Bio Watch.To Bee or Not To Bee UK -- The British scientific community was rocked by the discovery Last April that bees had carried pollen from genetically modified (GM) oilseed oilseed
the seeds of the linseed plant, rapeseed or canola, peanut, safflower (Carthamus tinctorius); biproduct oils from seeds include corn, grapeseed, olive, sesame, sunflower. rape 4.5 kilometers from a farm test site. (Government standards require only a 50-meter separation between GM crops and other fields.) Last September, a court challenge by Friends of the Earth forced the government to admit that its oilseed rape tests were illegal. According to FOE, rules governing the trials had been broken to accommodate biotech giant AgrEvo. FOE Executive Director Charles Secrett called the disclosures "the death blow for the whole GM trials program."
ARABIAN GULF -- Large numbers of fish are dying in the northern Arabian Gulf because of higher water temperatures brought on by global warming, indiscriminate dumping of wastewater by oil companies, and oil seepage from offshore rigs. The Gulf's oil rigs produce 30,000 to 40,000 barrels a day; a Lot of that ends up in the water through seepage from the seabed, cracked equipment, illegal dumping, leaking vessels and accidental spills. Oil extractors also dump polluted and hypersaline water created by their processes. The construction of dams on the Tigris and Euphrates Tigris and Euphrates is a German strategy board game designed by Reiner Knizia and first published in 1997 by Hans im Glück in German (as Euphrat und Tigris). rivers has greatly reduced fresh water inflow that would dilute the pollution.
Mind Your Manures
US -- The Environmental Defense Fund's Scorecard Website [www.scorecord.org] lists the Top Ten states for livestock excrement excrement /ex·cre·ment/ (eks´kri-mint)
2. excretion (2).
Waste matter or any excretion cast out of the body, especially feces. production. Using 1997 statistics provided by the states to the Department of Agriculture, the Scorecard determined that the country's ten most manured states were Texas (84,587,100 tons), Nebraska (41,304,000), Kansas (34,767,000), Missouri (34,061,000), Minnesota (33,392,300), Oklahoma (30,850,000), North Carolina North Carolina, state in the SE United States. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean (E), South Carolina and Georgia (S), Tennessee (W), and Virginia (N). Facts and Figures
Area, 52,586 sq mi (136,198 sq km). Pop. (27,317,800), Illinois (19,212,500), New York New York, state, United States
New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of (18,696,270), Montana (17,777,000). The EDF (algorithm) EDF - earliest deadline first. estimates that US Livestock generates one billion tons of feces and urine each year. That's enough to fill ... Well, never mind. Giant hog-factory farms are the latest twist in intensive excretion. Hurricane Floyd doused North Carolina, the nation's second-largest hog-producing state, with thousands of hog carcasses and hundreds of thousands of gallons of manure, contaminating drinking wells and homes. The hog industry estimates that the average hog produces two tons of waste per year. Some pig.
It's Not a Birdy Picture
MALAYSIA -- Some 1200 bird species -- one in eight worldwide -- will Likely go extinct in the next century and another 600 to 900 more species are in danger of joining them, according to a report from BirdLife International, a wildlife advocacy group that represents 2.2 million people in 105 countries. Birdlife International warms that 185 bird species face extinction within the next 10 years. Countries with the most birds at risk are Brazil (with 111 species), Indonesia (92), China (82), Colombia (81), Peru (79) and India (70). The highest densities of threatened bird species occur in the Philippines, where 69 face extinction. The burning-off of vegetation, commercial logging, farming, mining, and deforestation deforestation
Process of clearing forests. Rates of deforestation are particularly high in the tropics, where the poor quality of the soil has led to the practice of routine clear-cutting to make new soil available for agricultural use. are the most common threats. Most threatened species live in forests, but even common birds like European swallows and skylarks in have declined by as much as 50 percent in the past 30 years.
On the Other Wing ...
