Hello friends, it's the Environment Show and welcome. The Endangered Species Act is formally
offered for renewal. Senator John Chaffee says the new bill differs from the old, save
the habitat, and the species will survive. A conversation with the senator. And Larry
Sompke says, don't water, mulch, don't weed, mulch, don't spray for bugs, mulch. And Marie
Strong, Secretary General to the Earth Summit last year, says all the talk of failure is premature.
These stories this time on the Environment Show, a national production made possible by
Hemings Motor News, the national bible of the old car hobby, monthly from Bennington Vermont.
And by the J.M. Kaplan Fund of New York, and this is Bruce Robertson.
Rhode Island Republican Senator John Chaffee has offered a renewed version of the
Endangered Species Act, itself scheduled for extinction at the end of this year, without such renewal.
The bill was introduced with the support of Montana Democratic Senator Max Bawkes,
and Massachusetts Democratic Representative Jerry Studds, supporting both houses and both parties
of Congress. Senator Chaffee says his new bill is predicated on the original legislation.
We think that the basic act is a very good act to these on massive overhalls to it,
but they are what we consider to be improvements.
The original legislation was signed into law in 1973. Called the Endangered Species Act,
it was in turn based on a piece of legislation dating to 1969, called the Endangered Species Protection
Act, which in turn had been a reworking of the 1966 Endangered Species Preservation Act.
Each of these earlier bills was an attempt to focus attention on the seriousness of extinction
in both the plant and the animal kingdom. However, all of the bills lacked a really good
definition of endangerment. The 1973 bill, needing to be renewed by the end of this year,
clearly stated that a species will be considered endangered when it is, quote,
endanger throughout all or a significant portion of its range. Today, Chaffee says this is a good
working definition, but is one that needs to be refined. I think that what we need to do in
end of the act is look more at what you might call the multi-species of the ecosystem.
There is a very broad approach. Under the act, you take species by species.
And furthermore, I think that there isn't enough under the act as it now exists to give warning signs
to federal agencies or private land owners that this species or multi-species under
are going to be potentially endangered. And so what we want to pay more attention to,
or what we might call candidate species, those who are in trouble, they haven't reached the
threaten or the endangered status yet, but they're close to it. And so let's take some steps now,
rather than waiting into the last minute. We have in hand here a rough outline of your proposed
renewed bill. And there is a curious line in it. What presumably later will be a full title in
the final bill. To it, you propose to create incentives for private land owners to conserve species
by authorizing federal assistance for land planning. What does this mean, Senator?
I think that we want to have the land owners, the private land owners, partners in all of this,
rather than antagonists. The problem is now, if a land owner who might be a farmer, for example,
with three or four hundred acres, maybe a thousand acres, will discover on his property in an
endangered species. And with that come all kinds of restrictions, restrictions, and what can be done
to the habitat where that species is. And so the farmer will suddenly find that he can't
plow right through some prairie pothole on his land. That water is very, very important to this
endangered species to exist. Or he can't plow to, in areas of grassland areas that where there's
a nesting place for that endangered species. So suddenly he finds himself in an economic
situation where he's deprived of some economic benefit of his land. And thus he gets antagonistic
and angry. And frankly, in many instances, if he could discover that endangered species before
the federal authorities discovered, he might be tempted to say, boy, this presents a lot of
potential problems. I'll get rid of it and have done with it before anybody knows about it.
