• Controversial Alaska Crab Quota Survives Omnibus Negotiations
  
• Utah Land Deal Investigation Sent to Attorney General
  
• Law Suit Takes Aim at New Jersey Bear Hunt
  
• Court Upholds Ruling That Blocks Gray Whale Hunt
  
• Mice Can Get Addicted to the Exercise Wheel
  
• Pasture Grass Can Fight Wheat Fungus
  
• Washington's Wild Sky Wilderness Closer to Protection
  

Controversial Alaska Crab Quota Survives Omnibus Negotiations

The proposal will "turn fishermen into share croppers," says Alan Parks, an Alaska commercial fisherman.

The plan would force Bering Sea crab fishermen to sell 90 percent of their catch to specified processors, who would be allocated a set share of the total allowable catch.

The controversial plan is an attempt to solve an increasingly difficult problem - the "race to fish" nature of the current Alaska crab harvest. Stock declines have forced fishery managers to set total allowable catches of crabs in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Island fisheries.

There are currently no individual quotas for individual fishermen. When the fisheries are open - usually only for a few days at a time - there is a free for all that encourages the fishers to get as many crabs as possible. They are free to sell their crabs to whichever processor offers the best price.

Many believe the plan violates anti-trust laws. The fishermen would be required to sell 90 percent of the total quota to 12 corporations, five of which are controlled by foreign owned companies.

Stevens inserted the provision in the fiscal year 2004 spending bill that includes the Department of Commerce.

The full Senate did not consider the bill. With Congress eager to adjourn for the year, House-Senate conferees included legislation within an omnibus spending bill that includes seven of the 10 fiscal year 2004 appropriations bills. The House and Senate could act on the omnibus bill next week.

Two other provisions within the original Stevens rider were also included in the omnibus bill.

One allocates a portion of the Aleutian Islands pollock fishery to the Aleut Corporation - the fishery has been closed since 1998 to due species depletion. Federal fish managers and conservationists believe the fishery has not yet recovered and note that part of the decision close it was to provide prey species for endangered Steller sea lions.

Stevens said the provision does not order the reopening of the fishery, but critics are far from convinced and note that the Alaska senator's son is on the board of the company set to receive the allocation.

The third Stevens provision that survived will set up a pilot program that would reopen a rockfish fishery - a program that has twice been rejected by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. Critics believe the program in effect privatizes a federal fishery.

Environmentalists took some solace in the decision by House-Senate conferees to reject the fourth part of the Stevens rider. This language would have prohibited the National Marine Fisheries Service from spending money to identify and protect essential fish habitat in the North Pacific.

The 1996 Sustainable Fisheries Act calls on the agency to identify and protect essential fish habitat to ensure that fishing does not harm the long term integrity of habitat considered vital to sustainable fisheries.

"This omnibus package smells a little better, but it is still a kettle of stinky fish," said Gerald Leape, vice president for Marine Conservation with the National Environmental Trust.

Utah Land Deal Investigation Sent to Attorney General

The report, submitted by the Interior Department to the Office of Special Counsel, detailed charges by Kent Wilkinson, a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) appraiser, that a land exchange promoted as equal would cost U.S. taxpayers more than $100 million.

Wilkinson blew the whistle on a final agreement that allowed Utah to exchange some 108,000 acres of state trust lands in San Rafael for 135,000 federal acres elsewhere in the state.

The deal was valued at approximately $35 million to each side, but internal BLM documents disclosed by Wilkinson showed that the deal would have cost federal taxpayers between $96.7 million and $116 million, using conservative estimates.

In July, Interior Secretary Gale Norton acknowledged that an Inspector General's investigation had found "improper actions" by political appointees and senior officials in the Office of the Solicitor and BLM.

That Inspector General's investigation report confirmed Wilkinson's charges and detailed a subsequent attempt by top officials to mislead Congress as to the real terms of the land exchange with the state of Utah. Norton confirmed that BLM Director Kathleen Clarke is under investigation regarding her role in the deal.

At the same time, Interior notified Utah that it was rescinding the trade even though it had already been ratified by the state legislature and had passed the U.S. House of Representatives.

