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ENVIRONMENT

US parks in trouble
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Katuah Earth First! defending Southern Appalachians
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Mexican govt.’s OK for GM crops lights a fuse

By Diego Cevallos

Mexico City, Mexico, Jan. 17 (IPS)— The Mexican government plans to authorize the planting of genetically modified crops, justifying the move with the argument that it will benefit the country’s impoverished agricultural sector. But environmentalists and small farmers say it will lead to a national tragedy.

Officials from the Vicente Fox administration announced that a law allowing the commercial planting of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) will be ready in March. The decision comes after 14 years in which planting such crops has been strictly limited to experimental fields.

Transgenic crops “have the potential to contribute to a more sustainable agriculture,” says the official bill, which gathers statements from world-renowned scientists and from agencies of the United Nations.

But environmental organizations and the peasant farmer movement, an umbrella of organizations that are working to block the agricultural trade liberalization under way between Mexico and the United States, charge that GMOs are a threat to the environment, human health and rural livelihood.

“The government wants war, and the government will get it,” said Esteban Martínez, member of the National Union of Autonomous Regional Peasant Organizations.

Martínez said that if the Fox government moves forward on authorizing transgenic crops, it will face massive mobilizations that will have the backing of farmers from other countries.

Bolívar Zapata, a biotechnology researcher at the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM), pointed out that the World Health Organization has not proved that the genetically modified products being sold on the global market today have any harmful effects on human health.

But Zapata recommends that the Mexican government and lawmakers draw up a law on biological safety before legislating on GMOs.

Environmentalist and farmers’ groups insist that GMO products cause allergies in some people and could in the long-term have other health impacts.

They argue that planting transgenic seeds creates dependence on the transnational corporations that produce them because they are often meant to be used with specific pesticides produced by the same firms, and this would undermine local, native agriculture.

The government says transgenic crops, which are the result of inserting genes from a different plant or animal species into the crop species in order to boost yields, will reduce production costs and increase the nutritional properties of food crops.

Farm outputs are on the decline in Mexico, where rural areas hold 75 percent of the country’s extreme poverty. The agricultural portion of gross domestic product (GDP) fell from 7.3 percent to less than 5.0 percent over the past decade.

Increasingly, the food that Mexicans put on their tables is imported.

Mexico imports 60 percent of the rice, half the wheat, 43 percent of the sorghum, 23 percent of the maize and nearly all of the soy it consumes, and most comes from the United States.

More than 1,000 scientists — including Nobel Medicine laureate James Watson, who is known for his groundbreaking DNA research — declared in February 2000 their support for the development of agricultural biotechnology, a branch of science that includes the transgenics.

These experts, from around the world, said in an open letter that there is no scientifically based reason to believe that genetically modified foods are less harmful than the foods we have been eating for centuries.

But those who oppose GMOs argue just the contrary.

At the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in late August and early September in South Africa, environmental leaders called for a total boycott of transgenic seeds and foods until independent studies can prove they are safe for human health and the environment.

The activists also suggested that the hesitation of the big biotechnology corporations to release information about the effects of genetically modified foods is evidence that they have something to hide.

Another argument wielded against GMOs is that such crops would contaminate native species, a potentially heavy and irreversible blow for developing countries, which hold more than 80 percent of the planet’s biodiversity.

In Mexico, scientists have experimented with genetically modified maize, potato, cotton, squash, soy, papaya, tomato, pineapple and tobacco, among other crops.

The Mexican Congress has been considering several legislative bills on the matter for more than four years, but nothing concrete came out of the debate. Now that the Fox administration is saying it will seek authorization for the commercial planting of GMOs, the lawmakers are talking again.

The commercial GMO crops that already have a major presence on the world market are soy, maize, cotton and canola. The genetically altered seeds, and accompanying rights, belong to the transnational corporations Monsanto, Dupont, Syngenta, Aventis and Dow.

Argentina, Canada and the United States hold 98 percent of the total area planted with these crops worldwide, and 94 percent of the seeds come from Monsanto.

Katuah Earth First! defending Southern Appalachians

Statement of Katuah Earth First!