Well, certainly that's not what we want. We want the private land owners to be partners in
interest. And indeed, many, many farmers, land owners are deeply interested just because they,
they believe in nature and the preservation of these species. No matter whether it's a spotted
owl or blackfooted ferret or whatever it is, they want to help. And I think there should be
some financial incentive to encourage the private land owners to participate and reward them if you
would for helping out in preserving these species. How far are you willing to go or indeed,
how far would you suggest that we as a nation should be willing to go to preserve a species
or even more broadly speaking to preserve an ecosystem? In other words, at what cost is really
the question? At what cost to bear the brunt of job losses, for example, that should quite likely
be the result of protecting an ecosystem? How far should we go? Well, we, you know, it's not for
me to sit here and say, all right, when you reach X dollars, we'll spend that much, but anything
beyond X, go to it that species not worth it. Frankly, I think that if the public is a whole and
the private land owners and everybody realizes that these are all part of the web of life and they
contribute to the benefits for all of us, it would be a sorry situation not just because of
potential pharmaceutical benefits that come from some rare type of flower, but it would be a less
a less a nation of ours if these species and animals and birds and flowers that we see in our
nation now were to disappear and be eliminated. We all worry about, say, the Black Duck population,
which is diminished drastically, principally because of the loss of habitat and the songbird
accounts are going down. Much of that due to the habitat that these birds have sought and
traditionally seek in Central America, or in some instances South America. So we can't put a
value on it and indeed in the endangered species, there is no valuation. It says they shall be protected
and the challenge there is to find a way to protect them. That isn't devastating to some economy,
whether it's lumberman and saw mills in the west or whether it's to farmers in the midwest or
whether it's to private land owners in the east. Senator, you just mentioned in passing their
plants, what about plants? Do you have a targeted plan in the bill for renewal of plants? Nearly half
about 46 percent, I believe, of all endangered species are in fact plants and there are many,
especially, botanists who say that we have not provided for plants in the endangered species act
over the years. I suspect that you're quite right that there's a much higher concern evidence amongst
the general population for animal life. Everybody can relate to a the bison, for example, or to some type
of animal that moves in four feet, rather than a plant. You get, oh, a bird and we all know what
happened to the passenger pigeon which docked in the skies in the early days of this republic.
And then suddenly it was gone. The last one and then that one died and there were no more.
People can relate to that whereas some kind of an exotic type of orchid or plant life,
they can't relate to so well. That is true. But nonetheless, we try to do our best in preserving them all.
I'm curious, Senator. What are your personal thoughts, your personal convictions, a sort of
philosophical view, if you will, of the notion of endangerment of extinction? Well, very worried about it.
Of course, biodiversity and endangered species, all of those problems relate right back to habitat.
That is the place where these animals live, birds, insects, flowers, whatever they might be.
You've got to preserve their habitat, their living places. And that involves not only the actual space
for them and the undergrowth and the trees, but also the cleanliness of the air and the type of
water that flows through those places. If we found, for example, one of the major problems with
the stripe bass, for example, has been the quality of the water in the Chaspeake Bay,
which is gradually improving in the stripe bass or improving likewise.
Republican Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island, speaking to us from Washington,
on his bill to reauthorize the Endangered Species Act, the bill has been co-sponsored by Montana
Senator Max Boccus and Democratic Representative Jerry Studz of Massachusetts. Senator Chafee suspects
the bill will make it through Congress sometime during this session, which goes through next year.
The wheels of government grind exceeding slow. The question is, can the plants and animals wait?
This is Bruce Robertson.
To ease your garden through the hot, dry summer, Larry Sompke, the environmental gardener,
says the best thing to do is mulch mulch mulch. He says he's mixed up a batch and is eager to demonstrate.
Let's see. Hey, there he is. Good morning, Larry.
You're here. What's going on? How are you doing?
Well, I'm doing fine. I'm just nice and warm and hot and dry now, so I'm going to
put a nice layer of organic mulch on my garden. I'm going to buck it here. You know,
big old wash tub. I remember swimming in these when I was about two years old in the backyard in
Iowa, and I've got compost from my compost bin, and I've got some shredded pine bark in here,
not nuggets. I don't like the big nuggets, but shredded pine bark and just a little bit of
peat moss in here as an extender. I like to use a natural organic mulch because it has a lot of
advantages to me over a black plastic or some of the other fabrics and products that you can use as a mulch.
I like this organic mulch because it has a lot of good properties, and it also has a nice look to it.
Now, Larry, why would we want to put down mulch?
Well, mulch does several things for you. One, it suppresses weeds, so you don't have to use any
herbicide. It just smothers the weeds, it simply kills them off by smothering them. Another thing that
it does is keeps the soil cooler, which means that your plants are not as stressed during the summer.
It retains moisture, it acts as a vapor barrier, I guess, and it keeps any moisture that you get
either from irrigation or from the heavens, keeps it in the soil, and then because it's a natural
organic mulch, and this is one of the great things about it, it will continue to decay. The microorganisms
in the soil will digest it, and it'll go into the soil and add more organic matter to the soil,
which that's the really a key to having a great environmental gardener is a really rich, organic soil.