TAIWAN -- Our friends at Spoonbill spoonbill, common name for a large wading bird related to the ibis. It has a long bill with a tip like a flattened spoon, with which it captures small aquatic animals. Action Voluntary Echo (Fall '99 EIJ EIJ Egyptian Islamic Jihad
EIJ Eritrean Islamic Jihad (Eritrea)
EIJ Earth Island Journal (San Francisco, California) , page 22) forward encouraging news from the Taiwan Wild Bird Society. In November, a record 443 blackfaced spoonbills -- up from 363 in 1998 -- arrived in their Chiku, Taiwan wintering ground.
Toxic Dump Sites -- with Fins
BRITISH COLUMBIA -- Canadians are worried that they're Losing their magnificent -- and profitable -- orcas. Cetacean cetacean
Any of the exclusively aquatic placental mammals constituting the order Cetacea. They are found in oceans worldwide and in some freshwater environments. Modern cetaceans are grouped in two suborders: about 70 species of toothed whales (Odontoceti) and 13 species of biologist Robin Baird has found that the orca population off British Columbia is declining at a rapid and unprecedented rate. The population has dropped from 96 to 84 in the past three years. Fewer calves are being born and fewer still are surviving. Canada's Institute of Ocean Sciences reports that levels of the industrial pollutant PCB PCB: see polychlorinated biphenyl.
in full polychlorinated biphenyl
Any of a class of highly stable organic compounds prepared by the reaction of chlorine with biphenyl, a two-ring compound. in their fat tissues makes orcas among the world's most PCB-contaminated animals.
US -- Plant researchers in Idaho and in Canberra, Australia have taken a leaf from old-fashioned crop rotation and found that natural pesticides formed in the roots of brassicas -- cabbage, mustard, canola -- act as natural soil fumigants when the plants are plowed under. These compounds, called
glucosinolates, are present in the whole plant, but only the glucosinolates in the roots form the natural soil fumigants. These root-based fumigants degrade into innocuous compounds within three days. Scientists are now trying to breed plants that contain more glucosinolates in their roots, in hope of replacing commercial soil fumigants Like the biologically nasty and ozone-depleting methyl bromide.
US -- The Idaho Fish and Game Commission (IFGG) had proposed "to severely and demonstrably reduce [by killing] the number of predators adversely affecting or that may adversely affect big game, upland gamebirds, fish, and migratory waterfowl waterfowl, common term for members of the order Anseriformes, wild, aquatic, typically freshwater birds including ducks, geese, and screamers. In Great Britain the term is also used to designate species kept for ornamental purposes on private lakes or ponds, while in ." The IFGG planned to kill half the local population of red-tailed hawks to help increase sage grouse population. The plan also targeted wolves, mountain Lions and bears. Environmental groups, animal rights activists, and several hunting groups spoke out against the plan in a public meeting and in a torrent of letters. The commission, citing excessive cost and public outrage, has repealed its resolution. It now will deal with claims of excessive predation predation
Form of food getting in which one animal, the predator, eats an animal of another species, the prey, immediately after killing it or, in some cases, while it is still alive. Most predators are generalists; they eat a variety of prey species. on a case-by-case basis.
THAILAND -- The World Wide Fund for Nature The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is an international non-governmental organization for the conservation, research and restoration of the natural environment, formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in the United States and Canada. (WWF See Windows Workflow Foundation. ) branch in Thailand is releasing captive elephants back to the wild at the Doi Pha Muang sanctuary in the northern Thai mountains. "Humanity can start to put elephants back into the forest as a sign of respect and gratitude for all the benefits that we've had from them over the past 1,000 years," said WWF's Robert Mather. The pachyderms, once revered for their roles in war and work, are jobless and homeless after economic downturns and long-overdue logging bans. The country's shrinking forests provide less work for tame elephants and less room and forage for wild ones. Loggers scratching for a living in these remnants have fed their four-legged workers amphetamines Amphetamines
Sympathomimetic amines; sometimes called speed; synthetic chemicals that stimulate the central nervous system.
Mentioned in: Weight Loss Drugs
amphetamines to stimulate production. Unemployed elephants have been sold into service as hotel mascots, tourist entertainers, and beggars' props in cities. Seventy-two elephants are being rehabilitated and freed over a year's time in honor of King Bhumibol Adulyadej's auspicious seventy-second birthday. Seven were released with tracking devices in 1996, and WWF's Sombat Prasertsuk reports, "They look healthy and, psychologically, they're in good shape."
