• $100 Million Will Buy California Salt Ponds
  
• Activist Arrested Blockading Forest Service
  
• New Center Focuses on Transportation Solutions
  
• Environmental Estrogen May Harm Breeding Songbirds
  
• Hot Polymer Catches Carbon Dioxide
  
• Appalachian Trail Group Opposes Wind Farm
  

$100 Million Will Buy California Salt Ponds

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, and California Governor Gray Davis brokered the $100 million deal, which is slated to be signed September 16. Cargill will be paid the first $53 million when the deal is closed on November 16, with the remainder to be paid over the next five years.

"We're taking the first step toward restoring the San Francisco Bay for the people of California," said Davis. "This is more than just a purchase. Today we're making a commitment - to enhance our communities, our state and our most precious natural resources."

The protected salt ponds will be restored as tidal wetlands habitat, which provide crucial migratory and year round habitat for birds and other species. Full restoration could cost up to $1 billion. Cargill has agreed to begin the process by reducing the salinity of the salt ponds.

"This acquisition sets the stage for the largest tidal wetlands restoration on the U.S. Pacific Coast," said National Audubon Society president and CEO John Flicker. "San Francisco Bay is a site of international significance. Restoration of these ponds is critical to ensuring the long term health of the Bay."

The majority of the salt ponds are located in southern San Francisco Bay with 1,400 acres located along the Napa River in the North Bay.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will manage the majority of lands as part of the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge. The California Department of Fish and Game will also manage a portion of the property.

The federal government has authorized $8 million toward the purchase price of the ponds. Several private foundations are providing another $35 million, and the rest of the money will come from state water and park bonds.

San Francisco Bay is one of the largest estuaries of the world, providing habitat to a variety of fish and wildlife, including over 20 species now threatened with extinction. The Bay Estuary is recognized as a site of international importance for more than a million shorebirds and over half of the diving ducks migrating along the Pacific Flyway.

The Bay Area, the nation's fourth largest metropolitan area, is home to more than seven million residents with an expected population growth of 1.3 million in the next 20 years. Eighty percent of the Bay Area's tidal marshes have already been lost to development.

Activist Arrested Blockading Forest Service

Redge Peterson of Wild Rockies Earth First! (WREF!) locked his arms inside two concrete filled barrels, blocking the door to the U.S. Forest Service office for about nine and a half hours before releasing the locks inside the barrels. Peterson, a 25 year old from Missoula, Montana, was arrested and charged with obstruction of a police officer and conspiracy to impede.

Peterson staged the protest with the help of about a dozen other WREF! activists to draw attention to the USFS's plans to log in a burned area of the Bitterroot National Forest as part of a restoration and recovery plan.

"WREF! has been monitoring the Bitterroot National Forest logging activities and it is clear that logging is destroying, not restoring, the burned areas of the forest," said Redge. "We challenge the public to explore the logged areas of their Bitterroot National Forest and discover for themselves that logging destroys, not restores the forest. Logging is part of the problem, not part of the solution."

The so called Burned Area Recovery sale, the largest salvage logging project in the history of the Forest Service, is designed to log portions of the Bitterroot National Forest that were burned in the summer of 2000. The original Bitterroot project was to be the largest timber sale in U.S. history, producing 190 million board feet of timber from 46,000 acres of forests burned during the summer forest fires of 2000.

Under an agreement reached in February, two-thirds of that volume - 55 million board feet - is slated to be logged. Of the 17,000 acres of roadless area included in the original project, 15,000 will remain untouched, including critical habitat for the bull trout and cutthroat trout.

But WREF!, which has been monitoring the planned timber sales, says it has found "significant violations" of the guidelines the Forest Service has imposed to protect the region's wildlife and wildlife habitat.

WREF! emphasized that Tuesday's action targets the United States Forest Service(USFS) and not the people of the Bitterroot Valley. The conservation group supports an alternative recovery plan that it says would emphasize forest restoration over salvage logging.

