Welcome to the Environment Show, exploring issues and events of the planet.
I'm Thomas Lalley.
The Environment Show is a national production made possible by Heming's Motor News, the
monthly Bible of the Old Car Hobby from Bennington Vermont, 1-800-CAR-H-E-R-E.
Your host is former Environmental Conservation Commissioner for the State of New York and
former President of the National Audubon Society, Peter Burley.
Thanks Thomas.
Coming up on this week's Environment Show, we'll hear about an international effort to develop
an environmental code of conduct for mulley national corporations and small businesses.
You'll learn how to hear the Environment Show anytime on your home computer via the
World Wide Web.
Our ear to the ground explores a group working deep in the rainforest to educate students
around the world.
And our Earth calendar catalogs critters who perform mid-air 90-degree turns in the middle
of a thick forest.
These stories and more coming up on this week's Environment Show.
Have you ever wondered why the prongs of all electrical plugs are the same size or the
threads on bolts are uniform so they can be interchanged?
Chances are that the manufacturer has agreed to make the product and accordance with standards
set by the International Standards Organization or ISO.
This is a voluntary process.
Now, an ISO standard is being formulated by representatives of the industry, government
and citizens groups to bring about an environmental code of conduct.
It's called ISO 14,000.
Dorothy Bowers is the Vice President of Environment and Safety at Merkin Company and chairperson
of an ISO subcommittee.
She explains what ISO 14,000 is all about.
What we're talking about is first developed that an organization that wants to manage its
environmental impact most cost effectively and most effectively would implement something
called an environmental management system.
So that's what ISO 14,000 is really all about setting up a protocol and a program and recommendations
for organizations to follow in putting a system in place to manage their environmental
aspects.
Mary McKeill directs the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's standards network.
She describes what a company would have to do to get certified.
The top person in an organization has to commit to managing their environmental impacts.
Then secondly, you have to identify those impacts by taking a look at what are all the ways
in which your business has an impact on the environment.
What are the most significant?
Once you've identified those, you set goals and objectives and then you put training systems
in place for your employees so they know what they're doing.
Then you have a review and an internal audit system so that you know how the whole thing
is working and that you can see the results.
For continuous improvement, you have to continually go back and reestablish the goals.
See where your system is not working.
Fix that part of it and continually review what you do.
So that's, you know, it's plan, do, act, review and that's over and over again.
Procedures are being designed to ensure that companies who are certified under ISO 14,000
environmental standards follow the rules.
According to the ISO 14,000 standard, an organization can choose to verify its performance
in one of several ways.
The most common way and the most likely way to be done is third party verification where
an organization will go to an outside certifier, a third party, who will come in and verify
once every three years that in fact the company has the program in place, can document that
it's doing, what it says it's doing and will be reviewed in depth that in fact that's
taken place.
Joel Charm is the director of Health Safety and Environment for Allied Signal Corporation
and chairman of the ISO Technical Advisory Group.
He says the program will have an impact.
I think it's going to be very significant.
At a minimum, I think it is going to be viewed as the basis for an acceptable environmental
management system globally.
It will be the level playing field standard, meaning that if an organization wants to do
business in a, for example, a third world country where environmental protection may not
be the highest priority, this will provide an internationally recognized norm for environmental
protection.
That's number one.
I think it will facilitate the free flow of goods and services worldwide.
One of the concerns was whether this would be a trade barrier, a non-tariff trade barrier,
but we think it's been created in a way that it actually will enhance the free flow of
goods and services.
Thirdly, I believe that agencies at the federal and the state level will be looking to use
this standard as an alternative approach to the traditional command and control approach
of our current regulatory structure in the United States.
The obvious question is whether voluntary standards will be effective.
Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute, an environmental research organizations,
thinks they will.
The teeth come in the process of commerce.
If a major corporation that has outside suppliers across the world insists that each of its
suppliers be certified under a standard, that becomes a floor for the operation of all
serious businesses.
