• Forest Thinning Bill Passes House Committee
  
• New BLM Group Oversees Forest Projects
  
• Judge Allows Tower Construction off Cape Cod
  
• Study Examines Link Between Beef Hormones, Cancer
  
• Humane Society: Cloning Causes Animal Suffering
  
• Cut Methane to Combat Pollution, Climate Change
  
• Court Rejects Oil Company's Financial Claims
  
• Ocean Tower Monitors Air and Water
  

Forest Thinning Bill Passes House Committee

The Committee voted 23-14 to pass fuel reductions legislation (HR 5319) authored by Representative Scott McInnis, a Colorado Republican. Critics charge that the bill undermines the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by barring less environmentally damaging alternatives to logging to be either offered or analyzed.

"Members from both parties are under a great deal of pressure to show their constituents that they are addressing fire, but the Republican bill passed out of committee today is nothing more than a logging bill masquerading as fire prevention," said Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust. "By gutting the National Environmental Policy Act and weakening judicial review in millions of acres of our national forests, this bill sets a dangerous precedent for gutting environmental safeguards on all public lands."

The bill promotes logging by authorizing stewardship contracts that reward loggers for performing fuel reduction projects by allowing them to cut valuable timber. The legislation also weakens public involvement in the project approval process by setting strict, brief time limits on citizen appeals and judicial reviews that critics argue render the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act unenforceable.

"This bill is an all you can eat buffet for the timber industry. Timber executives get to sit at the head of the table while Congress serves up our forests on a silver platter," said Brian Vincent, California organizer for the conservation group American Lands.

A compromise reached between Representatives McInnis, George Miller, a California Democrat, and Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, unraveled during committee deliberations, and Miller and DeFazio withdrew their support for the bill that passed Tuesday.

U.S. Forest Service scientists have found that reducing brush and fine fuels adjacent to homes and communities affords the best forest fire protection. The McInnis bill would expedite logging projects on all public lands, including in forests far from communities, old growth forests, National Parks, and designated wilderness.

Representative Jay Inslee, a Washington Democrat, offered an alternative bill that would have focused fire prevention efforts on projects near communities, create grants to states and tribes to protect homes, and retain current environmental and public participation regulations. Inslee's proposal was defeated in committee, but may be offered on the House floor when HR 5319 is considered later this week.

"Not only does this bill cater to the Bush administration's deregulatory agenda and the timber industry's desire to log the backcountry of our national forests, it provides no direct assistance to homes and communities and will not reduce the risk of fire," Clapp noted.

New BLM Group Oversees Forest Projects

The new group will be responsible for the administration of 55 million acres of forest and woodland on BLM governed public lands.

BLM Director Kathleen Clarke announced the new group Tuesday while addressing the Society of the American Foresters' National Convention in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The new group, a former part of the BLM's existing fish, wildlife and forests group, will focus on restoring the health of the estimated 12 million acres of forests and woodlands that have been identified as needing active intervention.

"We must restore the health of our forests and woodlands and this new group, this new realignment, puts us in a better position to do that," Clarke said.

"The group will implement restoration treatments that will make BLM managed forestlands more resilient to disturbance such as fire, insect infestation or disease," Clark added. "While these activities will also reduce hazardous fuels, they will, at the same time, provide employment opportunities to private individuals."

The Bureau now treats about 66,000 acres of forest a year through various methods, such as mechanical thinning, selective harvest, reforestation and prescribed burning. The new group will focus on accelerating the number of acres treated over the next five years as part of the Bush administration's forest fire prevention plan.

The group is expected to add national emphasis to the Bureau's implementation issues surrounding the Northwest Forest Plan, a complex plan to balance the protection of old growth forests and a predictable and sustainable level of timber harvest on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest. The group will emphasize commercial timber production as authorized under the Northwest Forest Plan and the use of forest health treatment byproducts - harvested timber and brush - for commercial uses such as engineered lumber and bioenergy production.

As part of the BLM's Renewable Resources and Planning Directorate in Washington, DC, the Forest and Woodland Management Group will develop policy and guidance, as well as national strategic goals and priorities for the management of BLM forests and woodlands including the Oregon and California Railroad Grant Lands, and Public Domain Forests and Woodlands spread across 12 western states and Alaska.

The forest and woodlands areas will continue to be managed by BLM's field offices across the country, and sitespecific management objectives will continue to be developed through local land use plans.

