• Chemical, Nuclear Security Bills Pass Committee
  
• Spiked Plutonium Mimics Aging Weapons
  
• Feds Call Manatee Settlement Illegal
  
• Nation's Oldest Cattle Ranch Protects Forests
  
• Panel Urges Public Warnings About Mercury in Tuna
  
• Radios Lead Researchers to Murrelet Nests
  
• Illegal Fish Imports Bring Indictment
  
• Fish in Lewis and Clark's Footsteps
  

Chemical, Nuclear Security Bills Pass Committee

"These bills address the concerns that all of us have shared since the tragic events of September 11th," said Senator Jim Jeffords, the Vermont Independent who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee. "We must do everything in our power to make sure that terrorists are not able to turn our own resources against us."

The Nuclear Security Act of 2002 (S 1746) would require a comprehensive review of security at all nuclear power plants, including an evaluation of hiring and training standards, facility security plans, and emergency response plans. The bill would appoint a task force headed by the commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and including federal experts on security, intelligence and radiological response, to review security at U.S. nuclear power plants.

Under the bill, the White House would establish a federal team aimed at ensuring coordinated protection of air, water and ground access to nuclear power plants, along with a new office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response within the NRC to coordinate and consolidate security functions of the agency.

The Chemical Security Act of 2002 (S 1602) would require chemical plants with a certain capacity to assess their security vulnerabilities and draft plans to respond to any vulnerabilities, including the addition of safer technologies. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Office of Homeland Security would determine which facilities would need to undergo these assessments, and would guide the preparation of assessments and response plans.

Chemical plants would submit their assessments and response plans to the EPA and the Office of Homeland Security for review and certification. Some information about these plants would be kept off limits to the public, at the discretion of the EPA.

EPA records show that a terrorist attacks on any of at least 123 chemical facilities could threaten a million or more nearby residents. The U.S. Army's surgeon general estimates that 2.4 million people could be killed or injured in a terrorist attack at one U.S. toxic chemical plant.

The chemical bill has won the support of a variety of environmental groups.

"The Chemical Security Act of 2002 is an important first step towards making our hometowns safe from terrorist attacks on chemical facilities," said Alys Campaigne, legislative director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Once enacted, the legislation will require high priority chemical plants to assess their vulnerabilities and to craft plans to 'eliminate or significantly reduce' the threats."

Panel Urges Public Warnings About Mercury in Tuna

Ten states - including Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut, Washington, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin - have already posted advisories warning pregnant women and, in some cases, children to limit consumption of canned tuna, one of the most consumed fish in America.

"Nobody wants to tell people to stop eating tuna fish," said Sanford Miller of Virginia Tech University, chair of the FDA's 15 member food advisory panel. "We're trying to balance the very positive virtues of fish, including tuna fish, with the harms. It's a very hard balance to make."

Last year, the FDA advised pregnant women and those who could become pregnant not to eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish. After a three day meeting this week, the FDA panel recommended that the FDA add other seafood to its off limits list for sensitive populations if they contain over FDA's action level of one part per million of methylmercury - including canned tuna.

"We applaud FDA's food safety committee for recognizing the importance of informing pregnant women and children about the mercury exposure risks from canned tuna," said Michael Bender, director of the Mercury Policy Project, and a presenter to the FDA's Food Advisory Committee.

According to government agencies, seafood can harm the nervous system of an unborn child if its mother regularly eats mercury contaminated tuna or other fish. Infants and young children may also be more at risk from mercury exposure because they eat more fish relative to their body size in comparison with adults, health agencies warn.

"For over five years, FDA has been asleep at the wheel when it comes to testing large predatory seafood for mercury," said Bender. "We strongly support the food safety committee's recommendation that FDA begin fish testing again and immediately add seafood known to have high levels, like Marlin, to the list that is off limits for pregnant women and children."

The panel did not offer specific advice on what level of tuna consumption is safe for women and children. However, the panelists commended Wisconsin's advisory, which recommends that pregnant women limit their consumption to two six ounce cans of tuna per week, or one six ounce can plus six ounces of another fish.

Nation's Oldest Cattle Ranch Protects Forests

Under this groundbreaking forest management easement, the Conservancy will make annual payments to the landowner based on the appraised timber value. The Conservancy will conduct sustainable forestry on the property to generate funds for the annual payments, while protecting critical habitat for migratory songbirds and imperiled aquatic species.