Orissa's Unnatural Disaster
UK -- In the November '99 New Scientist, journalist Fred Pearce, environmentalist environmentalist
a person with an interest and knowledge about the interaction of humans and animals with the environment. Vandana Shiva, and several coastal geographers attributed much of the death and devastation from India's October 1999 supercyclone to the destruction of India's coastal mangrove mangrove, large tropical evergreen tree, genus Rhizophora, that grows on muddy tidal flats and along protected ocean shorelines. Mangroves are most abundant in tropical Asia, Africa, and the islands of the SW Pacific. forests. Orissa's mangroves were cleared to make way for shrimp farms. India has Lost more than half its mangrove forests in the past 40 years. The cyclone ripped the coastal state with 300-kilometer-per-hour winds. A tidal surge and torrential rains flooded up to 13 kilometers inland with five feet of water. Poor communities 50 kilometers from the coast were washed away. About 10,000 people died, and 10 million were left homeless. "In the past," says Tom Spencer of the Cambridge University Coastal Research Unit, "the mangroves would have dissipated the incoming wave energy." In addition to providing habitat and fish nurseries, mangroves trap sediment in their roots, creating shallow shorelines that slow waves, while their Leafy canopies shelter the land from wind.
Checks marked "Orissa Cyclone Relief" may be sent c/o Food First, 398 60th St., Oakland, CA 94618 (510) 654-4400.
An Airline's Error Line
SINGAPORE -- Last October, a South African exporter sent a planeload plane·load
The load that an airplane is capable of carrying. of 201 animals to a game reserve in Canton, China. The shipping manifest Listed ten white rhinos, two black rhinos, 18 giraffes and an assortment of wildebeests, bonteboks, gemsboks, otters, servals, wild dogs and bat-eared foxes. Animal activists blew the whistle on the carrier: Singapore Airlines.
The Circus of the Scars
UK -- Mary Chipperfield Cawley and Roger Cawley of Mary Chipperfield Promotions, a British circus concern, have been fined 8,500 [pounds sterling] and charged 12,240 [pounds sterling] ($20,000) in court costs for abusing animals. Animal Defenders [261 Goldhawk Rd., London, W12 9PE; phone 0181-846-9712; info@animaldefenders, org.uk.www.animaldefenders.org.uk], which urged the Cawleys' prosecution with press releases, petition drives and movie-trailer ads, called the sentence inadequate. AD hopes that the trial will spur the British public to demand changes in humane laws. In shocking investigative footage videotaped by AD and shown in court (and broadcast on AD's TV program Secrets of the Circus), animal handlers were photographed beating elephants, camels, horses and tigers hard enough to make viewers flinch. One Chipperfield employee (once convicted of manslaughter) was filmed clumsily bashing a chicken to death against a wall Witnesses testified to repeated and gross abuses, including those to an infant chimpanzee named Trudy, who was beaten, isolated, terrorized and confined to a tiny cage. None of this treatment was disputed; under current Laws most of it is legal. One benefit of the trial was the release of Trudy from the Cawleys' custody.
Can't Carry a Tuna
SWITZERLAND -- In August 1999, the UN International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) is an intergovernmental organization created by the mandate of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea. ordered Japan to stop its "experimental scientific" catch of endangered Pacific bluefin tuna Pacific bluefin tuna, Thunnus orientalis are some of the biggest and fastest fish in the Pacific. Evolution has streamlined the tuna's body to reduce water resistance and conserve energy for trans Pacific migrations. . In 1999, Japan used this ploy to harvest 2,200 extra tons of bluefin, in addition to its commercial quota. Greenpeace International Fisheries Officer Desley Mather said, "Japan irresponsibly used the excuse of a scientific program to raise its tuna catch, just as it has done with minke whales. This ruling is good news for conserving the bluefin tuna and should make Japan think twice about embarking on so-called experimental fishing again." Numbers of bluefin, which can fetch 25,800 [pounds sterling] ($41,800) in Japanese markets, have crashed by 90 percent since 1960 and deep cuts in the commercial catches of all countries' fleets are still needed to allow recovery.