Some 50% of trade globally is not at arm's length, but is within the family.
It's between one company and its subsidiary or its contractual supplier, so it can have
an enormous impact if it's self-enforced.
Lash sees the development of ISO 14,000 as an important step in the effort to achieve
a better environment around the globe.
It seems to me significant for two reasons.
The first one is really quite obvious to all of us.
For years, the process of environmental progress was based on contentious battles between
government insisting on performance and industries resisting.
That here is an example in which the levels of performance may be set and enforced by
industries themselves on a voluntary basis, because they see it to be in their own interests
to assure that all of their competitors meet the same standards.
That's a very interesting step.
It also signifies a change in that while individual countries have set standards for environmental
performance, there has not yet been any process for global harmonization for bringing
those standards to the developing world.
This could be a powerful tool to improve performance in countries where there is either
a lack of standards or a lack of enforcement.
During the next few months, the ISO 14,000 standards will be adopted.
Then a time will come when you will be able to insist that a multinational corporation
or a mom and pop enterprise be ISO 14,000 certified before you buy their products or do
business with them.
I'm Peter Burley.
I'm Thomas Lally, producer of the Environment Show.
We want as many of you as possible to hear the Environment Show, so now you can hear
it anytime on your personal computer over the internet.
Todd Wagner, CEO of AudioNet, spoke with Peter Burley about how it all works.
What it basically does is allows you for the first time ever to stream audio through
your computer.
Whereas maybe six months ago, eight months ago, you had to download a wave file in order
to be able to listen to any audio.
What now we can do for the first time, and literally this is brand new technology for the
last six months now, we've been able to make it possible for people to stream audio through
their computer.
So in other words, it's on demand.
It's in real time, as opposed to a file that has to be downloaded and then you could only
hear a part of it.
Now when I get to the Environment Show webpage and I ask to listen to the show and the
show shows up and I've selected the one that I want, where is that show been hiding?
It's been waiting for me to call it up off our webpage.
Well that show actually has already, if it's something that's been so to speak archived
or placed on our server, in other words, it's already sitting on our computer back here.
And what someone does is they're literally accessing it through the magic of the internet
and through the magic of the web browser, one that people are most familiar with, is
the net scape, but through the magic of those, that type of technology then, what that
does is access it from our server, which then basically places that onto the internet so
that they can listen to it through their computer.
To get to the Environment Show on your personal computer, here's what to do.
Go to our Environment Show webpage at www.wamc.org slash EMV.
The first time you do it, click on the little sign that says, real audio on the bottom
of the page.
The real audio page will then appear and tell you how to download the free software.
You'll get a choice of version 1 or version 2.
I put one and the installer in my Mac laptop in about 10 minutes.
I'm told that version 2 gives you better sound, but requires more computer capacity.
Once you have installed the software, return to the Environment Show page.
Then click on Listen to the Environment Show.
You will see a new page with our most recent show listed, and then click on the one you
want to hear.
I'm Peter Burwood.
We're always interested in what you have to say.
You'll write us at 318 Central Avenue, Albany, New York, 1-2-2-06, or reach us by email
at ENVSHOW at AOL.com.
That's ENVSHOW at AOL.com.
You've already heard about our webpage, and we hope you'll listen to us on your personal
computer.
That's www.wamc.org slash ENV.
Still ahead, our ear to the ground visits a group of the Amazon River Basin reaching out
to the students of the world.
Professor at Brisha Community College and editor of the Brisha Reader Dick Nundley presents
his very personal portrait of the Adirondacks.
And our Earth calendar looks at critters who perform mid-air acrobatics in the middle of
the dense forest.
These stories still ahead on the environment show.
I'm Linda Anderson, and this is Ear to the Ground with stories about people affecting
change in the environment.
This week, education and preservation in the Amazon.
The lush rainforest of the Amazon supports the most prolific and diverse array of flora
and fauna found anywhere in the world.
