangered ocelots, jacarundi and other species from accessing the Rio Grande.

The walls should be removed from areas where they threaten flora, fauna and waterways. But that’s only a start.

Congress must obliterate the ridiculous waiver it enacted.

The very idea that one official could cavalierly waive our Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act and three dozen or so other laws is shocking, despite the alarmist attitudes over illegal immigration.

The rule of law must be upheld, and the Obama administration and Congress should waste no time righting this egregious wrong.