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 the W. Alton Jones Foundation.
The Packard Foundation for Coverage of Fisheries Issues, the Bullet Foundation, and Heming's
Motor news, the Bible of the Collector Carhobby 1-800-CAR-H-E-R-E. Your host is Peter
Burley.
Thanks Thomas, coming up on this week's Environment Show.
A recent decision means that less fish will be caught in the North Pacific this year, but
critics charge it may not be enough to save the fishery.
Meet some great old broads fighting for the environment.
And in our Earth calendar, Gray Jays perfect the art of making spitballs.
These stories and more coming up on this week's Environment Show.
Many of the world's fisheries are in trouble, and scientists say it will only get worse
as population grows.
Recently, the regulatory body which sets limits for the mammoth North Pacific fishery cut
the Pollock catch 5%.
Environmentalists had called for cuts of up to 40%.
Environment Show producer Thomas Lalley has this report.
The fishery in the North Pacific is the largest single species fishery in the world.
The catch of one species alone, Pollock, is more than the total of some other fisheries.
To and decisions are made about Pollock, it's big news.
Recently, the group which regulates the Pollock fishery decided to cut next year's catch
a whopping 1.5 billion pounds by 5%.
Dave Witherall is a staff biologist with the North Pacific Management Council.
Well, the council basically adopted the scientist's recommendation on the catch quota.
And it certainly is a drop due to a declining stock.
We've seen lower-year-class strengths produced over the past several years, meaning that
the young being born each year has been lower in the past four years than it was previously.
Witherall and others say the council airs on the side of conservation, but some environmental
groups criticize the council saying they hadn't gone far enough.
The problem they say is that numerous animals rely on Pollock as a main source of food.
Yet, when management decisions are made, they don't take into account wildlife.
Dorothy Childers is the executive director of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council,
which called for a 25% cut in Pollock catches.
She says intensive Pollock harvesting has been devastating.
Pollock is an important forage fish, that is, it is the food source for many other species.
It's an important food source for juvenile stellar sea lions.
Stellar sea lions are about to be listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
Sea birds that feed on Pollock are also in decline and have been for the same period of
time that the large-scale industrial fishery has been exploiting the Pollock resource.
And so there's a concern that the fishery is competing with other species in the ecosystem
for the same food.
The fishery management system in the North Pacific does not account for the needs of other
species when they set the commercial fishing limits.
And so we're fishing on Pollock as if we're the only species that relies on Pollock.
And in fact, we need to be sharing that Pollock with the other species so that the diversity
in the bearing sea is maintained and therefore the health of the bearing sea is maintained.
With or all defense his council's decisions, saying the recent 5% cut should result in increased
numbers of Pollock.
But he admits management decisions do not take the ecosystem as a whole into account.
Our catchcord is based on a single species modeling as our for Pollock, as with every other
stock that we manage.
And is the case with fisheries management throughout the world.
The North Pacific Management Council has been widely praised for keeping the Pollock fishery
healthy.
And in some circles there is considerable optimism that the fishery will remain this way.
Ellen Picketches with the Wildlife Conservation Society.
She recently conducted a study which showed that use of a new kind of net could significantly
reduce the numbers of young Pollock caught.
Now about 10% of the Pollock catch is too young and is tossed dead overboard.
The most recent research that we completed was with the Pollock fishery in the bearing
sea.
And what we were trying to do was to see if we could modify the net in such a way that
it would allow young fish to escape underwater.
I think that what we need to do with this resource is make the best possible use of it.
And so what I've been looking at is our ways that we can use as much of the fish as possible
and minimize the waste.
But while new methods are underway to keep the Pollock stock healthy, some environmentalists
say we still don't know enough about how the entire North Pacific ecosystem works.
Suzanne Yutichello is with the Center for Marine Conservation.
She describes the current scientific understanding of marine environments.
It's pretty dismal actually.
There is much more that we don't know about the ocean than what we do know.
We haven't even catalogued the species that exist in the ocean, let alone the relationships
that they have among each other and the interdependencies of one species upon another.
It has been more of the track record of use it until something goes wrong and then stop
than it has be cautious until you're short but it's safe.
But a recently reauthorization by Congress of a law called the Magnusen Act should go a long
way towards addressing these concerns.
The first test of the Magnusen Act may come this year when fishery councils around the
country will be required to set catch levels based on strict new guidelines which take
into account biological as well as economic interests.
Dorothy Childers from the Alaska Marine Conservation Council says the 5% cut in Pollock catch this
year is merely putting off cuts needed in the future.
A precautionary approach has not been taken here and we may find out in the next year,
in 1998 that a much larger reduction in the fishery will have to take place.
In fact, the scientists are predicting as they do every year they forecast what the population
is going to look like based on what they know so far.
They're forecasting that in 1998 only one year from now that the fishery will have to
be reduced by 40%.
The reauthorization of the Magnusen Act has already forced changes in the eight fishery
councils around the country but the real changes are expected to come with time.