You told us your particular mixture here, your recipe, is there a particular formula that it works
better, or could you put grass clippings and leaves and that kind of stuff?
Well, if they're shredded, I think you can use grass clippings and leaves if they're shredded and
they're blended. They make a real nice mulch also. You should always use whatever is available to you,
there's a cedar bark nuggets, there's some people like to use these buckwheat hulls,
cocoa bean shells, whatever you find to be your favorite from an aesthetic point of view,
and from a value point of view, use that. I use what I have that's available to me and what I've
grown to like. What about tips for applying it? Well, you just put it on about two to three inches,
or one to two inches, I'm just going to take my shovel. Is the thickness kind of key to
you? Yeah, you got to have a good couple inches work on there and you'll learn what your garden needs
to keep the weeds down. I just take it and just kind of shovel it on there and move it around.
Some people are a lot more gentile about it than I am, but I used to shovel asphalt around,
so I've kind of taken on that kind of habit where I just fling it. I once worked on the back of an
asphalt truck, so it goes on pretty easy. There's nothing secret about it, and then you can get it
up close to the plants. You don't want to put it on top of the plants, but you can get it up pretty
close. Of course, you would never want to put it on top of young seedlings. As you can see down
there, I have some zineas that are just now coming up. That would smother them. They would just
smother them and kill them just like it would the weeds, but a lot of people ask me how close can you
get it to the plants? Well, you can get it right up around the base of the plants and it won't
cause any trouble. Now, what you can do for a little fine touch here, you can see you can get
down on your hands and knees and lift up some of the plants a little bit, and just kind of with your hands,
you know, working it in underneath, and then it has a really nice look. See, I have a rough look,
but then I can go in, smooth it out a little bit with my hands, and give it a real nice look. Finally,
Larry, after you've applied the mulch, as you said, the one of the reasons is for moisture retention,
what about raining and watering the plants afterwards? Doesn't it take a little bit extra water to
get down through the mulch to the plants and the roots? No, not necessarily. Now, this garden that I
have right here does not really demand a lot of water, but if you have a garden, you know you're
going to demand some water. You may consider installing a soaker hose in the garden before you put
the mulch in and put the soaker hose underneath the mulch. That way, whenever you water it, the hose
is underneath the mulch, but no, the mulch will not cause you to use more water. It will actually
cause you to use less water because more water is being held in. It's more water conserving,
and so for that reason, you get another environmental halo because you're conserving water resources.
All right, well, I'll ever like to interrupt you too long. It's always best to get back to work.
Yeah, and I think we'll talk about it as an electric lawnmower next.
All right, see you next time, Larry.
Larry Sompke, the environmental gardener, and author of the new book, Beautiful Easy Gardens.
The electric lawnmower was sitting out on the lawn and it really looks interesting. Join us next time
from Hollowville, New York. This is Bruce Robertson.
At the United Nations, recently Vice President Al Gore spoke to the Commission on Sustainable
Development, an organization formed in the wake of the Earth Summit last year in Rio.
Speaking to the Commission gathered for its first Rio meeting, Mr. Gore pledged greater
future participation and leadership from the United States, a nation severely criticized last
year for failing to take a prominent position. However, though he says governments will play an
important role on the world stage, Maurice Strong, Secretary General to the Summit last year,
says non-governmental organizations in Geos made the difference then and will make the difference
in the future. For an assessment of last year's Summit now a year later, we reached Mr. Strong in
Toronto, Canada, at the headquarters of Ontario Hydro, where he serves as Chief Executive Officer for
the moment, first on the role of governments. Well, obviously there is no substitute for
governments in terms of making regulations, making policies, and most of all creating the system
of incentives and penalties to which business responds and to which individual behavior responds.
And one of the most important functions that governments now have to perform is to, in relation
to implementation of Rio, is to go back and to their basic budgeting process and their own
internal domestic resource allocation processes and look at all the ways in which
their fiscal and tax and incentive policies are affecting economic behavior. They'll find that
many of them are now are de facto subsidizing environmentally unsound and unsustainable practices.
They weren't intended that way, but they are agricultural subsidies, subsidies to coal,
subsidies that provide incentives for cutting down trees more than to replanting them. A whole
series of things. Now you'll find that the money is in the system if they can reorient that to
provide positive incentives for environmentally sustainable behavior. And they'll find incidentally
that this offers also the most promising prospect for revitalizing our economies.
