This is the Environment Show. It's about our stewardship of the Earth and the beauty
and mystery of life in all its forms. I'm Peter Burley.
Coming up, more city dwellers in Africa with more cash are buying more meat for the table.
They're eating monkeys and other wild animals and their critters are going fast.
Meat in thems of our national parks has been neglected, but now the money you spend
to get in is being used to fix up what's inside. It's a start, but a lot more is needed.
In our continuing series on the origins of life, two scientists describe a new way to find
earth-sized planets circling stars and if life is there.
And the Meerth calendar, tiny white lady-slipper orchids are blooming and south the Coda.
These stories and more coming up on the Environment Show.
You're listening to the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burley.
Dr. Jane Goodall, the world's leading authority on chimpanzees, appeared on the Environment
Show a few weeks ago to discuss a number of environmental problems such as the growing
bush meat trade in Africa. Bush meat is wild meat or any meat that does not come from
domesticated animals. For many Africans, bush meat is an important part of the diet.
But as Stephen Wescott reports, logging activity and the increasing demands of urban dwellers
with an insatiable appetite for wild game is destroying the biodiversity of tropical
forests in Central Africa.
Scientists and experts alike say a lot of animals are being taken from Africa's tropical
forests.
We are estimating that the wild meat trade is taking out something in the order of one
million metric tons of wild meat per year. That level is 20 to 50 times greater than
the harvest rates that we're seeing in areas where people are primarily hunting for
assistance.
That's Dr. John Robinson, vice president and director of International Conservation with
the Wildlife Conservation Society, based at the Brock Zoo in New York City.
Most of the animals which are taken tend to be the ungulates, the cow goat family, and animals
like dikers and pigs and things like this.
Robinsons says many of the primate species being taken are already threatened. He emphasizes
that there is a limited number of the large mammals and birds that can be taken before their
numbers become critically low. The animals are coming from the Congo and other tropical
areas of Central Africa. Native people have hunted bush meat for the past 40,000 years, so
forest hunting is nothing new. What is new about today's bush meat trade, according to Dr.
Robinson, is the amount of meat being taken to feed people living away from the small
towns and villages.
If the urbanization of the rural population, people have moved into the cities that have
retained a preference for wild meat. The commercial trade in wild meat is supporting those
meat preferences of what are now urban dwellers. The greatest proportion of the wild meat trade
is to support those urban consumers.
Wild animals have long been an important source of protein for Africans, and with a lack
of large-scale domestic animal farms, they are continuing to rely on bush meat as a food
source. Besides the increased amount of meat being taken from Africa's forests, Dr.
Robinson says the way the animals are being taken has also changed.
What is happening nowadays is that the large blocks of tropical forests are being opened
up, and they are being opened up primarily because of logging companies moving into areas,
and to get the wood out those logging companies put in a vast network of roads. That gives
people access to the forest. It also gives people in the forest the ability to transport
meat out. What we have seen as the logging front has moved into tropical forests, what
we have established is this network that drains the meat out of the forest. This is really
a phenomenon that we have seen develop over the last 20 years in Asia. In Africa, we are
seeing it developing right now. Local hunters and hired poachers are involved in the bush
meat trade, but Dr. Robinson says local workers, hired by European and Asian logging companies,
are taking most of the animals and transporting them to the towns and cities. Robinson says
the governments of African nations simply do not have the resources to control the bush meat
trade. As a result, Dr. Robinson and others are going to the source of the problem.
We are beginning to work with conservationists are beginning to work with logging companies
to try to get them to close down their roads after they have used them to take out the
wood to supply meat to their domestic meat to their lodgers so that the lodgers don't
have to go out there and hunt wildlife populations to encourage logging companies to prohibit
the transportation of wild meat on logging company trucks. Dr. Robinson doesn't believe the
bush meat trade dilemma can get any worse than it already is. He says unless aggressive
measures are taken in the next 5 to 10 years, the only areas in Africa that will have significant
wildlife populations will be some protected parks and preserves. For the Environment Show,
I'm Stephen Westcott.
