• HALO Trust Celebrates Removing One Million Mines
  
• No Military Exemptions, Grassroots Groups Demand
  
• California Fire Claims Three Lives
  
• Lawsuit Forces Tennessee to Issue Power Plant Permits
  
• Unique Carnivore Rediscovered in Tanzania
  
• Boston Drinking Water Supply Protected
  
• Noisy Oceans Shrink Whales' World
  
• Atlantic White Marlin May Get Endangered Listing
  

HALO Trust Celebrates Removing One Million Mines

The world's largest private non-profit humanitarian demining organization, the HALO Trust is headquartered in Scotland and has an office in New York.

Today, Lincoln P. Bloomfield, Jr., the Special Representative of the President and Secretary of State for Mine Action, applauded the HALO Trust on its destruction of a million landmines and other items of unexploded ordnance since 1988, when it began operations in Afghanistan.

"Congratulations to the HALO Trust, its dedicated headquarters staff and 4,850 hardworking local deminers in nine mine affected countries around the world, for their nearly 14 years of life saving toil under very dangerous circumstances," said Bloomfield.

Although the Ottawa Treaty banned landmines five years ago, HALO says it is busier than ever conducting mineclearance with over 4,850 local deminers in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Eritrea, Somaliland, Sri Lanka and in the Caucasus - Abkhazia/Georgia and Nagorno Karabakh.

Donald "Pat" Patierno, who directs the U.S. Office of Humanitarian Demining Programs, said the United States is the leading funder of the HALO Trust.

"HALO Trust is known to be among the best of the mine clearance organizations, having been at this business for well over a decade," Patierno said. "We first engaged them in 1999 and have found them to be efficient, effective, productive and professional in their approach to demining. We have enormous respect for HALO's capabilities and achievements and we now fund their operations in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Georgia and Somalia."

No Military Exemptions, Grassroots Groups Demand

Congressmen Bob Filner of California and Tom Allen of Maine, both Democrats, spoke at the event, arguing that the military should be subjected to the same local, state and federal environmental laws that govern private companies and individuals.

The DoD’s request to be exempt from such laws is scheduled to be debated on the Senate floor this week.

The Military Toxics Project warns exemptions would pose a significant threat to human health and the environment near military operations.

The activities were part of a National Week of Actions, during which groups across the country came together to demand military accountability and release a report by the Military Toxics Project, "Communities in the Line of Fire: The Environmental, Cultural, and Human Health."

Military munitions and firing ranges, for which the DoD is currently seeking blanket exemptions from environmental and public health laws, release dangerous toxic substances into communities across the country. Literally hundreds of communities and tens of millions of acres of land and water have already been contaminated, the MTP report shows.

Tara Thornton, MTP executive director, said, “Giving the military carte blanche to pollute people’s air and water and destroy the environment is not the way to go. The Department of Defense can already receive waivers from most current environmental laws in the name of national security. Exemption is unnecessary and would guarantee that the military continues to be the biggest polluter in the country, putting thousands of communities at risk.”

The report shows that communities and individuals adjacent to military operations, as well as active duty personnel, veterans, and civilian workers suffer from elevated cancer rates, intergenerational health problems, contaminated subsistence food chains, bombing of sacred areas, and destruction of wildlife habitat.

California Fire Claims Three Lives

As a precaution, the U.S. Forest Service's Fire and Aviation Management Administration ordered all of the Lockheed C-130As grounded while the crash is investigated. Members of the National Transportation and Safety Board have arrived to investigate the air tanker crash site. Highway 395 remains closed until the investigation is completed.

Dead are pilot Steven Ray Wass, 42, of Gardnerville, co-pilot Craig Labare, 36, of Loomis, and passenger Harlow Davis, 59 of Bakersfield. The plane was based out of the Minden-Tahoe Airport near Carson City, Nevada.

The fire has consumed 15,000 acres in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest and is considered about 10 percent contained. Known as the Cannon fire, it is burning 25 miles northwest of Bridegeport, in a Marine Winter Warfare Training Area.

The fire had four fronts during the afternoon burning period and a major run to the north and east was observed. Unfavorable winds, low relative humidity, and very dry fuels are contributing to extreme fire behavior, fire officials said.