In birds alone, the Amazon contains almost one-third of the planet's species.
Since 1991, the Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research, or ASEER, has been
working to save the rainforest.
The purpose of the ASEER is to promote environmental education and disseminate the education and
training, not only at basic level, but also at professional level in the Amazon rainforest.
Yvonne Mahia is executive director of ASEER.
The purpose of this training, awareness education and conservation education and scientific research
is to preserve the rainforest biodiversity.
We know that by educating normally at the school level, that educating the population, training,
scientists, and profession, how to do better management resources, and spreading the world
about the problems of the rainforest and the problems of ecosystems is the best way to
preserve the rainforest.
If you don't educate people, you will not get people concerned about preserving the rainforest.
ASEER's administrative headquarters are in Helena, Alabama, while its research facility
is located in 250,000 acres of primary rainforest deep within the Upper Amazon basin.
Four miles upriver from Iquitos, the Amazon's main town.
Powered by solar energy, the facility currently houses about 40 people.
A laboratory is under construction to facilitate researchers and workshops, and ASEER also
has a canopy walkway.
The canopy walkway is a special infrastructure we have there.
It's the highest and longest canopy walkway that exists on Earth, above the canopy level.
It was built with the purpose to facilitate also scientific research and educational
programs.
Mahia says that from the canopy walkway, there's an amazing 360 degree view dotted with
hundreds of birds and flowers of many colors.
And she says a rare way to experience the beauty of the rainforest.
When you are in the rainforest, you are walking in the ground.
It's dark, it's kind of humid, although it's hot, but it's humid, it's dark.
The canopy is covered in the whole area.
While you are close to the canopy, you see the sky and the sun, and you can see the darkness
of the rainforest inside.
So it's a very dramatic experience.
ASEER has many programs designed to increase awareness of the rainforest, working closely
with the local population and with the approval of the Peruvian Board of Education.
Mahia says they help train rural, Amazonian teachers with lesson plans about the rainforest.
They also have helped thousands of Amazonian schoolchildren receive badly needed school supplies
through their adoptive school program.
This program pairs American schools with rural Peruvian schools, exchanging letters, pictures,
and educational materials.
Mahia adds, in addition, ASEER also provides workshops in professional training in such
things as environmental mapping for Peruvian scientists, universities, research institutes
or government.
By this program, we work in cooperation with the Westchester University, professionals
who go to Peru and train professionals over their hopes to better use the resources to
implement the database of the rainforest.
So they are learning to use the satellite system so they can better study the resources
over their implant, what should be done, or what should not be done.
Mahia says that ASEER does not work with big foundations.
Their support, she says, comes from small companies, individual donations, and ecotourism.
In conjunction with an organization called International Expeditions, Mahia says ASEER
provides controlled visits in the Amazon.
Travelers, she says, gain an appreciation and understanding of the rainforest while
helping to support ASEER.
With ear to the ground, this is Linda Anderson.
We all have places which are special to us.
For some it's a city street, for others it's a place deep of the wilderness.
State Nunley is Professor at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and
editor of the Berkshire Reader.
He often spends time in the Adorondack Mountains of New York and has this portrait of his
special place there.
In the Adorondacks, one overcast day last August, we made a lazy flat water paddle from one
forest pond to another and another, from church to Osgood to Jones.
We put in Nearpall Smith, within ear shot of the busy main road to Canada, but within
five strokes of the paddle we were in another world crossing a high banked church pond
and rounding a hammock of hard hack, gliding into the eerily still little Osgood.
Its mirror like black water doubled the white skeletons of blown down spruce tangled around
its edge.
Some little Osgood, a six foot wide channel led through a dim, hemlock grove into Osgood
pond itself.
Taking us past a campsite where a group of Amish women in their caps and long old fashioned
dresses stood like ghosts among the trees.
Beyond a tiny point, all of Osgood opened up, a far off line of low blue mountains lay
across the bottom of the sky and wide reaches of empty grey water glittered ahead.