Fish populations often vary significantly from year to year if the demand for fish continues
to rise so this year's 5% cut in Pollock may be a harbinger of things to come.
For the Environment Show, I'm Thomas Lally.
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I'm Linda Anderson and this is Year to the Ground.
The stories about people affecting change in the environment.
This week, Gradle Broad's for the Wilderness.
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
That's a quote that brandishes the front of broadsides, the quarterly newsletter of the Gradle Broad's for the Wilderness.
Gradle Broad's was founded in 1989 by Susan T. Shea, an environmental lawyer who describes herself as sort of a non-profit environmental busybody.
She had often enjoyed hiking with a number of women of a certain age, so when she heard a politician say something that didn't sit well with her, she couldn't let it slide.
There was a senator from Utah who made the public pronouncement that elderly could not get into wilderness.
Therefore, we ought not have so much wilderness.
Well, because we were all sort of on the elderly side of our lifespan.
We took Umbridge and Ashley said, well, we'll just get a t-shirt together and we'll just go to Congress.
And we will show them that indeed the elderly and particularly the little ladies want more wilderness, not less, that we do get into it even though a little bit more slowly than the rest of the people.
And what is it that Gradle Broad's do?
Anything may damage, what's anything may darn well please.
They've hiked on Capitol Hill to warn Congress people that if they didn't vote for protecting wilderness, the Gradle Broad's would tell their mothers.
But for the most part, Gradle Broad's go on what they call, Broadwarks.
We have taken to doing broadwarks across some of the countries that we think ought to be preserved as well to note.
Two years ago, we did a broadwalk across Utah for a month.
And there were about 80 women who came at one time or another and took long nights across beautiful beer of land management, managed land that ought to be preserved as well to note.
Last year or earlier this year, I should say in September we were in Idaho for two weeks and hiked across some beautiful Idaho lands.
They do not do backpacking to Shay says they are not professional hike leaders and don't pretend to be.
Instead, she explains Gradle Broad's are encouraged to meet at trailheads at certain times, prepared to do whatever it takes to do, whatever it is they want to do.
We troop off and there are various ages and sizes and abilities and it certainly is one of the most rag tag looking army she has ever seen.
Because most of us have been hiking with some of the gear that we are hiking with now for a number of years.
And so it wouldn't make Patagonia turn over in its grave for the most part.
Some of it is so old that I don't even know what the name Brad on it is.
Tisha who herself is only in her 50s says this rag tag bunch can include anyone from teens to grandmas and even men.
Because explains Tisha being a great old broad is a state of mind.
She says it's about being passionately funny and hysterically passionate about the wilderness.
If you don't get the humor of being a great old broad and not all do, then she continues you probably aren't one.
The reality is that it does take humor because it's a long, long battle for preservation of wilderness.
The great old broads for the wilderness whose headquarters are in Nizoula, Montana recognize some 3000 members.
Once a year, members join the annual broadwalk where they laugh at themselves, enjoy the beauty, but also are saddened by signs of destruction on the land.
Tisha says what great old broads do is spread the news about the places that need protection.
She likens the organization to crows and ravens, saying they're all around sending up alarms.
With ear to the ground, I'm Linda Anderson.
You're listening to the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burley.
Still ahead. In our series of year and roundups, one member of the Environment Show Advisory Council sees hope for the future.
And Greyjays perfect the art of spitball making. These stories still ahead on the Environment Show.
Environment Show Advisory Council member Diane Dillon Ridgley is president of a nonprofit advocacy group, zero population growth based in Washington, D.C.
She was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Beijing UN Summit Conference on Women in 1995.
And now she is a member of President Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development.
Looking globally, she is optimistic about progress that's being made to create a more sustainable world.
I am eternally optimistic and maybe that's one of the things one has to be to keep moving forward in this process.
I, in addition to the Beijing meeting, was asked to be on the U.S. delegation at two more, and fortunately the two final global meetings that the UN has held.
The Habitat 2 meeting that was in Istanbul in this past June of 96 and the food summit meeting that was in Rome in November at the Food and Agricultural Organization.
And I was asked specifically, I was asked to be on the delegation specifically because of the environmental and population agendas that have carried forward in this process since the Earth Summit.
And while I think one could look at what came out of those meetings, especially the food summit, as particularly modest, I think there is a real consistency that has been adopted by the world community and certainly by this administration of understanding how all of these global issues are related to each other and understanding the centrality of environmental protection to the entire pro-community.
And that is a very important process of our future and if that has really permeated policy and our understanding since the Earth Summit, I think that's actually a very strong positive.
And I'd cite as one example the now outgoing Secretary of State Warren Christopher's speech this past year, which really set the future of U.S. security in an environmental context.
And I think that the tremendous change for us to finally begin to be able to see how what happens inside our own country and other countries, environmentally in terms of natural resource use, in terms of scarcity, in terms of pressures, has an impact on what then occurs in the political realm.