The BLM will identify an acting Forest and Woodland Management Group manager on an interim basis while the agency recruits a permanent manager. The Bureau anticipates that the Washington office will be small, with the majority of the work being handled at the field office level.

The BLM, an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior, manages more land - 262 million surface acres - than any other federal agency. Most of the country's BLM managed public land is located in 12 western states, including Alaska.

Judge Allows Tower Construction off Cape Cod

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro rejected the request, filed by the Ten Taxpayers Citizen Group, for a preliminary injunction against the tower. The citizens group had argued that the tower would do irreparable environmental harm, and charged that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated federal law in issuing developer Cape Wind Associates a permit to build the tower on Horseshoe Shoal.

"This is a legal victory for Cape and Massachusetts citizens who want to fully and fairly explore the potential of offshore wind energy," said James Gordon, president of Cape Wind.

The data tower will collect information on wind direction, velocity and turbulence, water currents and turbulence, and wave heights. The collected data will be used by Cape Wind to develop an environmental impact statement regarding the potential effects of the planned wind power project.

The Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound would be the largest offshore wind energy industrial complex in the world, providing, on average, half of the electricity used on Cape Cod and the Islands. It would include about 170 turbines, reaching more than 200 feet above the sea, in a 28 square mile grid

Critics of the wind farm say not enough is known about the project's potential effects on sea birds, turtles and other area wildlife. International Wildlife Coalition executive director Daniel Morast said what little is known about the potential impacts of such a project is not encouraging.

"From the standpoint of the fishery and wildlife which migrate through Nantucket Sound, this project could have devastating impact," said Morast. "Wind generation may be benign as a general concept, but constructing an industrial complex with 170 towers that exceed the Statue of Liberty in height may not be a benign experience for the fish and wildlife that call that this area home."

The project area on Horseshoe Shoal is a common summering area for endangered turtles such as leatherbacks, loggerheads and green turtles. The area is frequented by gray and harbor seals, white-sided dolphins, harbor porpoises, right whales, humpback whales and minke whales.

The wind farm would be constructed in an area designated as essential for fish habitats under the Fishery Conservation and Management Act (FCMA) because a number of species, including squid, flounder, sea bass, flounder, stripe bass and blue fish, spawn in the area.

More than 500,000 birds are found during migration in the Nantucket Shoals area because it is in the middle of the Atlantic flyway, a major East Coast migratory pathway for birds that could be harmed by the operation of the 170 turbine propellers.

"Studies of other wind farms internationally have raised concerns about adverse impacts on wildlife that were discovered only after the construction," said Sharon Young, marine issues director for the Humane Society of the United States. "Environmental groups want to see a proactive study rather than retrospective regret."

While Judge Tauro said the motion failed to meet the criteria for an injunction, including legal standing in court, likelihood of success at trial and proof of irreparable harm, the lawsuit by Ten Taxpayer Citizens Group will proceed, as will a similar suit filed by the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.

Study Examines Link Between Beef Hormones, Cancer

The first of its kind study will compare beef consumption with elevated levels of the growth promoter zeranol in women's blood, urine and breast tissue.

"We want our patients to know that we have no evidence suggesting that eating beef in any amount is dangerous," emphasized Dr. William Farrar, a breast cancer specialist at the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute and a co-leader of the study. "But we are very interested in discovering any relationship between residual zeranol and enhanced estrogenic activity in the breast."

Zeranol is used throughout the cattle, veal and lamb industries in the United States. It is produced from the mold of a fungus often found in cereal and animal feed, and manufactured as a pellet that can be implanted under the skin of an animal's ear.

Cattle growers use zeranol to help fatten the animals faster, create a higher lean to fat ratio and develop meat with more flavor. Although zeranol has been shown to stimulate breast cancer cell growth, the Food and Drug Administration says it is safe to use in tiny amounts in young cattle and lambs.

But the practice concerns Dr. Young Lin, a veterinarian in The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center and a co-leader of the study. Lin points out that zeranol acts like estrogen in the body, and notes that some laboratory studies suggest that zeranol, like estrogen, stimulates estrogen modulated genes that can affect the growth of human breast cancer cells.

"We think this may be important, because some studies suggest that the more unopposed estrogen a woman is exposed to over her lifetime, the greater her chances of developing breast cancer," Lin said.

The key question, Lin explained, is whether long term, low level exposure to zeranol adds to that breast cancer risk.