US -- There's a Land boom rocking the Rocky Mountain states Rocky Mountain States
A region of the western United States including Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. and, as humans move in, native animals are Losing out. In Montana, which is home to 75 to 80 percent of the grizzly bears in the Lower 48 states, prime bear habitat is being sold off to a bull market. Montana real estate taws taws
pl.n. Chiefly Scots
1. A whip or leather thong used to drive a spinning top.
2. A leather whip divided at the end into strips, formerly used to punish children: don't require informing potential buyers that they are about to build their wilderness dream home in grizzly habitat. It is not just a Montana problem, Lance Olsen reports in Bear News [802 E. Front St., Missoula, MT 59802, (406) 829-9378, www.greatbear.org]. Congress supports sprawl with house-building tax write-offs for the rich. "If you make enough money to need up to a million dollars in tax cuts, building a home in the woods might be a solution," Olsen writes. Unfortunately, Washington's boost for housing and resort development "jeopardizes the survival of threatened and endangered species such as salmon, trout and bears."
US -- New Jersey's Pine Barrens are threatened by expanding cranberry bog farms and by the pro-development policies of Governor Christine Todd Whitman. Governor Whitman has replaced progressive members of the Pinelands Pinelands can refer to the following things:
n.pr See acid, eicosapentaenoic.
n. approval to expand cranberry farm bogs in the Pinelands by 300 acres. The plan would benefit the state's 48 commercial cranberry growers but would displace critical wetlands and wildlife. "These are one of the most important wetlands systems on the East Coast," said Jeff Titter tit·ter
intr.v. tit·tered, tit·ter·ing, tit·ters
To laugh in a restrained, nervous way; giggle.
A nervous giggle.
[Probably imitative. , director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club [(908) 766-6446, firstname.lastname@example.org].
US -- Social activist Dick Gregory has taped a public service announcement for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is an international nonprofit organization that supports Animal Rights and has spawned a tremendous amount of conflict and controversy from its inception. . Gregory's statement: "Martin Luther King, Jr. taught me that the fight against oppression is never an easy one. It's even harder when you have no voice. For animals held captive in circuses, life consists of cramped cages, shackles, and daily beatings. There's no escape. They can't demand their freedom. Images like these bring only one word to mind: slavery. Be an abolitionist for the animals. Please don't go to the circus." [Concerned readers may wish to ask their elected representatives to support Rep. Sam Farr's (D-CA) Captive Elephant Accident Prevention Act (HR 2929), which would outlaw the use of elephants in circuses and for rides.]
Small Farming Is Beautiful
US -- Contrary to popular misinformation mis·in·form
tr.v. mis·in·formed, mis·in·form·ing, mis·in·forms
To provide with incorrect information.
mis , the world's embattled small farms are two to ten times more productive per unit than large, tax-subsidized and chemical-based operations run by corporate agriculture. According to a major study by Peter Rosset of the Institute for Food and Development Policy [www.foodfirst.org], "communities surrounded by populous small farms have healthier economies than do communities surrounded by depopulated de·pop·u·late
tr.v. de·pop·u·lat·ed, de·pop·u·lat·ing, de·pop·u·lates
To reduce sharply the population of, as by disease, war, or forcible relocation. large, mechanized mech·a·nize
tr.v. mech·a·nized, mech·a·niz·ing, mech·a·niz·es
1. To equip with machinery: mechanize a factory.
2. farms." It appears that small family farms also do a much better job of controlling soil erosion and conserving biodiversity. "Despite more than a century of anti-small farmer policies in country after country," Rosset reports that small farmers "continue to be more productive and more efficient than Large agribusiness farming operations." The greatest threat to Earth's small farms comes from the World Trade Organization, which would tower farm prices in the name of "free trade." According to Rosset, the WTO See World Trade Organization. "could deal the death blow to the world's smart farmers ... driving them into bankruptcy by the millions."