• Panel Raises New Concerns About Yucca Mountain
  
• Conservationists Challenge Natomas Basin Development
  
• Channel Island Foxes Will Get Protection
  
• Watchdog Group Criticizes Army Corps Wetland Permitting Process
  
• Industry Funded Research on the Rise at U.S. Universities
  
• Senators Aim to Protect Farm Conservation Funding
  
• U.S., Chinese Researchers to Collaborate on New Nuclear Reactor
  
• Americans Spent $32 Billion on Birdwatching in 2001
  

Panel Raises New Concerns About Yucca Mountain

The panel, which is an independent body designed to scrutinize science and planning for Yucca Mountain, raised doubts about the Energy Department's claims that tightly packing waste into the facility would prevent corrosion of the canisters.

If the containers leak, highly radioactive waste would be released into the environment and could seep out of the facility into surrounding water supplies.

Critics of the Yucca Mountain plan say this finding indicates fundamental flaws in the project and note that some 200 other scientific questions about Yucca Mountain that remain unanswered.

"The board's findings can be added to the long list of problems facing Yucca Mountain including the potential for volcanic activity, earthquakes and a lack of safeguards against accidents or terrorist attacks," said U.S. Representative Shelley Berkeley, a Nevada Democrat. "Anyone who says that nuclear waste can be safely stored at Yucca Mountain is choosing to ignore the very real dangers that this project presents and the unanswered scientific questions that remain."

The Yucca Mountain site was first identified as a possible location for storage of the nation's nuclear waste in 1987, but the project has been beset with criticism and skepticism.

The facility, some 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is not expected to be complete until 2010.

"The storage of high level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain is, quite simply, scientifically unsound, as we in Nevada have been saying for years," said Nevada Senator John Ensign, a Republican. "This study is just the latest in a long list of scientific reasons for the abandonment of the Yucca Mountain project."

Conservationists Challenge Natomas Basin Development

The groups charge that the agency's decision violated the Endangered Species Act (ESA) because the development in the 53,000 acre basin will destroy some of the last remaining habitats for two threatened species - the Swainson's hawk and the giant garter snake.

Under the ESA, any habitat destruction must be offset with adequately funded mitigation measures that prevent development from jeopardizing threatened species. The groups believe the current plan does not contain adequate mitigation measures to protect the threatened species and say it is similar to a plan rejected by a federal court in 2000.

"This is essentially the same plan that the U.S. District Court struck down three years ago," said John Kostyack, senior counsel for the National Wildlife Federation.

"This 'destroy the habitat now, fix the problem later' approach has got to stop," Kostyack said.

Along with the National Wildlife Federation, the notice of intent to sue is cosigned by the Environmental Council of Sacramento, Friends of the Swainson's Hawk, the Planning and Conservation League and the Sierra Club.

Barring a satisfactory response from the Department of the Interior within the next sixty days, these organizations say they will file suit jointly against the Fish and Wildlife Service.

"If the current Habitat Conservation Plan is allowed to stand, thousands of acres of vital habitat will be converted to strip malls, office parks and houses, with inadequate safeguards for threatened wildlife," said James Pachl, legal counsel for Friends of the Swainson's Hawk.

Habitat loss has reduced the population of the Swainson's hawk in California to 10 percent of its historic level. The giant garter snake exists only in the Central Valley of California and was declared a "threatened" species under the ESA in 1993.

Three of the organizations - Sierra Club, Environmental Council of Sacramento, and Friends of the Swainson's Hawk - earlier filed a separate lawsuit that seeks to set aside the Habitat Conservation Plan for violations of the California Environmental Quality Act and the California Endangered Species Act. That lawsuit is pending in the Sacramento County Superior Court.

"Development does not have to come at the expense of imperiled wildlife," said Andy Sawyer, president of the Environmental Council of Sacramento. "We would like to see a truly effective Habitat Conservation Plan, with a connected series of wildlife reserves for the Natomas Basin. Unfortunately, once again, the plan approved by the Fish and Wildlife Service does not fit the bill."

Channel Island Foxes Will Get Protection

The agreement was signed last week with the Center for Biological Diversity, which has long lobbied for the action.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service first placed the fox subspecies on its list of "candidates" for ESA protection in 1984.

The agency proposed to protect the fox subspecies in December 2001, but the Bush administration did not finalize the decision, prompting the Center to sue in for action in April 2003.