Located on Beartown Mountain, the enrolled Rich Mountain Farm property straddles Russell and Washington counties and adjoins the state's 25,477 acre Clinch Mountain Wildlife Management Area, most of which was once owned by SLCC. Combined, this large, intact forest area provides a haven for vulnerable songbirds such as the hermit thrush, magnolia warbler and Swainson's warbler.

Since the SLCC property drains into the Clinch River, maintaining the forest cover on Rich Mountain Farm will help protect water quality for one of the world's most diverse populations of rare fishes and endangered freshwater mussels. A recent biodiversity survey found that the highest concentration of rare and imperiled species on the mainland U.S. occurs in the Clinch River watershed.

Stuart's Rich Mountain Farm contains a mixture of pasture and forest. (Photo © Mundy Hackett, courtesy The Nature Conservancy)

The Conservancy will harvest timber from the Stuart land, as well as from future properties enrolled in the forestry initiative, under the guidelines of an operations manual prepared by Stephen Lindeman, manager of the Conservation Forestry Program.

"The management plan for the Rich Mountain forest will be designed to protect water quality, nesting habitat for migratory songbirds and rare natural communities," Lindeman said.

One such community is a small spruce fir grove, habitat more typical of the Canadian mountains than Virginia, added Lindeman.

"This is a mutually beneficial arrangement that allows us to retain ownership of the land, while being guaranteed an annual income in perpetuity," said William Alexander "Zan" Stuart, Jr., current SLCC president. "At the same time, the Conservancy will manage the timber land in an environmentally sound manner that will protect both the ecological health and the natural diversity of the landscape."

The Nature Conservancy created its Conservation Forestry Program to counter threats posed by inappropriate timber harvesting in the Clinch River watershed.

Evolved from a concept known as the Forest Bank, the program is designed to foster partnerships with private landowners and to promote the economic productivity of working forests while protecting critical habitat across a large landscape.

Feds Call Manatee Settlement Illegal

In January 2001, conservation groups including the Save the Manatee Club, Defenders of Wildlife, The Humane Society of the United States, and the Sierra Club, won a landmark settlement agreement compelling the USFWS to institute measures to protect manatees.

This week, the USFWS called the settlement illegal, saying it "unlawfully" constrains the discretion of the federal government to take no action to protect manatees. Earlier this month, federal Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled that the federal government had illegally delayed designation of manatee sanctuaries and refuges, intended to reduce mortality due to boat strikes.

The USFWS claims that it is avoiding measures to reduce collisions with boats that kill dozens of manatees every year, in order to allow the state of Florida to implement its own protections. In May 2001, Florida Governor Jeb Bush wrote to the USFWS asking for a delay in the creation of new refuges and sanctuaries to give the state time to design and implement new boating regulations.

Judge Sullivan ruled that no such delay was allowed under the settlement, and that potential state action did not excuse the federal government from acting, particularly in places where the state does not intend to enact manatee protections.

"Just when you think this administration has bent over just about as far backward as it can in order to avoid its legal obligations to protect manatees, something completely off the wall like this comes along," said Eric Glitzenstein of Meyer & Glitzenstein, the lead attorney representing the coalition of manatee supporters that had won the settlement agreement.

Glitzenstein noted that the state was making no efforts to protect manatees in some of the areas where mortality is the highest, including Lee, Collier and Duval counties. Lee County set an all time record for manatee deaths from boat strikes last year, and is on a similar pace in 2002.

Statewide, there have been 67 manatee deaths as of July 12, more than 50 percent above the average for this time of the year.

"To claim that the proper way to comply with a court order is to pretend the whole thing never happened marks a new low - and a novel approach - in [Interior Secretary] Gale Norton's contorted attempts to avoid complying with laws that say her department needs to protect species at risk."

Judge Sullivan's ruling made special note of the role that politics appears to have played in the USFWS's violation of the settlement agreement, which took the agency and the conservation groups nine months to reach.

"Whatever the political ramifications," wrote Sullivan, "such a justification cannot excuse a violation of the agreement to designate areas throughout Florida by the date established by the agreement."

The Department of Justice told the court that in agreeing to the settlement, the USFWS "bargained away its discretion, binding itself to some substantive outcome in its rule making before actually engaging in that rule making."

Spiked Plutonium Mimics Aging Weapons

Plutonium is the main ingredient of weapons in the U.S. nuclear stockpile. The nation stopped making new weapons in 1989 and stopped underground nuclear testing in 1992.