Not an engine or motorboat was to be heard.
We were looking for the flow that according to the map leads back to Jones pond.
We found it behind a concealing point where a yellow sand bar had built up.
A couple of women with orange kayaks pulled up on a bushy little beach there informed us
that beaver dams blocked the way, but we decided to give it a try.
Almost immediately we were gliding through a winds low homer water color, a silent world
of tamarack and swamp maple where the flow meandered in and out of patches of blue picker
oed and white arrowhead, the peaty water, the color of tea.
The first beaver dam had been reached and one vigorous dig with the paddles got us
up and over, but the second, a couple of hundred yards upstream, was a stoutly woven basket
like weir, 30 inches high, gently spurting silver leaks.
We climbed out into the water and lifted over, getting soaked of course, but who cared?
Every bend of the stream above the dam unfolded a new picture we glided into with a quiet
elation of discovery.
Then the woods fell back and the slowed flow widened into Jones pond.
In waving stands of pale green marsh grass, red wings whistled and the canoes nudged
water lilies aside like casual stars.
Around to a clock we pulled up in a blueberry thicket under tall pines, dry thunder muttered
in the distance as we ate our long-weighted sandwiches, the gray afternoon, warm and still.
We were far away, though never more than half a mile from main traveled roads.
Lake Nanley is a professor at Berkshire Community College and editor of the Berkshire Reader.
And now it's time for the Earth calendar.
Flying squirrels are extremely abundant in the United States, but few people ever see
them, because like most small mammals they are nocturnal.
People who study them say day sightings are almost hurt off, yet flying squirrels are
a major source of food for many creatures throughout the world.
Tom Rice studies southern flying squirrels at the Savannah River ecology lab in Akin
South Carolina.
He says mating season ended around the turn of the year and the gestation period is coming
to a close.
At this time of year they'll give birth typically to two to four young, young pups we call
young squirrels.
And this is a smaller litter than what they have in the fall.
In the fall they'll have litter up to three to five is a more typical range.
And one of the more interesting things I'm finding is that in the fall they give birth
to more female babies and in the spring or late winter breeding period they give birth
to more male babies.
And I'm not sure exactly why that is, but it's something I'd like to look into.
In many ways, flying squirrels are a lot like other squirrels.
They eat nuts and live in large hardwood trees.
But there are things flying squirrels can do that a few other mammals can, so don't let
their name fool you.
They should really be called gliding squirrels.
They don't fly at all.
So what they'll do is they move through their environment as they'll go up to an appropriate
height.
And then they usually pause before it take off.
And you'll see the move their head from side to side because they're actually triangulating
on the landing spot to see how far it is.
Then they'll jump off the tree with an explosive burst.
They're really quite athletic and they'll extend their flight membrane.
And as they land they'll move their front limbs upwards and their bottom limbs backwards
and they'll lower their tail which acts almost as a rudder or stabilizer.
And they'll make a touchdown, beat first.
And then when they land they'll immediately spin around or run around to the backside
of the tree to foil any predator that might have watched the glide.
And if they're moving great distances they'll continue up the tree, obtain an appropriate
height again and repeat the whole process.
The flight of a squirrel is about 60 yards.
They're also known for their acrobatic turns.
Sometimes at 90 degree angles or more as they avoid branches and trees in their paths.
Just think.
If Tarzan took lessons from a flying squirrel maybe Jane would have been really impressed.
Thanks for being with us on this week's Environment Show.
I'm Peter Burley.
For a cassette copy of the program called 1-800-747-7444, ask for program number 318.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions which is solely responsible
for its content.
Thomas Lallie is the producer and Dr. Alan Shartag is the executive producer.
The Environment Show is made possible by Heming's Motor News, the monthly Bible of the Old
Car Hubbard.
1-800-CAR-HER.
So long and join us next week for the Environment Show.
