• Lieberman Questions Ethics of Interior Deputy Secretary
  
• EPA Finishes $6 Million St. Clair Shores Cleanup
  
• Supreme Court Takes a Pass on Sea Turtles
  
• Conservationists Want Protection for Pygmy Rabbits
  
• Sudden Oak Death Impacting Other Species
  
• Climate Change Warning for the Great Lakes
  
• Ohio Deer Test Negative for Chronic Wasting Disease
  
• Rhode Island To Move 400,000 Pounds of Live Clams
  

Lieberman Questions Ethics of Interior Deputy Secretary

Lieberman, a declared candidate for the 2004 Presidential election, highlighted that many of the Bush administration officials within the department who previously worked for oil, gas and logging interests.

"Many of the appointees to these positions had previous careers working for, or representing, the same entities who will reap the financial benefits of [the Interior Department's] decisions," Lieberman wrote in an April 7, 2003 letter to the Interior Department's Inspector General Earl Devaney. "Thus, it is especially important that Americans have a reason to be confident that such officials exercise their public trust responsibilities in full conformance with applicable laws, including all ethical requirements.

Lieberman specifically cited the actions of Deputy Secretary Steven Griles in his letter. Griles, a former oil and gas industry consultant, has been criticized in the media and by conservation groups for participating in department meetings to discuss oil and gas leases in which his previous clients had an interest.

Last week the Associated Press broke the story with documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

"These reports raise numerous, troubling questions about whether the deputy secretary has successfully avoided conflicts of interest, or the appearance of conflicts," Lieberman said.

"Such reports raise questions about the adequacy of [the Interior Department's] efforts to insure full compliance with recusal requirements designed to insure impartiality in decision making by [Interior Department] officials."

While it is the deputy secretary who has been in the news, Lieberman said, "there are other [Interior Department] officials subject to recusal requirements as well."

Lieberman asked that the Devaney assess the adequacy of the department's processes for insuring compliance with recusal requirements and to look into the specific allegations against Griles. He requested a reply to his inquiry by May 5, 2003.

EPA Finishes $6 Million St. Clair Shores Cleanup

The sediment was removed from a storm sewer system and two canals that flow behind area homes in St. Clair Shores.

It contained high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), toxic chemicals that have been banned from manufacture within the United States since 1977 but still exist in the environment and in many electrical devices made prior to that year.

Michigan state officials had asked the EPA to do an emergency assessment of St. Clair Shores in early March 2002, after unexpectedly high PCB levels were found during preparation work for dredging the two canals.

After analyzing more than 300 sediment, air, water and soil samples, the EPA confirmed the presence of elevated levels of PCBs as well as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heavy metals. The department moved forward with cleanup on July 29, 2002.

"We made this a high priority cleanup," said Tom Skinner, EPA administrator for the department's Region 5, which managed the cleanup. "We moved as quickly as possible and put in some extra hours to get the job done for the people of St. Clair Shores. To get a project like this done in a year is a great accomplishment."

According to EPA officials, the materials with the highest concentrations of PCBs were sent to Wayne Disposal in Belleville, Michigan. The rest of the contaminated sediment was sent to a landfill in Lenox, Michigan.

The EPA treated and returned to Lake St. Clair some two million gallons of contaminated water from the site.

Supreme Court Takes a Pass on Sea Turtles

Conservationists and U.S. shrimpers are disappointed by the decision, which exhausts the legal challenge to the U.S. State Department's enforcement of the 1989 Turtle Shrimp Law.

"After eleven years of fighting the State Department to get this law properly implemented, I am very disappointed," said Todd Steiner, director of the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, the lead plaintiff in the case.

The Turtle Shrimp Law was designed to protect sea turtles and the U.S. shrimp industry by using economic pressure to convince other countries to take similar steps to protect the the endangered turtles. These measures include turtle excluder devices (TEDs), which conservationists say reduce turtle drowning by fish nets by some 97 percent.

But not all nations use TEDS and the State Department has been wary of enforcing the law because of threats by other nations that could challenge the law as a nontariff barrier to trade under the rules of the World Trade Organization.