We move in a summer and it's vacation time. For some, that means a trip to a national park
like Yellowstone, you're somebody of the great Smoky Mountains or a lesser known park
such as we described last week. But as Ray Graff reports, there are some things you should
know about our national park system before you load up the car. The U.S. National Park
system is the largest and many say the best park system in the world. But according to
a report released this spring by the National Parks and Conservation Association, a private
nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the parks, crowds, noise and pollution are
endangering many of the 378 parks in the system. Tom Kearnin, president of the NPCA, runs
down this year's list.
The 10 Most Endangered Parks as NPCA announced included Taco Culture National Historic Park,
Denali, Everglades and Biscay National Parks, Gettysburg National Military Park, Grand Canyon,
the Great Smokies, Haleakala National Park, Mahavi, Voizers and Yellowstone National Park.
Most of the problems that our parks face are reprobble. Some like protecting some of the
species in the artifacts. That is not fixable. If we blow it now, we've blown it for our
kids and our grandkids and they will not forgive us.
According to the NPCA report, the range of problems facing the parks on the list is wide.
Record-breaking air pollution at the Smokie Mountains National Park is limiting the once
seemingly infinite visibility to a mere 20 miles on some days. At the Alaska Park wilderness
of Denali, snowmobiles, roads and other intrusions are threatening the pristine environment.
At Tom Kearinen says that perhaps the biggest problem facing the National Park system is
that there simply isn't enough money in its budget.
One of the fundamental problems underlying many of the challenges in our park system include
lack of funding or completely inadequate funding. An example or a post-yourchild is Yellowstone
where the lack of funding has led to sewage coming out of sewage treatment plant into
Yellowstone Lake and near old faithful. The cost to fix that is roughly $30 million and
the park's budget to handle all its other needs is $30 million. So there's no way that
the park service budget can easily fix that problem without significant additional
appropriations.
Well, I doubt there is any agency in the government that would tell you they couldn't
use more money.
Descree Jarvis is assistant director of the National Park Service in charge of external
affairs.
It's certainly for a number of years the park service has said so.
Jarvis says recent additions in funding to the park system have made big improvements to
some of the problems listed in the NPCA report. Two years ago, Congress gave the National
Park Service the authority to retain park entrance and user fees. Before that, the
money had gone to the general fund of the U.S. Treasury.
And that essentially resulted in a $140 million increase in park service funding for operation
and maintenance in the parks. All of that money stays with the park service and goes right
back into visitor services and resource protection. So things like big ticket items that hadn't
been handled very well in recent years because of lack of funding. Many of them will get
funded now through this $140 million increase.
But there are some problems that increased funding can't cure. One of the biggest is
urban sprawl. Some national parks like Mojave National Park in California are being
squeezed by increasing development. Again, Tom Kearnin of the National Parks and Conservation
Association.
That park is under tremendous threats from surrounding development. There's an adjacent
army base that wants to expand its tank training area. There's also proposals for new
resorts and new golf courses that was a park out in the middle of nowhere is now being
surrounded on all sides by development, which is significantly impacting the health of
the plants and animals inside the park. Some of the parks are turning more into zoos
than naturally functioning ecosystems.
If Kearnin and Jarvis agree that while there are many threats to our national park system
that we can't control, the number one thing we can do to preserve our parks is when we
visit them treat them with respect.
Deskry Jarvis of the National Park Service.
There are ethical and unequal ways to use the park. People who litter, people who cut off
trails and cause erosion, people who feed the wildlife, all of these things are bad and
will damage the parks. If people know better, if they're informed or inform themselves,
they won't do these things. People don't do it maliciously for the most part, although
there is vandalism. But the vast majority of people are doing it in ignorance and would
simply like to help them learn from their experience in the park and take those lessons that
they learn back home with them and do the same thing in their own neighborhoods.
You can learn more about the NPCA's list of 10 Most Endangered National Parks and ways
that you can help preserve them on the worldwide web at www.eparks.org.
For the Environment Show, I'm Ray Graf.