According to the letter obtained by PEER, the Office of Special Counsel has abandoned a general policy that allows the whistleblower to comment on the report.

The office wrote in the letter, dated November 21, that it could not release the report to Wilkinson because "when evidence of a criminal violation is obtained by the agency and referred to the Attorney General, the report is not transmitted to the whistleblower. The Department's report in this case states that evidence of criminal violations were referred to the Attorney General, thus, we cannot transmit the report to you."

This is not acceptable, according to PEER's General Counsel Dan Meyer, who is representing Wilkinson.

"Unless Interior Secretary Norton releases the report, how will the public know whether it actually addresses the problems raised by the whistleblower?" Meyer asked.

He said his organization has submitted requests under the Freedom of Information Act to both the OSC and Norton for release of the report.

Lawsuit Takes Aim at New Jersey Bear Hunt

The state approved its first statewide bear hunt in 33 years amid some concern that conflicts between black bears and humans are on the rise in New Jersey. The hunt is set to begin on December 8.

The park represents some 20 percent of the total area open to the state's bear hunt.

Allowing the bear hunt at the park would violate federal environmental laws, the coalition says.

"Regardless of what happens on New Jersey's state lands, national parks are unique and require special attention," said Michael Markarian, president of The Fund for Animals. "The National Park Service has thumbed its nose at federal law by allowing the trophy hunting of bears without studying the potential impacts to the environment, to the bear population, and to rare species such as bald eagles."

The Delaware Water Gap encompasses more than 67,000 acres of protected park land, home to more than 130 species of rare and endangered birds, mammals, and plants - including a vulnerable population of wintering bald eagles.

The critics note that a similar hunting program at Cape Cod National Seashore was stopped in federal court in October.

"Bears are not a public safety threat in New Jersey, but thousands of bear hunters in our woods are the real danger," said Sue Russell, policy director for the New Jersey based Center for Animal Protection.

"What our state needs to solve bear-human conflicts is not to shoot bears at random for trophies, but rather to implement a progressive policy of aversive conditioning, authentic public education, and bear habitat preservation," Russell said.

The coalition says public opinion polls demonstrate that New Jersey residents oppose the bear hunt. A poll commissioned this month by several New Jersey wildlife organizations found that 58 percent of registered New Jersey voters feel that the bear hunt should be stopped, and 67 percent believe the state should use nonlethal methods to reduce bear related incidents instead of having a hunt.

The plaintiffs include The Fund for Animals, The Center for Animal Protection, The Humane Society of the United States, and several individuals.

Court Upholds Ruling That Blocks Gray Whale Hunt

"For the third time now, the court has said no to whale hunting," said Michael Markarian, president of The Fund for Animals, one of the plaintiffs in the case. "Americans decided long ago that our whales should be protected, not persecuted."

The Makah, a Northwest Indian whale hunting tribe, had given up the hunt in the 1920s, but is keen to resume limited hunting as part of a cultural revival plan.

But in its ruling earlier this year, the court found that the government had failed to adequately study the ways in which the Makah whale hunt could set a dangerous precedent and adversely affect the environment, in particular because the hunt poses a risk to the area's small population of 30 to 50 resident gray whales.

The court agreed with the plaintiffs that the administration's actions did not comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, which calls on the federal government to study the environmental impacts of planned actions and suggest alternatives.

The court also argued that the government's authorization of the whale hunt violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The law generally prohibits whaling, although it contains an explicit exemption for Alaskan tribes.

The court determined that the Makah did not qualify for this exemption.

Mice Can Get Addicted to the Exercise Wheel

The findings, say the researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, lend support to the addictive nature of exercise in some animals.

The researchers studied changes in brain activity in two groups of rodents - typical laboratory mice and a special breed of mice selected over 29 generations for their affinity for voluntary wheel running.

To understand what drives these mice to run faster and farther than the average mouse, the researchers conducted a study to measure changes in brain activity when both groups of mice were granted or denied access to the running wheel.

For six days, they let all mice run as long as they wanted and recorded their distances. By and large, the high wheel running mice, compared to the other group, covered more ground in the same amount of time on their spinning treadmills. On the sixth day, for example, these mice averaged about six miles, compared to about two miles among the controls.