Jan. 21—Factions of Katuah EF! from three states, in solidarity with local activists, are prepared to defend National Forest lands as the Bush administration shamelessly dismantles decades of environmental legislation. While Bush was appointing pro-logging cronies to administrative positions within the Department of Interior and the US Forest Service (USFS), citizens from around the country have organized to protect their local National Forests from newly legalized resource depredations. In southwestern Virginia’s Wise County, a 5,000 strong grassroots group called the Clinch Coalition has linked arms with Katuah EF! to oppose ill-advised mountainside logging and natural gas wells and pipelines that threaten local watersheds and recreation-based economies.

The Clinch Coalition sued the USFS last month to halt the Bark Camp timber sale. This much-opposed series of sales lie within the Clinch Ranger District. As the suit was being filed, Earth First!ers and local activists were already in base camp and starting tree-sit training workshops. The training workshops serve notice to the USFS that the Clinch Coalition is not backing off their nearly two years of opposition to the sales. The Forest Service’s own flawed environmental assessment provided part of the basis for the lawsuit.

Despite the logistical challenges of long miles and winter weather, Katuah EF!ers have been scouting the proposed timber sales. While some trees in the units are of merchantable size, it’s our observation that the vast majority are in the 50- to 60-year age group and are too small and “gnarly” to be worth much on the market. The predominate species seems to be scarlet oak, not a “preferred” marketable tree. These sales may be an attempt by the Forest Service to clear a diverse forest of “undesirable” species to make way for their own preference. Local citizens like their recovering forests just the way they are. A big heartfelt thank you to the local residents who’ve brought hot home-cooked food out to activists in the National Forest training camps!

For more coverage of the Bark Camp sales and the Clinch Coalition’s efforts to stop these sales, see the new issue of the Wild Mountain Times, the journal of the Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project, available free all around town.

In conjunction with the lawsuit, the Clinch Coalition elected to send a friendly “heads up” to area loggers, giving them advance notice that not only will the timber sales be vigorously opposed, but that a suit was also pending, adding unforeseen obstacles to any profits the loggers may be depending on to get through the coming season. In this same spirit of goodwill and gracious manners, Katuah EF! sent out “Holiday Greetings!” cards to all of the potential bidders, with photos of tree-sits, road blockades, and the cheerful salutation “See You In The Woods!”.

While dozens of activists were teaching and learning non-violent homeland defense techniques in the Virginia mountains, two other groups were scouting the notorious North Shore Road project, a.k.a., “The Road to Nowhere,” that threatens to penetrate into an otherwise isolated section of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The North Shore Project seeks to fulfill a broken promise by the federal government (imagine that) by completing a road to a cemetery now isolated within the National Park by the waters of Fontana Lake. Formerly the Little Tennessee River, Fontana Lake was the result of Fontana Dam, built to generate electricity for Alcoa, a major WWII-era producer of defense materials. Communities along the Little Tennessee were drowned by the lake, as were innumerable sites of cultural importance to the Cherokee people.

Unknown at the time the road was promised was that the rock strata through which the road would be blasted is heavily acidic. This is an immitigable and extremely adverse circumstance that would impact dozens of mountain streams and seeps that run through the area. Also, the topography is torturous with ridges and ravines, one after another, making road building a financial boondoggle. In a classic case of pork, outgoing Senator Jesse Helms and current Rep. Charles Taylor got $16 million earmarked to initiate the project. While anyone intimately familiar with the terrain there would intuit that this sum is ridiculously out of touch with actual construction costs, its actual purpose is to commit even more taxpayers’ money into a money-guzzling road fiasco that seeks to commercialize this region of the National Park. Road proponents envision new “infrastructure” within the Park in the form of a “cultural center” and other amenities. This would actualize as bumper-to-bumper traffic, further diminishment of water and air quality, and an increase in adjacent private land values.

What’s given no consideration is that the North Shore area has become a de facto wilderness by nature of its inaccessibility. While it does have many traces of human intervention across its landscape, it has now enjoyed about 60 years of nothing but footsteps. In light of the unprecedented pressures put upon the National Park, this area should remain impenetrable to automobile “tourism.” Amazingly, the road’s beginnings are right in downtown Bryson City! Isn’t anyone thinking of traffic impacts? The good news is that when this proposed project is defeated, the $16 million stays in the coffers of Swain County, one of the most impoverished counties in the state, the result of most of its land base belonging to the federal government and thus providing no tax base.