"We have examined the impact of zeranol on the breast tissue of rats - and on human breast cancer cells, as well," said Lin. "Our research shows that even in very small amounts - levels 30 times lower than FDA approved limits, zeranol seems to enhance the effects of estrogen."

Lin said it is too soon to call beef products containing zeranol a potential environmental risk, because what happens to cells in the controlled setting of a laboratory might not happen in the complex setting of the human body.

Lin and Farrar will be examining both normal and cancerous breast tissue taken from patients at The James Cancer Hospital who undergo biopsy or surgical breast reduction. Volunteers will be asked to complete a questionnaire on beef consumption, and the patients will be classified according to the amount of beef they consume.

Researchers will take blood and urine samples to measure any residual zeranol against the activity of several biomarkers believed to be active in the development of breast cancer. The biological activity of the zeranol will also be measured by the degree of cell proliferation and alteration of estrogen responsive gene levels.

Lin and colleagues in veterinary colleges in four other universities across the country will test random samples of supermarket bought beef to gauge the presence and amount of zeranol residue in commercial products. Partner institutions include the University of Minnesota, Texas A & M, Cornell University and the University of California at Davis.

Lin said the purpose of the study is not to challenge the legality of current regulations on the usage of zeranol in food animals, but to offer information that could be useful to regulatory agencies in decisions about the use of growth promoters used in beef destined for human consumption.

"We hope this study will permit an evaluation of the validity of the hypothesized link between long term, low level dietary exposure to zeranol in beef and adverse health effects, specifically with respect to breast cancer and other estrogen sensitive disorders," Lin said.

The study is supported by a three year, $555,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute.

Humane Society: Cloning Causes Animal Suffering

In a letter sent today to the director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, the HSUS noted that a recent National Academy of Sciences review found adverse impacts on animal welfare in the cloning of farm animals.

The animal welfare group says cloning can involve intrusive and sometimes painful reproductive manipulations. Surgery is used, for instance, to remove eggs from female breeding stock and to implant embryos to produce transgenic and cloned animals. The animals used as breeding stock can be subjected to these procedures over and over again.

Cloning also results in very high rates of fetal deaths. Health problems in those who survive to birth include respiratory distress, pneumonia, lethargy, cardiomyopathy and metabolic problems.

Abnormalities such as brain lesions, skeletal malformations and incomplete development of the vascular tract are also often seen in cloned animals. Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, suffers from severe arthritis, the HSUS said.

Cloned cattle and sheep have higher than average birth weights, requiring caesarean deliveries which may be repeated on the same breeding stock.

Dr. Michael Appleby, HSUS vice president for farm animals and sustainable agriculture, said that the artificial selection for particular qualities that is current practice in modern agriculture has already led to production related disorders such as crippling and high disease vulnerability, a problem that will worsen if cloning becomes common.

"A single pathogen could wipe out countless numbers of genetically identical animals, putting animal safety and the world's food supply at risk," said Appleby. "Already animals are suffering from maladies at a rate unheard of before we applied biotechnology to the barnyard. It would be disastrously premature to put this technology into commercial practice."

In the letter to Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine, Appleby also raised concerns about the impact of cloning on the small family farmer.

"This expensive technology will benefit only biotech companies and large agribusinesses," Appleby wrote. "This will exacerbate the ongoing trend in agriculture today of the loss of small family farms which are often more humane and ecologically sustainable."

To date, the FDA has asked producers to hold off on selling such products even though no current federal law or regulation prohibits such sales. The HSUS praised the agency for the precautionary approach it has taken so far.

"We commend the FDA for its actions in commissioning the National Academy of Sciences report and requesting that food from cloned animals not enter the marketplace," Appleby concluded. "These measures show an appropriate, precautionary approach, and we trust the FDA will further this by putting more weight on the animal safety issues outlined in the report."

Cut Methane to Combat Pollution, Climate Change

Scientists at Harvard University, the Argonne National Laboratory, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) say that methane is directly linked to the production of ozone in the troposphere, the lowest part of Earth's atmosphere, extending from the surface to around seven miles (12 kilometers) altitude. Ozone is the primary constituent of smog and both methane and ozone are greenhouse gases that are linked to global warming.

A simulation based upon emissions projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a longer and more intense ozone season in the United States by 2030, despite domestic emission reductions, the researchers note. Mitigation should therefore be considered on a global scale, the researchers said, and must take into account a rising global background level of ozone.

