"In recent years, the Forest Service has flagrantly abused its discretion by misinterpreting the Eastern Wilderness Act and incorrectly applying ad hoc guidelines," Furnish writes in the report, titled Eastern Roadless Areas Under Threat. "This has resulted in an inconsistent approach (and) raised questions about the agency's credibility and stewardship."

"The Forest Service is putting the environment at risk by placing exploitation of public lands ahead of stewardship," said Robert Vandermark, co-director of the Heritage Forests Campaign. "From the lake states to the Appalachians and into New England, the trend has been to minimize and reduce roadless areas and wilderness recommendations."

Conservationists say the White House has exacerbated the threat by proposing to eliminate National Forests protections currently in place under the Roadless Rule. The Administration's plan eviscerates current forests protections, and instead allows state and local politicians to either petition for protection of roadless areas in their states -- or for more logging, mining and drilling.

The Roadless Rule was finalized in Jan. 2001 after years of scientific study, 600 local public hearings and meetings and a record number of public comments. Prior to the current public comment period, the Forest Service received 2.5 million comments in favor of the rule. The Rule protects 58.5 million acres nationwide, while allowing temporary road construction in order to fight wildfires, ensure public safety, and protect forest health. The Rule ensures that national forests will continue to provide habitat for fish and wildlife, clean drinking water for millions of Americans, and endless opportunities for recreation.

The National Marine Fisheries Service issued a draft biological opinion last month stating that hydropower dams on the river will not threaten endangered salmon and steelhead populations, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Now 102 lawmakers have sent a letter to President Bush requesting that the draft be rewritten.

Led by Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Thomas Petri (R-Wis.) and Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), the letter asserts that the current draft "does not ensure self-sustaining, harvestable populations, by relying on legal technicalities to justify not having to fully mitigate for the operation of the hydropower system." The lawmakers ask that the draft be rewritten in a way that is "biologically, legally, and fiscally defensible" and that recognizes "the Federal Government's numerous legal and tribal treaty obligations to recover salmon and take adequate action to leave the river and fish in better shape than before."

First, there is the news that MALE fish in the Potomac are OVULATING.

The South Branch of the Potomac River is as clear as bottled water here, where it rolls over a bed of smooth stones about 230 miles upstream from Washington. But there is a mystery beneath this glassy surface.

Many of the river's male bass are producing eggs.

Scientists believe this inversion of nature is being caused by pollution in the water. But they say the exact culprit is still unknown: It might be chicken estrogen left over in poultry manure, or perhaps human hormones dumped in the river with processed sewage. Chances are, it is not something that federal and state inspectors regularly test for in local waters.

The discovery has made the South Branch the latest example of an emerging national problem: Hormones, drugs and other man-made pollutants appear to be interfering with the chemical signals that make fish grow and reproduce.

But, wait, there's more! There is a problem of a global nature: frogs are dropping like flies rather than eating them.

Amphibians are experiencing a precipitous decline across the globe, according to the first comprehensive world survey of the creatures, which include frogs, toads and salamanders. As many as 122 species have disappeared since 1980, and 1,900 are in danger of becoming extinct.

The rapid drop -- the equivalent of tens of thousands of years' worth of extinctions in just a century -- is being caused by a range of factors that include deforestation, pollution, habitat loss and climate change, researchers said. But they added that the phenomenon also tells a disturbing tale of broad environmental degradation that may ultimately threaten humans and other animals, as well. Amphibians are often considered "canaries in the coal mine" because their permeable skin makes them especially sensitive to environmental changes.

Reports suggest that the trends may not necessarily back the administration's claims about its policy choices.

Workplace Health and Safety: The agencies that should be protecting the men and women in America who work for a living have not been doing their job. OSHA has not been producing fair rules that apply to all employers across the board but has instead been issuing suggestions for good practices. Although OSHA routinely counters that workplace fatality rates are falling, Newsday reports that, according to government data, "the rate has been been dropping steadily since 1994, and data released last month show the fatality rate steady but number of deaths slightly up in 2003."

Environment: The administration typically defends its many rollbacks of environmental protections by arguing that the air is getting cleaner, water is getting purer, etc. Knight-Ridder is reporting a different picture:

Over the past 30 years, the nation's air and water have become dramatically cleaner, but the steady improvement has stalled or gone into reverse in several areas since Bush took office, according to government statistics. On Bush's watch, America's environment deteriorated in many critical areas - including the quality of air in cities and the quality of water that people drink - and gained in very few.

Knight Ridder compiled 14 pollution-oriented indicators from government and university statistics. Nine of the 14 indicators showed a worsening trend, two showed improvements and three others zigzagged.

There have been some exceptions to the pattern, such as the EPA's adoption earlier this year of tough new emissions standards for diesel engines. But critics and many analysts say the common thread that ties together almost all of the administration's other environmental initiatives is to cushion the impact of regulations on business.

"Across the board in the environment and resource agencies, you have an array of individuals who represented big business in private practice and are now representing big business in public service," said John Walke, a former career EPA lawyer who is now director of clean air issues at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an activist group.

The Bush administration counters that it is actually good to have business types in the agency, because they know how regulations affect industry. Newsday quotes John Spinello, former EPA associate deputy general counsel, as adding, "The people who are served by government agencies deserve a well-rounded workforce that includes a diversity of perspectives outside the government," presumably meaning both environmental and industry voices. But about that diversity:

The Newsday analysis, however, shows that Bush's appointees to senior environment-related jobs actually have less diverse backgrounds than the people Clinton picked during his first three years in office. Bush's choices were more likely to be lobbyists or executives in their previous job, while Clinton's were distributed more evenly among the worlds of business, academia and advocacy.

Specifically, Bush appointed 22 lobbyists, lawyers, consultants or business executives to top environmental policymaking jobs in federal agencies and the White House, while Clinton named 14. And while Bush named six academics and just one employee of a non-profit group, Clinton named 10 from academia and seven from non-profits.

The remaining top appointees -- 26 by Bush and 27 by Clinton -- came from other government jobs, generally staff positions in Congress or in state governments. . . .

"The Clinton people were less predictable. With this administration, it seems like everybody at the political level here has either a close attachment with industry or with an ultra-conservative think-tank or legal organization," said one longtime EPA attorney, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retribution from supervisors.

Read more about it -- more details about the industry ties in the ranks of EPA and the consequences of their anti-environmental decisionmaking -- before the link expires: Dan Fagin, "A facelift at the EPA: The Bush administration has committed itself to reshaping the EPA by staffing key regulatory posts with industry lobbyists and lawyers," Newsday, Oct. 12, 2004.

Posted by Robert Shull, 03:59:00 PM

Friday, October 08, 2004

Wednesday, October 06, 2004