Each year, NRDC identifies 12 BioGems, critically endangered wild places across the Americas, and mobilizes citizen action to save them. Joining the BioGems list in 2004 are three areas where the survival of scores of imperiled species hangs in the balance. In the Cumberland Plateau region of the southeastern United States, clearcutting threatens the largest concentration of endangered species in North America, and in Canada's Heart of the Boreal Forest, a proposed hydropower project has put the vast ranges of the threatened woodland caribou at risk. In Alaska's Western Arctic Reserve, which has moved to the BioGems list from the BioGems watchlist, the Bush administration is pushing to open habitat for Alaska's largest caribou herd and for millions of shorebirds and waterfowl to energy development.
NRDC removed Brazil's Araguaia River from our BioGems list in 2004, in the wake of a momentous victory in which the Alcoa aluminum company and its partners abandoned plans for a massive dam complex there. Following other encouraging developments, we have shifted two areas from the BioGems list to the watchlist: The Great North Woods -- where we are building a coalition to push legislation in Congress to protect forest lands in a number of ways -- and the Usumacinta River -- where funding for a ruinous dam project has so far failed to materialize.
Following the Bolivian government's decision not to move forward with a damaging hydroelectric dam project, we have removed Madidi National Park from our watchlist. Joining the watchlist in 2004 are Chile's Aysén, where six proposed dams threaten to flood the habitat of the endangered south Andean deer, and the Hawaiian Islands Whale Sanctuary, a crucial whale breeding ground endangered by Low Frequency Active sonar.
BIOGEMS 2004: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (U.S.); Castle-Bighorn (Canada); Cumberland Plateau (U.S.); Greater Everglades (U.S.); Macal River Valley (Belize); Heart of the Boreal Forest (Canada); Olivillo Coastal Forest (Chile); Redrock Wilderness (U.S.); Tahuamanú Rainforest (Peru); Tongass National Forest (U.S.); Yellowstone/Greater Rockies (U.S.); Western Arctic Reserve (U.S.)
BIOGEMS WATCHLIST 2004: Aysén (Chile); Baja California (Mexico); Cape Breton Island (Canada); Channel Islands (U.S.); Copper River (U.S.); Forest of the Rock (Canada); Great Bear Rainforest (Canada); Great North Woods (U.S.); Hawaiian Islands Whale Sanctuary (U.S.); Usumacinta River (Mexico and Guatemala)