"The recovery plan that WREF! supports, the Conservation and Local Economy Alternative (CLE), would provide the best path towards long term recovery of the Bitterroot National Forest," said Michael Tenenbaum of WREF!. "The CLE would provide true forest restoration, fire protection for structures, as well as 800 local restoration jobs."

New Center Focuses on Transportation Solutions

The WRI Center for Transport and the Environment (EMBARQ) will be based in Washington, DC. The focus of its first five years of operation will be cities in developing countries where air pollution, traffic congestion, and lack of access to clean and convenient transport are most acute and the poor bear the brunt of the problem.

"We have to change the way we move ourselves if we are to avoid the gridlock of environmental degradation brought out by transport," said Kurt Hoffman, director of the London based Shell Foundation. "The vision of EMBARQ is a future where modern, healthy, and environmentally sustainable transport is available to everyone."

To launch EMBARQ, the Shell Foundation gave WRI a start up grant of US$3.75 million; spread over a five year period. This grant could be doubled, depending on the success of the center and other fundraising efforts.

This is the largest grant given by the Shell Foundation since its establishment as an independent charity in 2000 by the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies.

"EMBARQ will create solutions to ease traffic congestion and improve urban air quality in the growing cities of the world where air pollution has a devastating impact on public health," said Jonathan Lash, WRI president. "The solutions we are seeking will also reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport, one of the leading drivers of climate change."

EMBARQ will concentrate on helping policy makers evaluate and adopt better transport strategies. The results of its projects will be shared with other cities through a website at: http://www.embarq.org

The program will work with governments, research institutes and non-governmental organizations in about five cities in the developing world. EMBARQ's first partnership is expected to be finalized later this month in Mexico City, Mexico, one of the world's biggest cities, and an urban center with some of the world's worst transport problems.

The United Nations estimates that by 2025, 54 percent of the world's 7.8 billion population will be living in urban areas. Two years ago, 14 of the world's 19 megacities - those with populations of more than 10 million people - were in the developing countries.

"The growth of transport in these cities has outpaced all attempts to provide for roads, mass transit, and other forms of public transport. Transport is the primary source of air pollution in Latin America and third in Asia, after industry and households," said Dr. Jose Goldemberg, secretary of environment for the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil. "It is extremely good news to hear that Shell Foundation and WRI have joined forces to tackle this problem."

Environmental Estrogen May Harm Breeding Songbirds

The research by scientists at the University of California at Davis demonstrates that so called estrogenic chemicals may hinder the ability of songbirds to reproduce.

Biologists have known for years that synthetic hormones that act like natural estrogen are leaching into the environment. Researchers have wondered how these powerful chemicals that regulate sexual development and reproductive ability might affect wildlife.

The UC Davis research reveals that when zebra finches eat estrogen mimicking chemicals, it can alter the brain circuitry of the female birds enough to make them sing. By nature, only male finches can sing.

In their studies, scientists fed zebra finch hatchlings for a week with estradiol, an estrogen hormone used in hormone replacement therapy (HRT). When the birds grew into adults, the scientists found that the estradiol treated finches could sing.

Dissecting the birds' brains, the scientists discovered that the regions controlling singing were well developed in the females treated with estradiol. The control group, given canola oil instead, showed no such effect.

Likewise, estradiol treated male chicks were infertile as adults. The scientists hypothesize that early estrogen exposure demasculinizes parts of the brain required for normal copulatory behavior.

"These results indicate that songbird populations may be at risk if they are exposed to estrogenic chemicals as chicks," said James Millam, professor in the animal science department in the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and lead author of the studies published in the December and April issues of the journal "Hormones and Behavior."

In the earlier study, Millam and his colleagues had found that estradiol hindered the finches' ability to reproduce. Exposure to estradiol resulted in fewer and more brittle eggs for the tested group and more infertile eggs in groups containing estrogen treated males. As a result, the number of hatchlings decreased compared to those of the control group.