The Sea Turtle Restoration Project believes this lax enforcement is bad for the turtles and the shrimpers.

"The State Department's interpretation of the law fails to protect sea turtles or U.S. shrimpers," said Peter Fugazzotto, spokesman for the Sea Turtle Restoration Project. "With the flood of aquaculture shrimp in the U.S. markets, and now this preferential treatment of foreign shrimp fleets, the U.S. shrimp industry may be on its last legs. It is not fair that American shrimpers get punished for doing their share in protecting global resources."

According to Fugazzotto, conservationists are now developing a legislative strategy and are considering a consumer boycott on all foreign shrimp.

All seven species of sea turtles have been listed as endangered, threatened or vulnerable.

Conservationists Want Protection for Pygmy Rabbits

The organizations asked the federal agency to list the species within the Intermountain and Great Basin regions of the West - all populations outside of the range of the Washington state population - as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act and to designate critical habitat for it. The Washington state subspecies of pygmy rabbit received emergency listing under ESA in 2001.

The coalition consists of the Committee for the High Desert, Western Watersheds Project, the American Lands Alliance, Oregon Natural Desert Association, Center for Native Ecosystems and Biodiversity Conservation Alliance.

They say that only three larger populations of pygmy rabbits remain and these are divided into small pockets by habitat fragmentation and development.

Several scientific studies show that pygmy rabbits face extinction without ESA protection, the coalition says, and the species has been on the the IUCN-World Conservation Union Red List of Endangered Species since 1996.

Chief among the threats to the species is the destruction of sagebrush, which the tiny rabbits depend on for cover from predators and for nearly all their winter diet.

Destruction of the plant across the West, in particular by grazing and development of public lands, has eliminated the species from some 90 percent of its historic range, according to Katie Fite, conservation director of the Committee for the High Desert.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is allowing essential sagebrush habitats "to be pounded to oblivion by livestock," said Fite.

The species' historic range once spanned more than 100 million acres across the states of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon and Washington.

"If we cannot save this species, there is absolutely no hope for longterm survival of any sagebrush dependent wildlife," according to Fite.

Sudden Oak Death Impacting Other Species

Sudden Oak Death (SOD) was first reported in 1995 in Marin County, California in oaks and tanoaks, but now scientists think that nearly all the main tree species in California's forests, as well as forest shrubbery and undergrowth, may act as hosts for the disease.

"SOD's reproductive strategy may make it able to persist indefinitely in infested forests and may affect the success of future regeneration and restoration efforts," according to Matteo Garbelotto, an extension forest pathologist and adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley who has been researching the disease.

"What we hypothesized and what we are now confirming is that SOD is not spreading via the oaks, but is instead using a huge range of native plants for reproduction," he explained.

The disease is caused by a funguslike brown larvae related to the organism that caused the nineteenth century Irish potato famine. Scientists are not certain how the disease got to California, but some suspect through imported nursery plants.

It appears to use the leaves, branches and stems of its hosts to reproduce, leaving behind lesions and leaf discoloration. It does not kill the host plant outright, according to scientists, but repeated SOD infections are likely to weaken the plant over time, negatively impacting its growth and making it susceptible to other diseases and insects.

Scientists knew the disease was spread by plants other than oaks, including plants from the rhododendron family, but evidence that it could have such a broader range of potential hosts brings good and bad news to those trying to combat the disease.

It increases the potential impact on California's forests and ecosystems, but also gives scientists greater understanding of the disease.

"The more we know about how SOD is spreading, the greater the chances for finding a way to control it," Garbelotto said.

An International Symposium on SOD will be held online from April 21 to May 4 by the American Phytopathological Society.

Climate Change Warning for the Great Lakes

The report predicts that climate change could lead to a three to six degree Celsius temperature increase in winter and a four to eight degree warming in summer in the region by the end of this century. This could bring the Great Lakes region more floods and droughts, lower lake levels, less lake ice cover and more extreme weather events.