By NASA, through support of the New York Center for Studies of the Origins of Life, it's
located at the New York State University at Albany, the Rensselor Polytechnic Institute
and the College of St. Rose. The Environment Show is a national production. It's made possible
by the W. Walton-Jones Foundation, the William Bingham Foundation, the Turner Foundation,
the J.M. Kaplan Fund, and Heming's Motor Doors, the monthly Bible of the Collector at
CarHobbitt, www.heming.js.com.
You can always reach us here at the Environment Show by email. It's green at wamc.org.
That's green at wamc.org or write us.
318 Central Avenue, Albany, New York, 12206. We'd like to hear from you.
In our continuing series on the search for the Origins of Life, we talked to two
scientists who are trying to find planets in orbit around stars. The idea is that these
are places where there may be life or conditions that could lead to the formation of life. In
an earlier program, we talked to Dr. Paul Butler, who has discovered planets circling
stars by measuring how they cause the star to move. In contrast, a process called interferometry
is being developed to see the planet directly. Jim Casting, professor of geosciences at Penn
State University, explains the difference between these two techniques. He says in the
first method,
The planet is pulling on the star and then it's causing it to wobble either back and forth
in the line of sight, in which case you can look at the Doppler shift, that's called
the radial velocity method, or it can wiggle side to side, and so if you can figure out the
star's position very accurately, then you can see that it has a planet going around it.
Both of those are indirect detection techniques, and what we're talking about with an interferometer
is slightly different, because in this case you're detecting the light from both the star
and the planet coming going around the star, but then you arrange the telescopes in such
a way that you can't fill out the light from the star, and you just retain the light from
the planet going around it. So you're actually looking then at right coming directly from
the planet. Casting says what is detected is not visible light.
It's infrared radiation, it's longer wavelengths than visible light, but it is coming from the
planet, and you know in particular it's coming from the planet's atmosphere, so if you can
observe it, then you can figure out what gases are emitting it.
Accomplishing this is difficult, because the star can be millions of times brighter than
the planet.
That's why you don't do this in the visible, because you know the sun puts out most of
its energy in the visible, and the earth of course reflects some of that sunlight, but
if you were to look at the earth and the sun in the visible, you'd find out the sun is
something like 10 to the 11th times, 100 billion times brighter than the earth. Well that's
impossible to overcome, but if you look in the infrared, the earth radiation peaks in
the infrared, so the sun is still brighter, but it's only brighter by about a factor of
a million or something in the infrared, and that, you know, even though that's a large
difference, we think we can overcome that and still see the light from the planet.
Casting thinks that when these planets are seen, it will be possible to determine whether
they're surrounded by gases that could relate to the presence of life. This conclusion
is based on his studies of the evolution of our own atmosphere.
Suppose you were to look at the earth not now, but during the first half of its history.
Most of us think that it didn't have oxygen in its atmosphere early on until about two
or maybe 2.2 billion years ago. So if you were to look at a planet that was an analog
for the earlier, you wouldn't see an ozone band presumably, but on the other hand you
might see lots of methane because we think that on earth the methanogenic bacteria are
very ancient, and if they were pumping out methane into an oxygen-free atmosphere, then
you could build up quite a lot of methane. We think enough to be able to see.
Dean Peterson, associate professor of astronomy at the State University of New York Stony Brook,
has the big breakthroughs in interferometry. It will occur in the next 5 to 10 years
when NASA launches interferometers in space, equipment that is being developed now.
It's lights and mirrors, literally. You have this pair of mirrors out at each end of
a large beam, 10 meters long in the case of the space interferometry mission, which is
the one I'm associated with. You bring the two light beams together and you get just
the wavelength of light, interference pattern in the two light beams allows you to make
an extremely precise position measurement.
Like all space exploration, putting an interferometer in orbit is expensive. Peterson reviews
the cost of a single launch. 480 million is in 1996 dollars is what they're counting.
NASA has a funny way of keeping track of budgets. That doesn't count the rocket. You put the
rocket in and run out costs and so on and the real total cost beginning to end is 850
round numbers. It's not cheap, but I mean think of the return. I mean the idea of dealing
with these absolutely fundamental questions is just mind-boggling.