In the domestic front, Diane Dillon-Rigely says positive steps are being taken to implement the recommendations of the President's Council on Sustainable Development on which she serves.
We issued our report to President Clinton this past March. He received it quite well and then immediately charged us with beginning the implementation phase of the recommendations that we put forward.
As a result of that in the ensuing nine months, we set the Council up in three task forces which looked at state, local and regional efforts, national initiatives, and then we also had an international task force.
We really have tried to say, okay, where do we see the kinds of things that we put forward as policy recommendations really happening.
And so you see places like Sustainable Seattle where the entire city has over the last five years really looked at everything that they do to say, does this in fact support the kind of future that we want to have?
Are we moving and continuing to develop and prosper? I think that's been one thing that unfortunately the environmental community has been misunderstood as somehow being anti-growth.
I think we are appropriately anti-destruction, we are appropriately anti-negative impacts and effects on the environment.
But to say that we don't believe that there should be economic vitality is absolutely a misrepresentation.
We just don't think that vitality should come at the cost of the very natural resource base on which the future possibilities of being able to continue to meet the needs of the human population exist.
And to do anything less is almost like having some sort of liquidation sale on your natural resource base.
So there are a lot of people who are in a number of organizations who are working very hard strategically and thoughtfully on how do we now fine tune the commitments?
How do we fine tune the regulations? How do we make these things really work for people work in both their private lives in terms of protecting the water base, in terms of protecting coastal areas, forest, fisheries, etc.
How do we work for that? But how do we also make it possible for people to have livelihoods?
Diane Dillon-Rigley is president of Zero Population Growth. She's a member of President Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development, and she's also member of the Advisory Council of the Environment Show.
And now it's time for the Earth Calendar.
This time of year most creatures are surviving on fat reserves they build up over the summer. But the Grey J has a different strategy.
Environment show producers Stephanie Goysman reports.
In the fight to carve out a niche in nature some animals have been driven to extremes. The Grey J lives in what we would consider an incredibly harsh environment in Arctic and high altitude regions.
Tom Weitz is a professor at the School of Forestry at Michigan Tech University. He says right now Grey J's are living off literally the fruits of their summer work.
The birds are making their living by going around and retrieving several of their 100,000 individual caches.
So the birds during the summer store hundreds of food items each day, each of which they cover with a really copious sticky saliva. And then they basically plaster these items in trees for use during winter.
So during the day which only lasts about four hours because my study area is above the Arctic Circle and so the sun is not actually coming above the horizon.
The birds are going around and retrieving some of these previously stored items.
When the short Arctic day ends the birds cluster together to brave the brutally cold night which lasts about 19 to 20 hours. Weitz says the Grey J's have evolved mechanisms to cope with the conditions.
First they drop their body temperature up to about 6 degrees C depending on how cold it is during the night. They also erect their plumage so that they appear about the size of the softball and very, very fluffy.
So they turn themselves essentially into a perfect sphere and they sit on their feet, they close their eyes, they tuck their bill into the plumage. So they look like a ball with a tail sticking out.
And they also huddle together. So individuals of a particular family group, members of a maiden parent particular will perch so close together that their plumage actually overlaps which further reduces the amount of surface area exposed.
When the J's collect food from their stored caches they only eat enough to get them through the night. Weitz says the food collects an Ebola fat on their breast which you can see because birds have transparent skin.
By the time they wake up the next day the fat is gone and they start the process all over again. While most birds can only call the Arctic home for a few months each year the Grey J's stay on their territory year round.
And the J's have another skill that would come in handy in school yard spitball fights.
The J's have enormous fellow berry glands and they have what appears to be a limitless supply of saliva. So during the course of a day if you provide food such as raisins which are what I use for many of my experiments an individual bird will make well over a thousand caches per day.
That is during a summer day when it has about when there's 24 hour daylight and the bird is typically active for about 17 hours the bird will make one trip after another from the palm of my hand where it collects a single raisin to a nearby tree.
And each of these food items is encoded with this saliva. Now I think the saliva probably has two functions and it's hard to say which is more important the first is that it appears to act as an adhesive so that it holds the food item together and it sticks it to the tree.
So that when the bird comes back perhaps months later to retrieve the food item and hasn't simply gotten dislodged it's still stuck in place. The other function is that the saliva acts as a preservative.
So the lesson is clear never get in a spitball fight with a Grey J for the environment show I'm Stephanie Goichman.
Thanks for being with us on this week's environment show I'm Peter Burley for cassette copy of the program called 1 8 8 8 49 GR EEM and asked for show number 366.
The environment show is a presentation of national productions which is solely responsible for its content. Dr. Alan Sharktot is the executive producer Thomas Lally is producer and Stephanie Goichman is the associate producer.
The environment shows made possible by the W.A.W. Jones Foundation, the Bullet Foundation, the Packard Foundation for coverage of fisheries issues and Heming's Motor News, the monthly Bible of the old car hobby 1 800 CER EEM.
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