"The Great Lakes area as we know it will change forever," said David Suzuki, scientist and broadcaster. "I grew up in this region and have fond memories of paddling and fishing in the lakes and watching birds from farmers' fields - climate change is altering the area's natural spaces dramatically. This research illustrates just how serious a problem we have got."

But the report, titled "Confronting Climate Change in the Great Lakes Region," is not all doom and gloom - it concludes that actions can be taken now to forestall many of the most severe impacts.

"To avert the worst impacts of global warming, we can harness our industrial know-how and economic strength to reduce the amount of fossil fuels we burn to produce electricity, drive our cars and run our industries," said Katharine Hayhoe, one of the report's authors. Hayhoe is a climate and atmospheric scientist.

The two year study was carried out by American and Canadian scientists under an effort spearheaded by UCS, the David Suzuki Foundation and the Ecological Society of America. It summarizes the current scientific knowledge about the potential regional impacts of climate change, which is caused principally by carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels.

"Large changes in climate will mean that many species will move north out of the region and new species will move in from the south," said Brian Shuter, a research scientist with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and the University of Toronto. "This process could be prolonged and chaotic."

The report shows the number of hot days in the Toronto-Niagara region could double by the 2030s and surpass 50 days by the 2080s, with the potential to greatly increase the rate of heat related deaths.

The water levels of the Great Lakes could fall because of seasonal shifts in precipitation, in particular during summer when rainfall cannot compensate for the drying effect of a warmer climate. This could impact soil moisture and increase competition over water resources for irrigation, drinking and other uses.

Ohio Deer Test Negative for Chronic Wasting Disease

The Ohio Department of Agriculture tested samples from deer brought by hunters to check stations during the deer gun season between December 2 and December 8, 2002.

These tests did not find any presence of CWD in Ohio's deer herd, said Steve Gray, chief of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife.

"We are pleased with this news, however, we will continue our intensive monitoring to safeguard the state's deer population," Gray said.

First discovered in captive deer in Colorado more than 30 years ago, there is no evidence that CWD can be transmitted to humans.

Still, the apparent spread of CWD over the past few years toward the eastern half of the country has caused concern for hunting advocates, as well as state and environmental public health and conservation groups.

The disease has now been diagnosed in wild or captive deer in Colorado, Wyoming, Wisconsin, South Dakota, New Mexico, Utah, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Illinois, Kansas and Montana.

CWD affects the brains of deer and is fatal to afflicted animals. How deer spread CWD remains uncertain.

It is believed to be caused by prions, which are abnormal proteins in the brain that cause similar transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. These include spongiform encephalopathy or Mad Cow disease in bovine and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans.

Rhode Island To Move 400,000 Pounds of Live Clams

The announcement came last week after Rhode Island Governor Donald Carcieri said he would tap into the state's contingency fund for the $50,000 needed to move forward with project. The state's Department of Environmental Management had previously said it would not be able to carry out the transplant program because of budget constraints.

The 2003 shellfish transplant program will be held in mid-May, with state environmental officials cooperating with local fishers to dig up adult quahogs, or clams, from overcrowded beds in Warwick Cove and Greenwich Cove.

The Rhode Island Health department will test the shellfish before they are placed in the High Banks Shellfish Management Area of the upper reaches of Narragansett Bay, where they will be afforded two years to grow and spawn before harvesting is permitted.

"As a Rhode Islander who spent my youthful summers shellfishing on the Bay and as an executive who understands the importance of this project to the shellfish industry and the state, I could not let this project stop," said Carcieri.

"This program is a prime example of the way state government must plan for the future," the Rhode Island governor said. "Just as we are seeding clean waters with quahogs for the coming years, we are planning and taking steps for the future in many other ways."

State officials say previous relocations of shellfish have helped to restore depleted fisheries in other areas of the bay included the vicinity of Quonset Point, Pine Hill and Hope Island.

Narragansett Bay Bay is a 25 mile long, 10 mile wide estuary with a watershed of some 1,800 square miles. It supports hundreds of species, including winter flounder, lobster, hard shell clams, eel grass and seals.