Peterson said certain identification of planets by interferometry has not happened yet, but
space launches of the interferometers now being planned for 2005 and 2010 will be the
next big steps as we look for places where the elements of life might exist.
This is an extremely exciting time. It isn't just finding Earths and just going after life,
which of course is the holy grail and all this, but we really know nothing about how planetary
systems form. And we will begin, we expect to begin to identify numerous planetary systems
of all masses at all distances around their stars. We'll be able to see them around solar type
stars and hot stars and cool stars and just start fleshing out the whole issue of how a star
develops a planetary system. We just are absolutely in that infancy of that knowledge.
Researchers speculate that in the early part of the next century we'll be discovering with space-based
interferometers a great many planets orbiting stars. And as a result the likelihood of finding
places that have the necessary prerequisites for life will increase.
And now it's time for the Earth calendar. As you listen to the show, small white orchids,
which are a form of lady slippers, are blooming in eastern South Dakota.
Susan Batcher is a research associate at South Dakota State University located at Brookings.
She says the wildflowers are found in clusters with up to 80 in one area.
If you've ever encountered a lady's slipper in the woods, it's just so nice to come across and
they just jump up and grab your attention. And the thing that makes these lady slippers
distinctive is that they are so very tiny and so delicate. They're only about a half of an inch long
roughly and maybe five inches tall, something like that. There are miniature versions of the other
lady slippers that most people are familiar with. These lady slippers have three or four long
straight narrow leaves that grow upward from the center of the stem. The flower has curled petals
that can be colored with a delicate purple line. The flower resembles a slipper and hence the name.
As with many plants, Susan Batcher says lady slippers are pollinated by bees.
And as they're feeding on some of these other wildflowers, they'll once and a while
fly into an orchid more or less by mistake. I guess the color or the fragrance, something about
the orchid entices this insect to fly in and once it gets there, it's trapped. And it can't get out
again without brushing against a bunch of pollen that's inside the flower. And this is
maybe similar to other pollination stories you've heard, but of course once it gets out of the flower
and it's curing that pollen load, then it makes that thing sick one more time. It has just succeeded
in successfully pollinating an orchid. Some say small white orchids smell a little bit like vanilla.
These lady slippers are usually found in prairies and wetland areas. Susan describes
this region of eastern South Dakota as Prairie Pothole with open rolling landscape. She says it's
unique to find lady slippers in this part of the continental United States. This is as far as I know
the western most population known to exist. We have I think only about five populations of these
orchids here in South Dakota and the majority of them are to the east of here in the Great Lakes
region and on actually over into the Atlantic States. So it's not very often that you'll find them
in South Dakota. Like many plant species, small white orchids have been pushed out of many regions as a
result of development of agriculture. That means the slippers on the lady in the mall or the corn
field are not the real thing even if they are petite and white. You're listening to the
environment show. I'm Peter Burley.
You're listening to the environment show and I'm Peter Burley. Still ahead. The International
Whaling Commission is voted to restrict whale hunting for another year. Observers at the annual
meeting say that Japanese are trying to blow the commission apart. We talk green about the
livability agenda. It's a fancy name for a bunch of items in the federal budget which vice
president Gore says will curb sprawl and make the country a better place to live. And naturalist
Don Ogden reflects on the battle between beavers and the road boss. Who spaces the road traversing
anyway stay with us.
In recent weeks representatives from across the globe gathered at the 51st meeting of the International
Whaling Commission. That's the international body designed to manage and address issues relating
to whales and whale hunting. Environmentalists have mixed views of the meeting but more importantly
some believe the future of the IWC remains uncertain. This could prove fatal for some whale species.
Stephen Westcott has more. Those attending the IWC conference in Grenada say the meeting
gone off to a rough start. There was a conspicuous effort by the Japanese to be disruptive to
intervene on points of order and basically to try and discredit the IWC. I think with a
intention of putting pressure on it to submit to their efforts to resume commercial whaling.
