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Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (2901)	2/17/2002 4:43:40 PM
From: Mephisto	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 15516

Silent on Wetlands The Washington Post Monday, January 21, 2002; Page A16 AS SECRETARY OF the interior, Gale Norton presides over agencies with wide-ranging and sometimes conflicting missions, from saving endangered species to issuing permits for mining and drilling on federal land. She says she's committed to protecting the environment and can balance that with an expanded effort to develop oil, gas and coal resources. But she sent a different message with the way her department handled its response to an important set of proposed Army Corps of Engineers rules involving wetlands. The Corps is the chief regulator of the vital acreage that provides food and breeding grounds for wildlife, protects water quality by filtering impurities and helps to control flooding. Draining or filling wetland acres requires a permit from the engineers, who are supposed to make sure the activity doesn't harm the environment. The Fish and Wildlife Service objected sharply to some changes the Corps proposed to some permit requirements. Its biologists warned that the changes could result in "tremendous destruction of aquatic and terrestrial habitats." Interior's Office of Surface Mining took a different view of proposed changes involving mining operations' effect on wetlands. The two agencies worked out a compromise just before the Corps' deadline, but top Interior aides didn't think it was ready to submit. The rules became final without the department weighing in formally on the concerns raised by its agencies. The Corps argued from the beginning that its proposals still would protect the environment. Even without comments from Fish and Wildlife, the proposals were modified in the end, though not to the extent environmentalists wanted. But the whole scenario raises questions about how strongly the Interior Department will speak for environmental concerns, particularly when, as is almost always the case, they compete with other interests. A spokesman for Secretary Norton blamed the failure in this instance on Congress: Because key appointees haven't been confirmed, he said, "there were not enough hands on deck to move the paperwork through the system." That's not a good enough excuse. Congress should not delay qualified appointees, but in the meantime it's up to the folks who are there to find a way to get critical work done. And it's up to Secretary Norton now to show that, when it comes to publicly advocating strong environmental protections, Interior isn't going silent. © 2002 The Washington Post Company

To: Mephisto who wrote (2901)	2/17/2002 4:55:47 PM
From: Mephisto	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15516

Ten key coral reefs shelter much of sea life American Association Scientists identify vulnerable marine 'hot spots' with the richest biodiversity on earth Tim Radford in Boston Friday February 15, 2002 The Guardian Conservationists could save a huge number of marine species by protecting just 10 coral reef "hot spots" around the world, scientists argue today. A team from Britain, Canada and the US, led by Callum Roberts of York University, reports in Science that the 10 reefs account for 0.017% of the oceans, but are home to 34% of all species with limited ranges. Coral reefs are under threat, from tourism, fishing, development, pollution and global warming. Scientists warn that most of the world's richest reef systems could be destroyed this century. A quarter have already been severely damaged or destroyed. Dr Roberts and his colleagues looked at 18 areas with the greatest concentrations of species found nowhere else, and selected the 10 most vulnerable. They are in the Philippines, the Gulf of Guinea, the Sunda islands in Indonesia, the southern Mascarene islands in the Indian ocean, eastern South Africa, the northern Indian ocean, southern Japan, Taiwan and southern China, the Cape Verde islands, the western Caribbean, and the Red sea and gulf of Aden. "One of the arguments is that there is nothing we can do, it is all going to go to hell, and that coral reefs are doomed. The other argument is that we should work very hard to try and do something about protecting them," Dr Roberts said. "The question then is how? Where are we going to focus our efforts, given that we don't have the resources to do all that we would like? We cannot save all coral reefs everywhere." The researchers mapped the geographic ranges of 3,235 species of reef fish, corals, snails and lobsters, which require healthy reef environments to survive. "One of the most effective ways to protect coral reefs is to establish networks of marine reserves that are protected from all fishing. By minimising the stresses of overfishing, they should be able to cope with the stresses such as global warming," he said. But eight of the 10 reefs were near coasts that were being dramatically altered by humans. The felling of forests meant that soils were easily eroded, which deposited muds that could choke the reefs. Farming, too, released nutrients that encouraged seaweeds to grow where corals would once have flourished. "We want to avoid that, and countries like the Maldives strenuously want to avoid that, because it means their islands might disappear if reefs start eroding," he said. ·Humans - one species among perhaps 10m on the planet- consume, divert or waste around 45% of all plant growth on Earth and more than half of all renewable fresh water, Peter Raven, president of the American Association for the Advancement ofScience, said in Boston last night. "We have altered substantially the characteristics of the land, the fresh waters of the Earth and the seas, and are driving a major proportion of the species, fundamental for our continued existence, to extinction." Species extinction over the past 65m years had run at about one species per million per year. It had risen in the past 300 years to 1,000 per million species per year. guardian.co.uk