We've been stuck in a rut in North America recently with the assumption that somehow there's
jobs in the environment run counter to each other. That as long as we're having trouble with jobs,
we can't afford to give the same amount of weight to our environmental concerns.
The evidence we assembled for the air summit really runs absolutely counter that. Of course,
there are jobs on the line in particular areas, but on the whole,
varmore jobs will be created by the transition to environmentally sustainable development,
then will be lost. Though governments must sign and somehow enforce the treaties and the agenda
21 agreements signed at the summit, and though the new United Nations Commission at which Mr.
Gorspoke is a governmental body, Murray Strong says we must continue to look elsewhere for the real
movers and the real shakers. At the level of people, it was really the people power that enabled us
to accomplish what we did at Rio. We didn't have the leadership of the United States as we've already
said. No other country was in a position to substitute for that leadership fully, and therefore
we relied on people power, amplified very much through the media because we had more media
presence at Rio. More than double as a matter of fact, the number of media representatives that have
ever covered any other world event of that kind. This meant that people everywhere were made
aware of what was happening, and that has been translated into a tremendous number of people-based
initiatives around the world. And initiatives on the part of important sectors, for example,
engineers. I've just been partied to the launching by the four world professional engineering
associations of a combined initiative, which they call the world's partnership for sustainable
development, committing their 12 million engineers members to putting a sustainable development
and a gender 21 in the center of their own professional gender. And I could give you an example,
after example, and that's where the real results of Rio will finally be worked out.
Mr. Strong, we are here talking about the Earth Summit now a year later. You were Secretary General
for the Meeting, which was formally titled the United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development Unsaid. You had great power to influence there in your capacity. What did you come
away with after the summit? Did you have a sense of accomplishment or a sense of disappointment,
or was it unfinished business? What? Well, I guess a mixture of all of the above. One on a
accomplishment. I think it has to be said that the agreements they actually reached there
went beyond my expectations, given the political climate. We nobody felt that you'd have a
once and for all quick fix of all the world's environmental deals. So this, I should remind you too,
is primarily a conference on economic change. And economic change in order to ensure the future of
our environment and our economy, but nevertheless economic change and not just mere environmental change.
So it shouldn't have been surprising that there were conflicts and controversies and difficulties.
But as I mentioned earlier, the net result, a gender 21 and the Declaration of Rio,
do constitute the most comprehensive and fire-ranging action programs ever agreed by the
international community. So, I mean, at that level, at the level of what they agreed, I wasn't happy
with everything. Obviously, I'd like to have been improved, but on the whole, I have to feel that
it was a major step forward. Now, the real issue is what happens as a result of it. What do governments
do now? What do people do now? What does industry do now? On that level, the verdict is that in the
yet, but the evidence is far more encouraging at that level than it is so far at the level of
governments. And I believe that the initiatives we're now seeing around the world, incidentally,
at the grassroots level and at the level of individual sectors like business and the engineers
that I was talking about, that that is going to inject a whole new energy into the political
process. And that that, in turn, will ensure that these issues will be pushed back onto the
political agenda in particularly in areas where they may have been temporarily shunted aside.
Even with its shortcomings, if we actually follow what was agreed at real, we'll be well launched
on that new pathway. At the same time, of course, we can continue the process of negotiating in
those areas that were left at two low level of consensus in real. But if we just get on with the
job of implementing what was agreed at real, we'll have made an immense advance in the right direction.
Maurice Strong, Secretary General to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro last year. He spoke to us from Ontario Hydro Headquarters in
Toronto, Canada. The work of the summit will continue next September 1994 with the conference on
World Population in Cairo, Egypt. This is Bruce Robertson. Political will is our problem. Now we've
got technology is available. It can be improved certainly. The resources are available despite our
sense of being poor. The resources are available by redeployment of resources within the system.
What is lacking is a political mindset, political will.
Well, that's our report on the Environment Show this week. Thanks much for joining us. Join us next week
at this time. The Environment Show is a presentation of national production solely responsible for its
content, Dr. Alan Shartock, Executive Producer. This is Bruce Robertson. Fortica set copy of the
program called 1-800-767-1929. Ask for the Environment Show program number 181. The
Environment Show is made possible by the Jam Kaplan Fund of New York and by Heming's Motor News,
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