The community of Camp Antelope and numerous residences east of Highway 395 remain evacuated and Wellington is threatened. Evacuation centers are open in Colville and Topaz.

Lawsuit Forces Tennessee to Issue Power Plant Permits

The decision comes following a lawsuit filed May 13 by four environmental groups - the Sierra Club, the National Parks Conservation Association, Our Children's Earth, and A Walk in the Woods.

The lawsuit charged the Tennessee Air Pollution Control Board with failing to comply with state and federal law requiring that the board issue permits within 18 months of the date that TVA's permit applications were deemed complete. TVA's applications for both the Kingston and John Sevier power plants were deemed complete by the state in 1997. Now more than three years after the deadline, no permits for these plants have been issued.

The result, the plaintiff groups argued, is that these power plants, which are major sources of air pollution, are not required to abide by current emission limits, compliance reporting, and recordkeeping and monitoring requirements.

"This is a complete victory for the citizens of Tennessee," said Dave Muhly, associate regional representative for the Sierra Club. "For over three years now these TVA plants have been allowed to operate outside the law. It's only unfortunate it took a court action to bring the state into compliance with federal and state law."

TVA's power plants in Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky are among the region's largest sources of air pollution, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most polluted Park in the country. Many areas throughout the Southeast suffer from poor air quality, and thousands of deaths are attributed to air pollution from these TVA power plants every year, the groups claim.

"The air quality in the Smokies is supposed to be the nation's best, and instead it is among the nation's worst," said Don Barger, regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association. "Getting good air requires getting good information. That's why these permits are important."

Final action on the permits must be made no later than September 16, unless an objection is filed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Unique Carnivore Rediscovered in Tanzania

"This is the first ever photograph of Lowe's servaline genet and confirms the animal's existence after 70 years," said Daniela De Luca, who works with the Wildlife Conservation Society based at New York's Bronx Zoo. "We now hope to find out more about the animal and thus help ensure its survival."

De Luca's remote camera trap survey was the first to focus on carnivores in the Udzungwa Mountains, a region noted for its high levels of biodiversity and unique wildlife.

"Compared to larger carnivores, the smaller species such as genets and mongooses are very poorly understood," said De Luca, "so one of our aims is to shed more light on this important and secretive group of animals."

Lowe's servaline genet was first described by and named after British explorer and naturalist Willoughby Lowe.

Apart from the assumption that the Lowe's servaline genet is, like other servaline genets, nocturnal and tree-dwelling, De Luca points out that nothing is known about the genet's ecology, distribution and abundance.

Findings on carnivore diversity and habitat requirements will be used to formulate recommendations on how to minimize the impact of human activities and settlements to wildlife.

Another of Lowe's discoveries, the Miss Waldron's red colobus monkey, was declared extinct in 2000 after an extensive survey in the monkey's former Central African habitat failed to find any evidence of its persistence.

Boston Drinking Water Supply Protected

The Metropolitan District Commission acquired 88 acres, which includes frontage on East Wachusett Brook, an important tributary of the Wachusett Reservoir on the South Branch of the Nashua River, which supplies drinking water to the Boston area.

This property lies across the street from land already owned by the Metropolitan District Commission, which owns and manages nearly 30 percent of the reservoir's watershed.

Last fall, at the request of the Princeton Board of Selectmen, the Trust for Public Land began negotiating with Paxton Hills, Inc. to conserve the property. An agreement to purchase the 105 acre property for $820,000 was reached in early spring. The Metropolitan District Commission acquired the majority of the land for $750,000.

The Town of Princeton voted in April at Special Town Meeting to purchase the remaining 17 acres for $70,000. This parcel, which includes an old gravel pit, is slated for conversion into recreation fields.

"This project is a testament to the power of teamwork," said the Trust for Public Land's state director Craig MacDonnell. "Together the coalition achieved two previously elusive land conservation objectives - helping protect one of the state's most important drinking water supplies and beginning the process of transforming degraded land into new athletic fields."

Noisy Oceans Shrink Whales' World

The very low frequency courtship songs of fin whales and blue whales are the most powerful biological sounds in the oceans. But the artificial noise created by ships and other human sources could be interfering with whale reproduction and population recovery, Clark and his team of marine scientists report in the June 20 issue of the journal "Nature."