A week-long scouting foray across the North Shore region galvanized Katuah EF!’s opposition to this horrendous project. Let’s take this a step further and propose the removal of Fontana Dam. Let the Little Tennessee run free! There’s great potential for employment in the course of restoring the inundated land currently silted up under Fontana Lake. The dam has fulfilled its purpose, and is obsolete. The land therein should be restored to its previous owners, and in cases where that’s impossible, should be restored to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, from whom it was stolen.

Updates on these two issues will be forthcoming on the Earth First! Radio Show, every Friday from 6-8pm on Free Radio Asheville, 107.5 FM. Be sure to check out the Clinch Coalition’s web site at www.ClinchCoalition.com.

If you are feeling the urge to participate in some of President Bush’s much-vaunted private sector activism and Homeland Defense, come to a meeting of the Mountain Faction of Katuah Earth First!, every Wednesday night at 7pm at the Asheville Community Resource Center downtown across from Vincent’s Ear (63 Lexington Ave.). Call our info line at (828) 225-0814.

Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul. – Edward Abbey

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US parks in trouble: 10 most endangered 2003

Washington, DC, Jan. 14 (ENS)— Insufficient funding undermines protection of Montana’s Glacier National Park; a new city may grow on private land adjoining California’s Joshua Tree National Park; and pollution from coal burning power plants dims the air over Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) today released its annual list of America’s Ten Most Endangered National Parks, detailing these problems and many others at five new parks and five the group has listed before.
“Designation as a national park alone doesn’t protect our parks,” said NPCA senior vice president Ronald Tipton. “Parks also need strong support from the President and Congress. The Bush administration needs to halt its attacks on national parks and provide the protections our nation’s treasures need.”

For the rest of this article, please see Environment News Service.

BRIEFS

Forest named in honor of Clash singer Strummer
Future Forests, a group late punk icon Joe Strummer of the Clash helped found in the 1990’s, asked fans to donate funds to help create a living memorial on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. Strummer planted trees to help offset the carbon dioxide created by his and others’ touring bands in England. Strummer, a seminal punk rock singer-songwriter, died Dec. 22 at the age of 50. The Clash will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March. (AP)

Australia drought made worse by global warming
A severe drought affecting much of Australia has been made worse by global warming, environmentalists and weather experts have concluded. Many parts of Australia have had no significant rain for 12 months, and 2002 was the fourth-driest year since 1900. The main cause of the drought and massive brush fires, which have damaged hundreds of homes, is the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human activities, such as burning fossil fuels. Study results add weight to arguments Australia should sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate control. (Ananova)

Feds to review protections on spotted owl, murrelet
Conservation groups, who have intervened in lawsuits challenging the protected status of the rare birds, say they were excluded from the settlement talks this week between the timber industry and the federal government. Lawyers for the Bush administration agreed to review the federal protections now in place for the two species. The protections have been blamed for the crash over the past decade of a Pacific Northwest logging industry dependent on timber sales from public lands. The review could eliminate the legal shield now provided for the birds by the Endangered Species Act, potentially removing both their threatened status and their designated critical habitat. (ENS)

GOP Senators push for Arctic drilling
Senate Republicans intend to push anew to open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, this time using a legislative procedure that would prevent Democrats from blocking the move with fewer than 50 votes. Attempts to lift the ban on oil development in the Refuge were thwarted last year when Democrats vowed a filibuster against the measure, meaning 60 votes would be needed to get the legislation through. The new process could lead to a showdown vote in the Republican-controlled Senate by February or March. (AP)

Protesters stage break-in at nuclear power plant
Nineteen anti-nuclear protesters used ropes, ladders, and wire-cutters to break into the central control of a nuclear power station in eastern England on Monday, said Greenpeace, which campaigns for an end to nuclear energy. The break-in was staged to expose poor security at the Sizewell B plant and other facilities. “Britain is sending troops into a war, we have a war on terror, the British nuclear industry is meant to be on the highest state of alert, but it was essentially a breeze to get in,” said a Greenpeace campaign director. (AP)

Lawsuit links logging to water pollution
Conservation groups are suing the California Regional Water Quality Control Board over pollution discharges associated with logging operations. The lawsuit comes just days after an independent scientific study determined that excessive logging in five Northern CA watersheds caused downstream problems, including sever flooding. The Board adopted a waiver for logging operations in 1987. Since then, more than 85 percent of the watersheds in the region have been listed as “impaired” under the Clean Water Act. (ENS)