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Bulletin Board
SOUND SCIENCE? On July 10, the House Resources Committee passed 22-18 a bill sponsored by Richard Pombo (D-CA) that would change the scientific requirements of the Endangered Species Act. The bill, which supporters are calling the Sound Science for Endangered Species Act Planning Act of 2002, raises the bar for listing a species in several ways. It includes a requirement that data collected in the field, rather than statistical modeling, be used to determine whether a species is eligible for protection.
"This legislation is a first step in fixing the Endangered Species Act, which over the years, has been blatantly abused by federal agencies and environmental groups alike. This law has impacted millions of people and has caused ruin for thousands more," said committee chair James Hansen (R-UT).
Environmentalists are crying foul, saying that the bill outlaws basic methods used by conservation biologists to determine the health of a species. The bill is unlikely to reach the House floor, where party leaders are more concerned about the upcoming midterm election and a backlog of appropriations bills than about kangaroo rats and whipsnakes. But Ed Lytwak, communications director of the Endangered Species Coalition, says that even if it dies on the floor, the bill may serve another purpose: strengthening support in rural areas for Pombo and the other co-sponsors.
CALIFORNIA NEEDS TO TAP INTO THE $180 BILLION made available by the farm bill approved in May by President Bush, says a new report by the California Wilderness Coalition. The Coalition wants Governor Davis to fight for California’s fair share of the funding, claiming the state could receive as much as $210 million a year (instead of the $8 million it received per year under the 1996 farm bill) if funding were based on agricultural production. With 292 endangered species and the loss of 47 square miles of farmland every year, says the Coalition, now is the time to develop better incentives for farmers to steward their land. The report can be downloaded at www.calwild.org.
KEEPING THE BIG ONES (and throwing back the small ones) may not be what’s best for some fish populations, according to a new study in the journal Science. In the study, David Conover, professor at the Marine Sciences Research Center at Stony Brook in New York, experimented with three groups of Atlantic silversides, each containing 1,000 fish. In the first group, the biggest fish were harvested; in the second group, the smallest were taken; and in the third, fish were randomly selected, not based on size. Although in the first year, the group from which the largest fish were taken produced the most biomass, in each succeeding generation, the group from which the smallest fish were taken produced more and bigger fish. The third group showed no change in size. The study followed four generations of fish. These results, according to Conover, may mean that management plans limiting catch to bigger fish may be harming fisheries in the long run. Other experts say the study is too limited to change the way fisheries are managed and that more studies are needed.
THE LONG-STANDING MYSTERY OF DEFORMED FROGS may be one step closer to being solved. A new study published in the July 9 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that a parasitic trematode that infects tadpoles may be working in conjunction with pesticides to cause the limb deformities. In the experiment, only tadpoles with the parasite developed deformities; however, when those tadpoles were also exposed to low concentrations of pesticide runoff—Atrazine, Malathion and Esfenvalerate—they developed deformities at a much higher rate than those not exposed to the pesticides. Contact: Sam Scheiner (703)292-848
DON’T SWITCH TO DECAF YET! It turns out that the caffeine in your morning expresso could prevent crop damage by snails and slugs. A study published in the June 27 journal Nature concluded that even in very low concentrations (0.01% solution), caffeine deterred the persistent mollusks. Because caffeine is highly soluble in water, the slugs may be more susceptible to it through the mucus secretions they produce. Although caffeine may have a promising future as a pesticide, it has turned up in recent studies of the nation’s waterways, raising questions about its impacts on aquatic life.
A BAN ON JET SKIS IN MARIN COUNTY waters—the first in the state—was reinstated by the state appeals court after an earlier judge had ruled that it was unconstitutionally vague. The 1999 ordinance bans "personal watercraft" (commonly known by the brand name Jet Ski) in waterways under Marin County jurisdiction, from the Pacific Coast to the mouth of the Petaluma River. The Personal Watercraft Coalition says it is being singled out by the ban, while environmentalists say the Jet Skis are threatening birds, seals and other marine life and causing pollution.
FIVE YEARS AFTER THE FEDS BEGAN DREDGING the Lauritzen Channel in Richmond, the U.S. EPA has found that DDT and Dieldrin, two pesticides banned since the early 1970s in the United States, exceed cleanup levels in certain spots in the channel. Although the source of the pollution—a former pesticide company known as United Heckathorn and a Superfund site—has been capped with concrete, pollutants in the channel may be contaminating bottom-dwelling fish, prompting concerns for human health and causing some to question the effectiveness of dredging as a cleanup remedy. According to the EPA, the pollution might be coming from areas that were missed by the dredging operations, from sediment stirred up by dredging or from other unidentified sources.
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