By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News website
The US is to establish what it calls “the largest area of protected sea in the world” around its Pacific islands.
Commercial fishing and mining will be banned in the protected zones which include the Marianas Trench, the deepest area of ocean on the planet.
The area totals 500,000 sq km (190,000 sq miles) of sea and sea floor.
While welcoming the protection package, environmental activists said that without curbing climate change, the other measures would be meaningless.
President George W Bush will formally announce the measure during an address on Tuesday evening in Washington.
Briefing journalists in advance, his environmental advisor James Connaughton said the move meant the US was “setting the mark for the world with respect to effective marine management”.
“The conservation action is going to benefit the public and future generations through enhanced science, knowledge and awareness, and just good old-fashioned inspiration, because these places are exceptionally dynamic when it comes to the marine environment,” said the chairman of the White House council on environmental quality.
The areas covered include some of the islands most remote from the world’s large populations centres, which have not so far encountered the intense fishing present across much of the oceans.
They also encompass some of the most biologically diverse places on the planet, undersea volcanoes and hot seafloor vents, and submarine pools of sulphur thought to be unique on Earth.
Continue reading US vows ‘huge’ marine protection
By SUSAN GALLAGHER, Associated Press Writer
HELENA, Mont. – The nation’s largest owner of timberland disclosed Monday that it will no longer pursue changes in agreements governing its use of U.S. Forest Service roads — changes that critics complained could transform forests into housing subdivisions.
Critics of the proposed changes had included President-elect Barack Obama and Montana’s junior senator.
Changes in the agreements would benefit the public, but “given the lack of receptivity, we have decided not to go forward,” Plum Creek Timber Co. Chief Executive Officer Rick Holley wrote in a letter to Missoula County, which opposed altering the agreements.
Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey indicated as recently as last week that the changes negotiated privately by the Forest Service and Plum Creek would become final before he leaves office when the Bush administration ends this month.
Rey, a former lobbyist for the timber industry, said the company’s decision is “not good news for the federal government or the public at large.” He had maintained the changes secured new benefits for the government rather than for Plum Creek.
Rey declined to comment further on Monday.
Critics argued that the changes sought by Plum Creek would have allowed it to pave Forest Service roads and make it easier for the company to develop vacation homes in Montana’s mountain forests. Such housing tracts could saddle local governments with costly services such as fire protection in remote places, they said.
Soon after a Montana campaign appearance, Obama said in July that the planned changes would further jeopardize public access to hunting and fishing areas.
Continue reading Timber company drops road deal with Forest Service
By BRIAN WITTE, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – A conservation group filed a federal lawsuit Monday to force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to enforce the law and clean up the polluted Chesapeake Bay, citing 25 years of failure to restore the nation’s largest estuary.
The lawsuit asserts that the EPA’s failure to meet its obligations “has led to the continued degradation of water quality in the Chesapeake Bay,” harming natural resources and the residents who depend on them.
Poor water quality caused by pollution has harmed the blue crab population, destroyed underwater grasses and hurt bay fish. The losses have badly damaged the soft shell and peeler blue crab fishery industries in Maryland and Virginia.
The U.S. commerce secretary last year declared a blue crab disaster, allowing Congress to appropriate economic assistance.
The EPA has said it’s committed to fighting pollution. The agency contends partnerships — not lawsuits — are needed. But William Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and other supporters of the federal lawsuit say political foot-dragging has gone on too long. An EPA spokesperson did not immediately return a call for comment Monday.
Continue reading Group sues to force EPA to clean up Chesapeake Bay
Bruce Sterling and company are doing their yearly “state of the world” ruminations over on The Well. They’re covering an lot of ground (financial crisis first and all that), but this is the quote that got me…
When you can’t imagine how things are going to change, that doesn’t mean that nothing will change. [...]
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