The U.S. Geological Survey reported in April 2002 that industrial contaminants in many American rivers and lakes seem to be affecting the levels of sex hormones in fish throughout the U.S. Estrogen like compounds are also formed by the breakdown of pesticides such as DDT.

Millions of women take estrogens in birth control pills and in estrogen supplements to relieve hot flashes and other symptoms of menopause. These pharmaceutical estrogens can remain in treated sewage wastewater.

Millam noted that his lab study does not answer the question of whether estrogens exert comparable effects in wild songbird populations.

Hot Polymer Catches Carbon Dioxide

Scientists at the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) are developing a new high temperature polymer membrane to separate and capture carbon dioxide, preventing its escape into the atmosphere. This work is part of the Department of Energy's Carbon Sequestration Program, which is exploring ways to capture carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning and reduce human impacts on climate.

National studies estimate that about 30 percent of human caused carbon dioxide emissions are a result of power producing industries. To sequester, or capture, the carbon dioxide they produce, it first must be separated from other gases.

Industrial processes that produce carbon dioxide operate at temperatures as high as 375 degrees Celsius. To date, commercial polymer membranes used for gas separation are limited to maximum operating temperatures of 150 degrees Celsius.

At the American Geophysical Union conference today in Washington DC, Jennifer Young, principal investigator for LANL's carbon dioxide membrane separation project, presents data on a new polymeric-metallic membrane that is stable at temperatures as high as 370 degrees Celsius.

"Current technologies for separating carbon dioxide from other gases require that the gas stream be cooled to below 150 degrees Celsius, which reduces energy efficiency and increases the cost of separation and capture," said Young. "By making a membrane which functions at elevated temperatures, we increase the practicality and economic feasibility of using membranes in industrial settings."

Young said developing an efficient and economical membrane from membrane materials is difficult because the membrane materials are expensive, and there is a tradeoff between productivity and selectivity. On the other hand, less expensive commercially available polymer membranes are effective only up to 150 degrees Celsius.

"Our approach is to improve upon conventional technology," said Young. "The most promising application of this technology in terms of the carbon sequestration program is the separation of hydrogen from carbon dioxide in synthesis gas; however, the technology is not limited to this particular gas pair. For example, it might also be useful in the separation of carbon dioxide from methane."

Appalachian Trail Group Opposes Wind Farm

Endless Energy Company plans to build an extensive series of windmills for electricity production in direct view of a scenic section of the Trail in western Maine. The proposal has not yet gone to Maine's Land Use Regulatory Commission (LURC), and ATC says it will seek to intervene in opposition to the construction plan when it does.

ATC says the project would mean a radical change for the area's views, plant and animal habitats, and land conservation potential.

The towers, as high as a 40 story building, would be visible for about four days of hiking on the Trail between Saddleback and the Bigelow Preserve. During the day, their whirling blades would appear to crawl across the mountains, and at night, their strobe beacons that warn off airplanes would bring an unwelcome human presence into the remote wilderness, ATC says.

That sense of wilderness is a major protected value in the National Trails System Act that recognized the Appalachian Trail's importance 34 years ago.

To install the wind farm, the forested tops of the Redington Range and Black Nubble Mountain to the west would have to be clearcut in places and scarred by about 12 miles of roads and perhaps 10 miles of transmission lines.

Supporters of the project tout its clean energy aspects and say that it would power 33,000 homes, but critics note that most of those homes would be in Canada. Maine does not have an electricity deficit, and few lines go from Maine into New England.

Air pollution problems in the state, which originate in midwestern coal fired power plants, would not be abated by the wind project. Any energy displaced by the wind farm's output would be that from nearby power plants that burn natural gas, biomass and other sources of energy that produce less pollution than coal.

Accepting such a radical change in the Appalachian Trail viewshed for so meager a benefit would set a dangerous standard as the ATC works to protect the Trail from other ridgetop developments, the project's opponents feel.