They made a number of interventions themselves and through small island states in the Caribbean
that are friendly to their interests that were really bordered on the undiplomatic. And they
wanted to have television cameras in there. I think with a view that they could publicly discredit
IWC. And at least in the first day and a half it was kind of a raucous meeting. Richard Mott,
vice president of World Wildlife Fund based in Washington DC, was among those attending the IWC
the International Whaling Commission was formed in the 1940s. But environmentalists and others say
only in the past 20 years has the body effectively addressed whaling issues and whale conservation.
During that time debates between pro-wailing governments like Japan, Norway and Russia,
and anti-wailing governments have increased. Richard Mott says this stalemate endured during the
latest meeting. The most critical event I would say was the tabling of a proposal by Ireland
to reach a compromise solution. This was something Ireland had put forward about 20 months ago
in Monaco, two meetings ago at the 49th annual meeting of the IWC. The Irish proposal was put
forward again in Grenada and it received a considerable higher level of support than it had
at any point to date. Ireland's proposed compromise would reportedly allow pro-wailing countries to
hunt in their territorial waters while making international waters off limits to whaling. A
moratorium on whaling has been an effect for the past 13 years. But now countries such as Japan
are hoping to lift the ban. But at least for now it will continue for another year
because IWC delegates voted to extend it. Richard Mott says Russia, which hunted whales for years,
will be an important variable in the equation. Russia has what is known as an objection to the
commercial moratorium. Although it is not whaling today, it objected to the commercial moratorium
which allowed it legally to begin commercial whaling anytime that it wants. If Russia
resumes commercial whaling, it is a wild card on the international front and it indicated
that Grenada that it would oppose the Irish proposal and that it would promote
relaxing of international trade bans on whale meat. The next IWC meeting is scheduled for
next June in Australia. Audrey Cardwell is an oceans campaigner for Greenpeace. I spoke with her
immediately following the IWC conference in Grenada. She says the focus now shifts to a meeting of
the convention on the international trade in endangered species, also known as CITES, where she
expects efforts by Japan and Norway to lift the ban on commercial whaling to continue.
They are looking toward the convention on international trade and endangered species meeting
next April in Nairobi. At that time, they will move to take certain whale meat, most notably the
minkey whales, which they hunt extensively now, off the list of products that are not allowed to
be traded because they are endangered. And once they do that, it means that countries such as Russia
and of course Japan and Norway, which have held what are called reservations against the moratorium,
will then be encouraged to go back to full scale commercial hunting because they will be able to
sell their whale meat to Japan. Despite the moratorium on whaling, countries like Japan and Norway
continue to commercially hunt the majestic mammals, mainly because of an IWC loophole that allows
countries to conduct what is called lethal scientific research, of which Japan is taking full
advantage. Meanwhile, Richard Maudwonders, whether the split between pro and anti-wailing governments in
the IWC, will lead to a few whaling countries to break away and create their own governing bodies.
He remains hopeful that Ireland's proposed compromise will be adopted at next year's IWC meeting.
But if that does not happen, Mott believes commercial whaling could resume on a scale not seen for
generation. For the Environment Show, I'm Stephen Westcott. My soul has been torn from me
and I am bleeding. My heart it has been rent and I am crying.
As the beauty round me fails and I am screaming, I'm the last of the great wills and I am dying.
Last night I heard the call of my last companion.
The blast of our Poon Gun and I swam alone. I reflected on days gone by when we were thousands
and I know that I soon will die. The last love I have on.
We're tucking green and I'm Peter Burley. Today we're going to be discussing the
livability agenda which is included in the year 2000 proposed federal budget and is being much
touted by Vice President Gore. We'll get into the details as we go along but in summary the
livability agenda includes a better America bonds initiative to provide zero interest financing
for $10 billion in bonds to finance local acquisition of open space and to clean up old industrial
sites. Also included is $6.1 billion for public transit, $1.6 billion for transportation planning,
particularly related to reducing air pollution and $50 million in matching funds for regional
partnerships among local governments, specifically across city suburb lines. My guests are Michael
Rapplogle, he's federal transportation director for the Environmental Defense Fund, that's a national
nonprofit environmental organization and also Greg Wetstone who is director of advocacy programs
with the Natural Resources Defense Council NRDC, another national environmental group. They are
both based in Washington DC. Michael Rapplogle, you are a transportation expert, most of the money in
this program goes for transportation, does it make any sense? This program makes a lot of sense.