The results of the study will affect whether the U.S. begins manufacturing additional plutonium pits, which form the core of modern nuclear weapons.

Los Alamos researchers are trying to hurry along the plutonium aging process to learn how long the metal will last and how that might affect the stockpile. Researchers at Los Alamos, which designed five of the seven weapon systems in the U.S. stockpile, play a major role in certifying each year that those weapons are safe, secure and reliable.

Certification depends on understanding how the plutonium cores of the weapons, known as pits, will change with age.

"We have to learn how to predict the properties of plutonium as it ages in the weapons, and to do that we need plutonium that's been around as long as plutonium has been on the planet," said Joe Martz, manager of Los Alamos' enhanced surveillance program.

The experiment involves "spiking" samples of nuclear weapons plutonium, the isotope known as Pu-239, with 7.5 percent of the plutonium-238 isotope, which decays about 300 times faster. Plutonium-238, because of its high decay rate, is used to provide electrical power for deep space probes such as the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Cassini mission to Saturn.

The hamburger sized spiked samples, cast at Los Alamos on May 13, 2002, should age about 16 times faster than the plutonium-239 in U.S. nuclear weapons.

"Every day that passes, the spiked plutonium will be aging more than two weeks, compared to normal weapons plutonium," said Dave Olivas, the metallurgical engineer who is running the experiment with physicist Franz Freibert. Both work in Los Alamos' Nuclear Materials Science Group.

"When the samples have aged for the equivalent of 60 years, we'll measure all their properties," Olivas explained.

The researchers will not know the results of their efforts for four years, although they plan periodic checks to compare the spiked plutonium to metal inside stockpile weapons.

The impacts of age on stockpile weapons have been subtle so far, and may not help scientists predict longer term effects. Plutonium is the most unpredictable of all the metallic elements, and some aging effects may suddenly appear after years of stable behavior.

The team expects to see some changes in the density of the spiked plutonium and in the growth of helium within its molecular structure, similar to aging effects they have observed in stockpile plutonium.

"Most things age from the outside in, but plutonium is much more unique because it also ages from the inside out," said former Los Alamos director Sig Hecker, a plutonium metallurgist and technical adviser to the experiment.

Radios Lead Researchers to Murrelet Nests

Marbled murrelets are small seabirds that feed on fish and invertebrates in the ocean, using their wings to maneuver through the water. They are unusual among seabirds because they are often solitary or found in groups of two or three instead of the large social groups of many seabirds.

Except when nesting and raising young, marbled murrelets spend their entire life on the ocean. They nest far inland, flying to old growth forests to nest on high branches of redwood and Douglas fir trees.

A marbled murrelet, ready for release after being fitted with a radio tag. (Photo courtesy U.S. Geological Survey)

Until the 1970s, no one had ever found a marbled murrelet nest. Only a few murrelet nests had been located in California until last year, when scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Humboldt State University found five nests, aided by radios planted on the birds.

This year, the researchers have radio marked an additional 44 birds and are now searching for nests.

Dennis Orthmeyer, a research biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, works with a team of scientists to capture and radio tag marbled murrelets at sea as they sleep on the ocean's surface at night. The birds are also weighed and measured, and a blood sample is collected to help develop baseline information about the species.

After the bird is released, it will lead researchers to its nest, often located 200 feet above the ground. Radio tracking these birds will provide essential information on the movements, timing of nesting, and habitat of this secretive bird, and how human disturbances may be affecting the species' nesting areas.

After capturing and releasing 23 marbled murrelets last year and 44 this year, the research team is studying the movements and nesting status of the murrelets. Ground and airplane crews track the movements of the radioed murrelets on the ocean and inland during the breeding season from April to August.

"The scanner is very similar to the radio in your car, and the murrelets are all on different stations," said Orthmeyer. "So if a murrelet signal indicates an inland location during the day, it is at a nest, and ground crews hurry to pinpoint the nest for further study."

Preliminary results from the first year of the three year study show that all nests located were in old growth trees. Of the five murrelet nests examined, three were believed to be successful in producing and raising young.

"One of our goals is to provide land managers of Redwood National and State Parks, as well as nearby landowners, with factual information that will enable them to make sound management decisions to help conserve this federally threatened species," said Richard Golightly, a professor and scientist in the wildlife department at Humboldt State University. "We hope to identify factors that may contribute to successful reproduction and future generations of marbled murrelets."