According to the terms of the agreement, the Fish and Wildlife Service will publish a final ESA listing decision by March 1, 2004 and designate critical habitat by November 1, 2005.

"The agreement is the last chapter in the island fox's long 19-year wait for federal protection but there is still lots of work to do to save them from extinction," said Noah Greenwald, conservation biologist with the Center.

The island fox is a distant relative of the California gray fox and is believed to have floated out to the Channel Islands on a raft of logs some 16,000 years ago when ocean levels were very low.

As ocean levels rose, the three northern Channel Islands formed - San Miguel, Santa Rosa, and Santa Cruz - each one evolving its own subspecies of fox.

Between 2,200 and 4,300 years ago, Native American transported foxes to the southern Channel Islands - San Nicholas, Santa Catalina, and San Clemente - where they again evolved to become unique subspecies.

The San Miguel Island fox, Santa Rosa Island fox, Santa Cruz Island fox, and the Santa Catalina Island foxes have suffered dramatic population crashes in recent years.

On San Miguel Island, for example, the population declined to just 15 animals, after which 14 were captured for captive breeding, leaving only one individual in the wild.

Overall, island fox numbers have fallen from approximately 6,000 individuals in 1994 to fewer than 1,660 in 2001.

Among the threats facing the island fox are historic habitat loss caused by exotic livestock, diseases spread by domestic dogs, and predation by golden eagles, which are not native to the Channel Islands.

Two other subspecies - the San Nicolas Island fox and San Clemente Island fox - are not part of the agreement and will not be listed as endangered species.

Watchdog Group Criticizes Army Corps Wetland Permit Process

PEER says the finding is part of a comprehensive 20 year tabulation of the Army Corps' wetlands permit and enforcement performance from 1982 through 2002.

The latest figures, according to PEER, show a continuation in trends of more development approvals without field visits and greater reliance on categorical exclusions that permit wetland loss without further examination or review.

"Increasingly, the Corps wetlands program is becoming a paper exercise," said PEER Board member Magi Shapiro, a former long time Corps Project Manager.

The Army Corps did not comment on PEER's report.

The analysis released by PEER shows that the number of "Jurisdiction Determinations" - where the Corps decides whether wetlands are protected from development - increased by 49 percent in the past decade, but environmental evaluations of permits declined 39 percent.

The report finds that nearly four times as many Jurisdictional Determinations are now made by phone or letter from the Corps office, without a field visit to the affected land.

In addition, PEER says that the Corps is denying fewer permits than ever before - the denial rate has decreased 78 percent in the past decade. The permit denial rate is less than 2 percent.

The watchdog group also criticizes the Corps for its enforcement record of permit conditions and says that despite 421 cases of noncompliance in 2002, the agency did not initiate litigation in a single case.

"Why should a permittee honor the terms and conditions of the permit when the Corps will either fail to make a compliance inspection, or, in the best of circumstances, require some minor permit modification that legalizes the violation?" Shapiro asked. "Complex permits require careful professional work on the part of the Project Managers who are continually frustrated by their inability to enforce the permit."

Industry Funded Research on the Rise at U.S. Universities

Analysis released this week finds that 2.7 percent of academic research and development funding came from industry in 1970 compared to 6.8 percent in 2001.

According to Sheldon Krimsky, a Tufts University professor, some universities today receive as much as 28 percent of their research funding from industry.

"It is no surprise that these dollars often come with strings attached," said Krimsky, author of "Science in the Private Interest: Has the Lure of Profits Corrupted Biomedical Research?"

"The public loses out because they often never hear about safety concerns of products they use," Krimsky said. "On the flip side, when a university study finds that a product is safe, most people do not realize that the research was in fact paid for by the manufacturers themselves."

At a Washington press briefing this week, Krimsky recommended the establishment of an independent national institute of drug testing that would serve as a firewall between corporations and researchers. Krimsky and other critics of commercial funding of scientific research say universities should only accept corporate research funding that does not prohibit researchers from publishing their findings, even if those findings reveal health or safety concerns about the product.

"It will never be possible to divorce entirely the scientific pursuit of knowledge from the pursuit of profit," said U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat. "But we must work to ensure that conflicts of interest do not unduly hinder scientific research and effective policy. Otherwise, we risk relinquishing the benefits of scientific advancement for the sake of corporate interests - a trade that the American people cannot afford to make."

According to the new data, the top five industry-funded universities in 2001 included Duke, MIT, Penn State, Georgia Tech and Ohio State.