For decades, federal policies are fuel sprawl and traffic growth. This new set of policies gives
communities vital resources that could reverse that tide. And is there anything new here,
spending money on public transportation has been going on for some time. Transportation planning
seems to go on at the infinitum, even though I'm not sure that too much is accomplished.
Is this window dressing or is there something substantive here? Now there's real substance in giving
flexible funding to communities and giving communities new tools to use that flexibility to
deliver better communities with less traffic. These resources are particularly focused on
spurring innovative programs that can help protect open space, revitalize our existing communities
that are many of which are in danger of disinvestment and falling apart. And they can help us
to enjoy better access with less traffic. Those are real gains for everybody. Greg Wetzdon,
if I'm a listener to the Environment Show and I hear about this thing, why should I really want
to push my congressman or the administration to move ahead with it? Well, I think that Michael
hit the nail on the head, there is a lot of money here that would provide opportunities for
communities to really grow in a smarter way and to take on the congestion and pollution and
uncheck development that has really changed and is changing the landscape in the country.
Give me an example before you go on about what that would mean. If I'm a mayor or a local selectman,
I hear you telling me there's money to grow in a smarter way. Specifically on the ground,
that means what? Well, it means things like money to assure that you can take advantage of
opportunities to revitalize existing areas, to protect open spaces. Some of the reasons
what people in this country over the past 20 or 30 years had, in the past migrated from
downtown areas, moved to suburbs, they were seeking open spaces in a way that kind of fueled
but it's become self-defeating in a way because there is now so much growth in the outside of the
cities and so much for all that the open space that people were seeking is getting gobbled up.
And so is the issue here acquiring more open space around the outside of cities or building
open space areas within existing urban areas? Well, it's both. It's both in a big way. It's urban
parks. It's renewing existing areas and it's purchasing new lands. And I want to mention Peter,
there's another important aspect of the livability agenda that was a separate proposal but part of
this package, if you will, which is the administration's lands legacy proposal, which is a billion
dollars to protect and acquire federal lands, open spaces and some of which would be channeled through
grants to states and local governments to similarly protect lands. And this is money that is
supposed to be being set aside for this purpose in any way revenue from OCS oil development.
Now that's been a program that's been ongoing for years. So again, the skeptics says what's
different about doing something that we've been doing forever? Well, I think it's been
dramatically underfunded for years and this is a proposal to set some of that money aside as
it's supposed to be. Now there may be some reason for skepticism and we should maybe come back
to how hard it's going to be to turn these programs into reality and to get them funded.
Well, get to that in a minute, but it raises, I think, a fascinating issue. You say the
program's been underfunded, but my understanding is that the money has been pouring in from the oil
and gas leases primarily in the Gulf that have been going on for years, but the Congress has never
allocated it to a solar water conservation fund for which it was intended. Is that what's been going
on? That is exactly what's been going on. This money has been coming into the federal treasury at
a substantial rate, but has not been getting appropriated or spent on the purposes for which
the fund was initially designed, which is to increase open space to protect the natural
legacy of this country, the public lands that we're going to be there not just for us, but for future
generations. And going back to transportation for a minute, Michael, what might we see in the
public transportation area that would be different or new or enhance what's going on out there now?