Illegal Fish Imports Bring Indictment

Lloyd Gomez is scheduled to face trial this September on charges related to the illegal import and sale of Asian arowana, a unique, colorful fish native to Malaysia and Indonesia. The fish, which can sell for as much as $10,000 each, is listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The trial was scheduled after Gomez, 25, pleaded not guilty on July 19, before U.S. District Judge Dennis Hubel. A federal indictment alleges that Gomez and Joe Lian Ho Luah of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, conspired to import and sell the endangered fish, illegally transported them into the United States in violation of the Endangered Species Act, and falsified documents in an attempt to pass through U.S. Customs.

The men also face one count of wire fraud, which charges them with using the Internet to communicate illegal activities via email. Gomez faces an additional charge of making false statements to law enforcement officials.

Each of the charges carries a maximum penalty of $250,000 and/or five years imprisonment. Gomez is free on personal recognizance pending trial, while Luah remains in Canada.

The indictment alleges that Luah established a tropical fish business called Emperor Pond in Canada, where it is legal to import and sell captive bred Asian arowana, and used that business to smuggle the fish to Gomez for illegal sale to customers in the United States. The indictment charges that Luah consigned a shipment of 11 Asian arowana to Gomez on September 9, 2001, from Edmonton, Alberta to Portland, Oregon, and falsely identified them as cichlids, tropical fish that are legal to import.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents determined that the fish were Asian arowana, popular among aquarium hobbyists because of their vibrant colors and unique shape. The fish has large scales and barbels, which resemble horns, giving them the nickname "dragonfish." Asian arowana are believed to symbolize luck, wealth, prosperity and strength.

Wild populations of Asian arowana have declined, causing them to be listed as an Appendix I species under the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Trading of the wild fish is illegal. However, 23 CITES registered breeding facilities in Asia are producing fish that can be exported for sale. These fish are legal to export to Canada and elsewhere, but not to the United States, where they are protected and the importation of either captive bred or wild Asian arowana is prohibited.

Fish in Lewis and Clark's Footsteps

The Sierra Club guide, titled "Eight Spectacular Fishing Spots Along the Lewis and Clark Trail," explores fishing holes from the prairies to the Pacific Northwest along the Missouri, Yellowstone, Jefferson, Bitterroot, Lochsa, Grande Ronde and Columbia Rivers. The guide, part of the Sierra Club's national campaign to protect the lands explored by Lewis and Clark, profiles legendary fishing holes while giving people a chance to help protect the rivers and wildlands they love.

The fishing guide is available at: http://www.sierraclub.org/lewisandclark/fishing_guide/

"This guide gives anglers a chance to experience the history of the expedition, catch magnificent fish, and protect the fishing holes we all enjoy," said Bill Arthur, Sierra Club's northwest regional director. "Future generations of anglers ought to be able to explore and fish these great rivers with the same sense of excitement Lewis and Clark felt 200 years ago."

The Corps of Discovery, led by Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, set out in 1804 on their epic three-year journey to explore the West. When they began their famed expedition, they commissioned Private Silas Goodrich to be their fisher.

It was Goodrich's job every night to fish the river and see what he could bring home. His assignment was partly for food - the fish became an important part of the Corps' diet - and partly for scientific research, but mainly because Lewis, Clark and Goodrich all loved to fish.

Today, with the bicentennial commemoration of their legendary journey kicking off in Monticello in January 2003, millions of people are expected to follow in their footsteps and experience the same legendary rivers and country.

Much has changed along the rivers in 200 years. The series of dams on the Lower Snake River have dramatically changed the river's character and its fabled salmon runs. For example, just one percent of the estimated 16 million wild salmon that made their way up the Columbia River system in the days of Lewis and Clark return today.

Sprawl, logging, pollution and excessive damming now threaten many of the rivers that Lewis and Clark navigated. As the rivers are damaged, so are the salmon, trout, steelhead and other fish that depend on them.

"When people discover the fishing holes used by Lewis and Clark, they will want to do something to help protect them," said Mary Kiesau, Sierra Club's Lewis and Clark bicentennial campaign coordinator. "There is no better way to commemorate the bicentennial than to protect the lands and rivers explored by Lewis and Clark."

The guide was written by Drew Winterer, a professional angling guide and Sierra Club member from Missoula, Montana.