Krimsky says these and other institutions are increasingly filling budget gaps by accepting multi million dollar grants from biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.

Duke, for example, received almost $32 million in research and development funding in 1992 from industry groups. By 2001, Duke was receiving approximately $104 million, Krimsky reports.

Senators Aim to Protect Farm Conservation Funding

The senators say the bill aims to restore the conservation funding commitment Congress and the Bush administration made to farmers and ranchers in the 2002 Farm Bill.

"It is time for Congress and the administration to honor the intent of the 2002 Farm Bill, by fully funding working lands conservation programs," said cosponsor Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. "The failure to adequately fund these working lands conservation programs is having a dramatic impact on both farmers and the farm economy and could become worse in future years if Congress does not address this matter."

The bill is cosponsored by Republican Senators Olympia Snowe of Maine and Conrad Burns of Montana.

Leahy explained that these producers are being denied funding because of the USDA's decision earlier this year to divert $158.7 million from the programs to pay for the cost of administering the other agricultural conservation programs.

The diversion of funds, Leahy said, came despite a "clear directive" in the bill to use other money to fund the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP).

The USDA diverted $107.9 million from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, $27.6 from the Farmland and Ranchland Protection Program, $14.6 million from the Grasslands Reserve Program, and $8.6 million from the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program to pay for CRP and WRP technical assistance.

"Despite the historic conservation funding levels in the 2002 Farm Bill, family farmers and ranchers offering to restore wetlands, or offering to change the way they farm to improve air and water quality, continue to be rejected when they seek U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) conservation assistance," said Leahy.

"[This bill] would require the administration to honor the 2002 Farm Bill and mandate that technical assistance for each program is derived from funds provided for that program," according to the Vermont Democrat.

U.S., Chinese Researchers Collaborate on Nuclear Reactor

For the past six years, MIT and Tsinghua research teams have been working independently on studies of a modular high temperature, pebble-bed reactor.

The reactor's name reflects its fuel - uranium is encased in billiard ball sized graphite pebbles that cannot get hot enough to melt within the small core and are prepackaged for long term disposal without reprocessing.

MIT researchers have been performing analytical studies and simulations on the concept, while Tsinghua researchers have built and are running experiments in a 10 megawatt thermal research reactor - the world's only operating pebble-bed reactor.

The collaboration is the product of an international agreement adopted last month between the U.S. Department of Energy and the China Atomic Energy Authority.

"The agreement provides an incredible opportunity for bringing the world together on this promising technology," said Professor Andrew Kadak of the Department of Nuclear Engineering, who leads the MIT research and was closely involved with a three year effort to get the agreement signed.

Kadak says there is "worldwide interest in the technology" and he is contacting other pebble-bed researchers in the United States, Europe, South Africa and elsewhere to develop a list of important topics to address.

The MIT researchers have been studying pebble-bed technology since 1998 and have recently turned their attention on the modular approach to construction of the new reactors.

They contend a "plug and play" approach to construction and the small size of the reactor could revolutionize how nuclear plants are built.

"If this works, the economic obstacle to building new plants will be removed," said Kadak.

Americans Spent $32 Billion on Birdwatching in 2001

The report - "Birding in the United States: A Demographic and Economic Analysis" - is the first of its kind analyzing data from the 2001 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation.

The $32 billion was spent on gear such as binoculars, travel, food and big ticket items such as canoes, cabins and off road vehicles, according to the federal agency's report.

The Fish and Wildlife Service says this spending also generated $85 billion in overall economic output and $13 billion in federal and state income taxes, and supported more than 863,000 jobs.

"Nearly one in five Americans is a bird watcher," said Fish and Wildlife Service Director Steve Williams. "This report recognizes what we always thought to be true. Birdwatching is very popular and contributes greatly to our economy, so it is important that we continue to work with our partners to restore and protect habitat to ensure healthy bird populations."

The report finds that Montana, Vermont and Wisconsin led the United States in birding participation rates as a percent of total state population, with California, New York and Pennsylvania the leaders in the amount of birdwatchers.

The agency defines a birdwatcher as an individual who travels a mile or more from home for the primary purpose of observing birds or who closely observe or try to identify birds around the home.

Those who notice birds while mowing the lawn or picnicking at the beach were not counted as birders and trips to zoos and observing captive birds also did not count as birdwatching.

Watching birds around the home is the most common form of bird-watching, according to report, and taking trips away from home counted for 40 percent of birders.