The U.S. standard is now based upon 84 parts per billion by volume of ozone, not to be exceeded more than three times per year, a standard that is not met nationwide. In Europe, the standard is much stricter, 55-65 parts of ozone per billion by volume, but these targets are also exceeded in many European countries.

Writing this month in the journal "Geophysical Research Letters," Arlene Fiore and her colleagues say that one way to decrease ozone pollution and greenhouse warming is to reduce methane emissions. Ozone is formed in the troposphere by chemical reactions involving methane, other organic compounds, and carbon monoxide, in the presence of nitrogen oxides and sunlight.

Methane is known to be a major source of ozone throughout the troposphere, but is not often considered to play a key role in the production of ozone smog in surface air, because of its long lifetime.

Sources of manmade methane include herds of cattle and other farm animals, rice production, and leaks of natural gas from pipelines, according to the IPCC. Natural sources of methane include wetlands, termites, oceans and gas hydrate nodules on the sea floor.

The researchers find that a reduction of manmade methane by 50 percent would have a greater impact on global tropospheric ozone than a comparable reduction in manmade nitrogen oxide emissions. Reducing surface nitrogen oxide emissions does improve air quality by decreasing surface ozone levels, but this impact tends to be localized, and does not yield much benefit in terms of greenhouse warming.

Reductions in methane emissions would, however, help to decrease greenhouse warming by decreasing both methane and ozone in the atmosphere worldwide, and this would also help to reduce surface air pollution.

Both in the United States and Europe, aggressive programs of emission controls aimed at lowering ozone based pollution may be offset by rising emissions of methane and nitrogen oxides from developing countries, the researchers write. Pollution could increase despite these controls, and the summertime pollution season would lengthen, according to the IPCC's simulations.

Court Rejects Oil Company's Financial Claims

Under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, companies or individuals may claim that they deserve financial compensation if the government takes or renders useless private property. Many cases have been brought by landowners seeking payment for compliance with environmental laws, but the courts have rejected most such claims.

In the case of Coastal Petroleum Company, the court agreed with arguments that the denial of the permit under these circumstances did not equate with a taking.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection granted Coastal Petroleum an oil drilling permit about six years ago. The environmental law company Earthjustice represented environmental groups in a suit filed in 1996 to have the permit invalidated on the ground that it violated the relevant permitting statute.

Earthjustice has contended that Coastal Petroleum sought a permit for the sole purpose of selling it back to the state.

"This case wasn't about an oil drilling permit," said Earthjustice attorney David Guest. "This case was about trying to get a permit to put forth a takings claim."

The plaintiffs convinced the court that on balance, the prospects of finding any recoverable oil were outweighed by the environmental risks of drilling. The courts denied Coastal Petroleum's permit for offshore drilling near St. George Island.

Tuesday's ruling from the bench threw out the company's subsequent takings claim for financial compensation, on the grounds that Coastal Petroleum was not guaranteed a permit for drilling when they purchased the lease.

"Coastal Petroleum never really was an oil company and there never really was a prospect," said Guest. "They were trying to make it look like they had a serious permit denied so that they could get serious money from the state and it didn't work."

Ocean Tower Monitors Air and Water

The Air-Sea Interaction Tower will measure conditions such as air temperature, humidity, solar radiation and carbon dioxide, as well as water temperature, salinity or salt content, wave height and direction, water circulation, current speed and direction, and sediment transport. It will also measure momentum, heat, and mass exchange between the atmosphere and ocean.

The Air-Sea Interaction Tower next to a construction platform. (Photo courtesy Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

"No one has ever built this kind of thing before," said science officer Simon Chang who oversees the project for the ONR.

"Understanding how the ocean and atmosphere interact under all conditions, and understanding the factors that affect the exchange of energy between the ocean and atmosphere, how readily carbon dioxide is exchanged, and how currents and waves affect bottom sediments, makes for better weather forecasts," Chang continued. "Avoiding storms and correctly and precisely forecasting bad weather saves lives."

Power and data transmission from the Tower are supplied the underwater cable linked to MVCO. Data gathered will be integrated with MVCO data and made available to all users and to the general public via the MVCO web site at: http://www.whoi.edu/mvco

The data will include wind speed and direction, air and sea temperature, wave height and direction, and currents at the offshore site.

"This is a one of a kind platform for studying coastal processes in the Atlantic Ocean," said James Edson of WHOI's Ocean Physics and Engineering Department, who serves as project engineer. "It will be used by researchers, educators, and students from around the world during its lifetime."