Well, there are a lot of different pieces to this that can help communities solve their
traffic problems and reduce air pollution that threatens public health. One of the components is
a new federal tax policy that was put in place last summer called commuter choice,
in which represents a large hidden tax cut that most working Americans aren't yet aware
that's available to them. Every American can today purchase transit benefits and vanpooling
benefits using pre-tax dollars, which will cut the cost of transit commuting for the average
worker on the order of 40 percent. How does that work? Basically any American can ask their employer
to allow them to have dollars withheld from their paycheck and use those dollars that are
withheld by transit passes or vanpool benefits. Or if those aren't available in their community,
the employer can give pre-tax cash dollars so employees can purchase access to vanpool program
benefits, setting up these kinds of systems. So what that means is if you're in a 20 or a 30 percent
or even 40 percent bracket, you don't pay the full amount because this comes out before you start
paying tax. That's right. Basically the government pays 20 to 30 percent of your commuting transportation
cost. Well, and it saves on both the federal and the state income taxes. So you know for the average
worker who faces maybe a 60 or 65 dollar a month cost of a transit pass, which is typical in many
cities and suburbs, that pass can be purchased using those pre-tax dollars, which cuts the effective
cost to the employee down to on the order of 35 dollars. So the employer can also offer those
transit passes and vanpool benefits for free to employees. And those are then non-taxable benefits
just like getting a parking space at work. And moreover employers for the first time can offer cash
in lieu of a parking space to employees. And this can be worth hundreds of dollars a year to
employees who could use the money that right now they can only get by taking advantage of a
free parking space by driving to work and clogging up the roads with traffic. Now if people want to get
into a carpool or ride a bike or use the bus to get to work, they can literally put hundreds of
dollars more in their pockets at the end of each pay period. Okay, let's talk politics for a minute.
These appropriations are part of the budget and they have to go through the Congress. And I've
noted some of the reaction to this, which I thought was kind of predictable. Columnus Joe Blast for
the Chicago Sun Times says that this agenda would and now I'm quoting,
destroy many of the freedoms we take for granted. Environmentalists are not known for placing much
value on property rights and liberties of humans. But why should the rest of us agree to such flawed
destructive plans? On the other side, writing for the rally news and observer, some officials at the
National Wildlife Federation say we are at the cusp of a rare opportunity to build a permanent
legacy that will benefit Americans for generations to come. So given the fact that political thinking
on this is by no means unified, what is going to be the fate of these proposals as the Congress
thinks about them and does their thing? Greg, what do you think? Well, I think I guess I would connect
the two issues. I think in fact that these proposals are very much in line with the thinking in
this country right now. There have been a raft of referendum across the country. If you look in
the last national election, there were some 240 different state local initiatives aimed at
reducing sprawl of protecting open spaces. More than 70% of those weren't active. Despite the fact,
many of them were measures that actually included tax increases to pay for open space acquisition.
So I think the public support is definitely there. And I have seen statements from across the
political spectrum recognizing that the vice president with a agenda is tapping into something very
real. In my mind, it's a very different issue whether or not we have a real opportunity to get
this enacted because I think some of these are going to be very difficult to be enacted despite the
fact that they're broadly popular. But you know, these battles don't they don't end in one year or
one Congress. So I don't think it's the end of the road. Mike, how do you see this one?
I would agree with Greg Wetstone's take on this that there's going to be some difficult
battles in the Congress over some of these things. But clearly smart growth strategies that
help us to manage how we develop our communities and how we manage traffic are gaining bipartisan
support at the state and the local level. There were 29 governors in their state of the state's
speeches who included themed supportive of smart growth this past year. The majority of those
were Republican governors. We have folks in both parties working at the local level to try and build
new consensus between business and environmental interests to help us give people better communities
with less traffic. The national home builders who traditionally have been opposed to anything that
looks like planning and the like came out in favor of a livability agenda. Does this indicate
some of the shifts that you guys have been talking about? I think it does. I mean, this is really
about quality of life to suggest as the columnist that you quoted did that somehow this is
contrary to personal freedom is I think antifetical to what this is about. This is about people
who want to have the option of living in a place where they don't have to deal with congestion
and pollution and crowding and sprawl and it's very much consistent with protecting quality of life
as so many environmental programs are and I think that's why this is popular. I think one of the things
that may be happening also is that people and I heard a recent report from Atlanta are finding that
this freedom to build whatever you want wherever you want is choking us and indeed Atlanta,
apparently the commutes are getting longer and longer and the areas getting worse and worse and
people are less and less happy about being there. I want to thank Michael Replogle from the
Environmental Defense Fund who has been with us and Greg Wetstone from the Natural Resources
Defense Council, both national nonprofit organizations both working on growth issues and thinking
about the passage of the proposed livability agenda which is now part of the administration budget
proposal. We know you have some thoughts about this so give us a call. Our number is 1-888-49
Green. We've been talking green and I'm Peter Burling.
