Bush making a move to ENSURE there are fewer Environmental Scientists!....WHAT A SHOCK.......
He and his cronies are now going to be on the defensive.....
White House Ends Environmental Fellowship
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON, April 13 — The
Bush administration is eliminating a
respected fellowship program for graduate
research in the environmental sciences,
administration officials said this week.
The fellowship provides $10 million a year
to students pursuing graduate degrees in
environmental science, policy and
engineering, as part of an Environmental
Protection Agency program called Science
to Achieve Results, or STAR. .
Since 1995, the program has financed nearly
800 students, awarding $60 million for graduate-level environmental
research. It now supports 311 fellows, with each receiving $30,000 to
$34,000 for one to three years, said Chris Saint, assistant director at the
agency's National Center for Environmental Research, which administers the
program.
"This is the only federal program that is specifically designed to support the
top students going into environmental science" and related fields, said David
Blockstein, a senior scientist with the National Council for Science and the
Environment, an environmental science advocacy group in Washington.
Under President Bush's 2003 budget proposal, most of the program's $100
million budget remains intact, but the fellowships would end, apparently
falling victim to an effort by the administration to consolidate financing for
environmental education under the National Science Foundation.
"There are no specific programs being transferred from the E.P.A. to the
N.S.F," said Bill Noxon, a spokesman for the science agency.
A staff member for the House Committee on Science, which oversees parts
of each agency, said the fellowship had been lost in the shuffle. "It doesn't
show up in their budget, and no one knows anything about it," the staff
member said. "It's not really explicit why this program is being cut."
Plans to end the fellowship were made after more than 1,350 applications
had been submitted for the 2003 program, Mr. Saint said. In February,
applicants were notified that the program had been canceled.
A number of interest groups and lawmakers have called for reinstatement of
the fellowship, including the Ecological Society of America and the American
Chemical Society, as well as Representative Lynn Rivers, Democrat of
Michigan, and Representative Sherwood Boehlert, a New York Republican
who is chairman of the House Science Committee.
Supporters of the fellowship say the Bush administration has sent mixed
messages.
Last year, Christie Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection
Agency, defended the fellowship in House appropriation hearings, saying it
"continues to successfully engage the best environmental scientists and
engineers from academia through a variety of competitive, peer reviewed
grants."
President Bush has consistently emphasized the importance of scientific
research in environmental decision making.
Dr. Daniel I. Rubenstein, chairman of the ecology and evolutionary biology
department at Princeton, said, "If the goal is to formulate policy that is based
on science so that it is made effective, then this program is a way to ensure
that the next generation of scientists are in the pipeline."
For most students pursuing graduate degrees in environmental science, the
end of financing for the program would be a roadblock but not
insurmountable.
"I'm pretty industrious," said Richard Brody, 38, a senior at the University of
California at Berkeley who had applied for a fellowship to study water
resource management next year.
"If you keep your ear to the ground, there is stuff out there," he said. "But this
was the big one."
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