On the seventh day, the researchers blocked half the mice in each group from the wheel while giving free access to the other half.

Five hours later, when the mice usually reach their running peak, the researchers compared brain activity in each mouse by measuring levels of a gene that is expressed in response to neuronal excitement.

"We thought we would see more activity in the mice doing the running, but that is not what we saw at all," says Stephen Gammie, assistant professor of zoology at the university and senior author of the recent paper.

Instead, they found that all the mice denied access showed higher levels of neuronal stimulation in 16 out of 25 brain regions. Stimulation was even greater in mice that typically ran longer distances, showing a correlation between brain activity levels and average amount of wheel running.

The researchers explain that blocking the running behavior in the mice bred to do more voluntary wheel spinning triggers a neuronal response - activation of brain regions involved in reward circuitry - that drives them to run.

Pasture Grass Can Fight Wheat Fungus

Resistance genes in the grass that replaced wheat increased protection against Fusarium head blight, or wheat scab, the scientists said.

In findings published in the December issue of the journal "Theoretical and Applied Genetics," the researchers also report that they located and mapped the small bits of DNA - known as markers - associated with the resistance gene in the grass, called tall wheatgrass.

In the past decade or so, the Fusarium fungus has emerged as one of the diseases of primary concern in wheat, according to Purdue agronomy professor Herb Ohm, because the widespread practice of reduced tillage in fields provides "a perfect environment for growth of the fungus."

There are good reasons for reduced tillage - it cuts farmers costs and helps prevent erosion.

But the fungus causes head blight that leads to major wheat crop losses. In 1996, crop losses due to Fusarium totaled at least $38 million just in Indiana, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

It also produces a mycotoxin that sickens animals and people. Pigs, cattle, horses, poultry and people can develop vomiting, loss of appetite, diarrhea, staggering, skin irritation and immunosuppression when they eat grain or hay containing the toxin.

"Fusarium production of mycotoxins is a more serious problem than wheat production loss," Ohm said. "The toxin results in complete loss because you can not use the grain to make food for people or livestock."

Ohm and colleagues say the replacement of the wheat gene was done with conventional crossbreeding and selection and did not involve any genetic engineering.

Because the two plants are closely related, the wheat is not altered, except for the added protection against Fusarium.

Ohm and his team of researchers hope their insights into how to combine the tall wheatgrass resistance gene with other resistance genes, will enable them to produce a line of wheat with several genes resistant to Fusarium.

Washington's Wild Sky Wilderness Closer to Protection

The bill, sponsored by Washington's Democratic Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, passed the Senate on a unanimous consent agreement. The bill was approved by the Senate last year, but did not win House support.

Designating the area as wilderness would protect wildlife - including threatened species of salmon, steelhead and trout - and would ensure the area is not directly affected by development. Critics say the measure is unnecessary, but the Bush administration has chimed in with support for protecting the area.

During a Senate hearing in June, Mark Rey, the Agriculture Department official who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, testified that the proposal was "a good bill" that President George W. Bush was willing to sign into law.

"Senate approval of this measure is a critical step in establishing Wild Sky as a destination for future generations to hike, fish, ride, camp, climb, and enjoy the great outdoors," Murray said. "It combines accessible lower elevations with majestic mountains and will be a treasure for Washington's citizens.

"Now is the time for every member of the delegation to get behind this proposal to help us reach the mountaintop," Murray said. "We can get it done this year."

Endorsements in support of the proposal have been made by more than 70 locally elected officials, including resolutions from the cities of Snohomish and Monroe. More than 100 businesses and organizations have endorsed the wilderness proposal, including REI, Cascade Designs, Montrail, Trout Unlimited, Backcountry Horsemen of Washington, and Washington Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities.

"The Wild Sky represents the future of Washington," said Don Parks, volunteer leader with the Alpine Lakes Protection Society, a member organization of the Wild Washington Campaign. "It is a hopeful landscape that we all share and want to see protected for our children and our children. Washington has always taken care of its backyard and the Wild Sky Wilderness bill is yet another example of that great tradition."