If you go to our website you could listen to the Environment Show and you can also respond to
a questionnaire which we have there. The site is www.enn.com.com-env-showw. That's www.enn.com-env-show.
Special to us. For some it's a city street. For others it's deep in the wilderness.
For naturalist Don Ogden it's the hills of western Massachusetts where he views efforts to keep
the roads open a symptom of humankind's lack of regard for the natural world and its inhabitants.
In this portrait of place Ogden reads from his essay titled The Road We Travel.
Here in the hills of western Massachusetts I'm living my neighbors in the Somal River Valley.
The people who lived here before us, the Pecumta, called the narrow river of stone and water,
saw it upskit to us. Their familiarity with the river could be measured in the thousands of
years they spent by its banks knowing beyond our experience. Now as then those who dwell in this
eastern woodland community are certainly not all human. We humans share the ancient presence of
the river with the deer and beaver, the porcupine and fox, the blue heron, the hawk and the raven,
as well as myriad other life forms. I'm happy to note that the number of four legids has been
growing. The beaver and fox are returning as once tilled field, yield to woods. But to the south
over in the next valley the number of humans is increasing also. It is there that reforisted land
is cleared once more and houses on lots of a few acres are built, one after another.
At the confluence of a brook with amber-colored waters wandering down through Martian
Woodlands passing by one or two homes, the beaver has come to reclaim its home on the Sawadopski
Chooas. A family of lodged themselves by the confluence and changed the face of the river.
Where there was once a meander with a few small islands there is now a beaver pond.
Nearly every day that passes I watch the water pour over the beaver's dam and
course down the rivers channel whirling and braiding and further on reaching rocks and ledge where
endless trails and thread of some reflected liquid light stream over stone
turning the surface. I watch those waters as a gift but also with some trepidation.
I say this because the road boss is also eyeing the beaver pond with concern.
The waters of the pond are a mere five feet from the road bed and the road is a main
artery for people in these parts just as the river is a major artery for the wildlife.
The road boss was raised on the river's banks and no doubt knows it well. He may have a better
sense or love of a than eye but his job is to keep the roads open. Two years ago before trapping
was mostly outlawed in the state of Massachusetts. He felt obliged to have the last beaver family
removed. Apparently towns still have that option under certain circumstances. The present occupants
of the beaver lodge may be living under borrowed time. It's a disturbing situation.
These things happen often as our expanding automated society rubs up against a more sedate yet fluid
one which finds little value in long stretches of an asphalt which can easily spell disaster for them.
It is though just this class of cultures that leave us considering what we have done during our
stay here on earth. Every day people make little decisions which place our species
ahead of the needs of others. It is done so often we barely think about such actions anymore.
Until a relatively larger life form which happens not to be human sets foot upon the road we travel.
That was Don Ogden reading his essay The Road We Travel. Ogden is a naturalist who resides in
western Massachusetts.
Thanks for being with us and this week's Environment Show. I'm Peter Burlet.
Would you go to a meal of bushbeat and whale boober if there were lady slippers on the table?
This program number 493 can make you think about it. Call 1-800-323-9262. The Environment Show is a
national production which is solely responsible for its content. Alan Sharktalk is executive
producer, Steven Westcott is producer and the show is made possible by the W. Alton Jones Foundation,
the William Bingham Foundation, the Turner Foundation, the J. M. Kaplan Fund, and Heming's motor
news, the monthly Bible of the collector, Karhavi, www.hemmings.com. Be good to the earth and
join us next week for the Environment Show.