Scientists from the University of California at Santa Cruz, Cornell University, Mexico's Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur, and the California Academy of Sciences studied fin whale courtship songs in frequencies far below the range of human hearing.

"We hypothesize that whale songs evolved to take advantage of the ocean's sound channel, especially for some of their most important kinds of communication, including finding a mate," says Clark, who is the I.P. Johnson Director of the Bioacoustics Research Program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. "Only male fin whales sing loud songs."

"Twenty to 25 million years of evolution are being undone in a hundred years," Clark says.

The discovery about whales' courtship songs occurred in a relatively quiet part of the seas, Loreto Bay in Mexico's Gulf of California, where fin whales aggregate to feast on swarms of krill and sing.

Special computer software, developed at the Cornell bioacoustics lab and installed onboard a converted fishing boat that was towing an array of hydrophones, helped biologists determine which whale in the bay was singing.

Once a singer was located, scientists in an inflatable boat collected a small sample of that whale's skin. Genetic analysis of the samples revealed the sex of the whales. The DNA analysis found that during the month long study of the whales in the bay in the winter of 2000, there were 21 males and 22 females. Only the males were singing the very low frequency song.

The study was funded by the U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research, which had supported previous studies by the Cornell Bioacoustics Research Program into a new type of sonar, low frequency active (LFA) sonar, that might possibly interfere with marine mammal communications. That sonar study concluded that LFA sound does not alter marine mammal behavior, although the animals can detect it.

But older types of military sonar are among contributors to disturbing background noise in the oceans, along with commercial ships and seismic surveys, according to the marine scientists.

Clark says. "These are animals that roam the world's oceans, and they breed only every two to three years. In their lifetimes, the oceans have become incredibly noisy. Their world, which is so dependent on sound, is shrinking as a result of human noise."

Atlantic White Marlin May Get Endangered Listing

NOAA Fisheries conducts such status reviews when it receives a petition that includes substantial information indicating that an Endangered Species Act (ESA) listing may be warranted.

The Biodiversity Legal Foundation and James Chambers petitioned NOAA Fisheries in September 2001 to list Atlantic white marlin as threatened or endangered throughout its range, and to designate critical habitat under the ESA. In December 2001, the agency found that the endangered listing may be warranted. NOAA Fisheries then solicited information and comments about Atlantic white marlin during a 60 day period. This public hearing stage is the next step before NOAA Fisheries is required in September to make a finding about the petition.

White marlin, smallest of the world's four marlin species, range over much of the North and South Atlantic Oceans. The species is a mainstay of the $2.3 billion recreational billfish fishery along the U.S Atlantic and Gulf coasts and throughout the Caribbean Sea. To promote conservation, recreational fishermen now voluntarily release virtually all of the billfish they catch.

But industrial scale fishing vessels from many nations, which are targeting more commercially valuable swordfish and tunas, catch and kill large numbers of white marlin and other species of the open ocean such as blue marlin, sailfish, endangered sea turtles, protected marine mammals, and juvenile swordfish that are too small to sell legally. According to Chambers, the veteran fisheries biologist who filed the petition, "White marlin and these other species will continue to die until it is no longer profitable to fish for swordfish and tunas, whose populations are larger. White marlin will not be able to last that long."

"It's important that we maximize the public's involvement in this status review to ensure that we get the best available information upon which we'll make our listing determination," said Georgia Cranmore, chief of protected resources for NOAA Fisheries Southeast. "The public scoping meetings are designed to collect additional data on the status of Atlantic white marlin we may not have yet."

Scoping meetings have been held in Maryland, Florida and Louisiana, Alabama, North Carolina, and St. Thomas, the Virgin Islands. Meetings are planned at these locations:

• June 25, 7:30-9:30 p.m., North Carolina Aquarium Roanoke Island, Manteo, North Carolina
  
• June 27, 7-9 p.m., Atlantic City Center, Atlantic City, New Jersey
  
• June 27, 7-9 p.m., The Harborfront Center, Fairhaven, Massachussets
  
• June 28, 7-9 p.m., Ocean Pines Library, Berlin, Maryland