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, and the
David and Lucille Packard Foundation for coverage of ocean science and fisheries issues.
Our 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, a budget is passed in Washington and the
major environmental programs earmarked for extinction were not repealed.
We'll ask the pollsters about what this means for the November elections.
Then we'll hear a debate over the 1872 mining law that costs the taxpayers millions of
dollars a year and yet after all the cost-cutting rhetoric still remains.
We'll find out about one man's fight to create ocean sanctuaries in New Zealand and in our
Rift Calendar, we spread seeds in the West African rainforest.
These stories and work coming up this week on the Environment Show.
In the federal budget finally passed, almost seven months into the fiscal year, many of
the most severe anti-environmental riders that had been attached during the months of
wrangling in the Congress were deleted.
Others remained attached to the budget, but the president was granted powers to waive
them, a kind of line item veto.
Peter Kelly, communications director for the Environmental Information Center in Washington
DC, describes the riders that came out.
The good news is they've decided to stop the so-called salvage logging of our national
forests, which is a very destructive practice that has resulted in a lot of clear cutting
of trees up to a thousand years old.
They're also going to let EPA protect wetlands, which are valuable for waterfowl and flood
control, and because they screen out a lot of pollution.
In addition, President Clinton is being asked to pull off the moratorium on listing any
more plants and animals as endangered so that we can go ahead and protect species that
face extinction.
Unfortunately, there are several pieces of these anti-environmental riders that remain
in the budget.
One of them, for instance, would suspend the Energy Efficiency Program for household
appliances that have saved the average homeowner $1,300 a year.
And so it's clear that we're going to have more of these anti-environmental riders in
the future.
We're going to have to watch for them on the 1997 budget, which is now up for negotiation.
Provisiones which the President can waive or not enforce include riders that provide
for more logging in the Tongus National Forest in Alaska and allow more off-road vehicles
in the Mojave Desert in California.
What seems to have happened was that during the months the budget was being negotiated,
political support for environmental protection increased, and the Republican Congressional
majority, which put the anti-environmental riders in the budget of a first place, softened
their stance.
Selinda Lake, a Democratic pollster in Washington, thinks the Republicans misjudged the strength
of the environmental issue in the beginning.
Well, I think the Republicans were actually very surprised at the clout of the environmental
issue.
And I think it's a good warning for what one will see in the fall of 1996.
The Republicans looked at numbers that said, for example, 2 and 3 percent of the voters
said that the environment was the most important problem facing the country and thought that
meant that voters didn't care about what happened to the environment and it couldn't be farther
from the truth.
In fact, what we found is that the environment ends up being a very powerful way to illustrate
Canada's character, a powerful way to talk about the connection in voters' minds, the
bad connection between money and politics, and it also the vivid way to illustrate politics
as usual and the out-of-touch politics that would turn back the consensus on the environment.
Voters say only 2 to 3 percent say that they're concerned about it because they believe
there's a national consensus that it's headed in the right direction and that everyone agrees
with them on this.
So they are very angry when they find out that politicians would have moved to undermine
environmental protection.
What will you be looking for as you're polling between now and the election day as it relates
to the environment?
Well, what we found in our current polling is that, first of all, that the environment's
a very strong issue, particularly in suburban districts, in places like Raleigh Durham and
the Minnesota districts, et cetera.
So we'll be looking to see if that holds up.
There are also several groups of Republican-leaning women who are defecting in quite large numbers,
professional women, suburban women, college-educated women, and in fact a quarter of Republican women
voted against Gordon Smith in the Oregon Special Election.
Environment was one of three factors in that, abortion and Medicare being the other two
factors.
So we'll be looking to see if that can continue the net ability to really mobilize part
of the gender gap around the environment still exists.
And finally, we found that voters are very angry about politics as usual.
They're very angry about the way politics is conducted in Washington.
They're angry about the role of special interest money in politics.
And the environment ends up being, right now, one of the most vivid ways and believable
ways to voters of illustrating that, and we'll be looking to see if it continues to have
that power.
The environment as a political issue tends to rise and fall.
Do you think that the intensity of interest will continue throughout the year now?
Yes, and probably increase, because one of the reasons that rises and falls is that voters
think that the environment is in pretty good shape, and they think that there's a national
commitment to keeping it that way.
And so they're always surprised when it's a political issue because it's one of the
few things they think they've kind of taken care of.
They've passed good laws.
They have an EPA to enforce them.
They recycle themselves.
And certainly there can be problems, but they think in general this is one of the few things
in good shape.
And it's one of the things that makes them very angry when they find out that someone's
trying to undermine that, because voters believe right now that America is not short of
problems, and so they don't want more problems put on the table.
If nothing else, the budget fight and the now eliminated environmental writers has convinced
both parties that the public does indeed expect a clean environment, and that massive rollback
of environmental laws is not a politically viable concept.
I'm Peter Burley.
We're listening to the Environment Show.
Reaches by email at ENVSHOWW at AOL.com.
That's ENVSHOWW at AOL.com.
And now it's time for Locking Horns, an Environment Show debate.
We hear a great deal of talk about balancing the federal budget from the President and
the Congress, but some laws which environmentalists say damage both the economy and the environment
seem to live forever.
One example is the general mining law of 1872.
It allows companies to mine on public lands without paying royalties to the federal treasury.
Environmentalists say the law creates false incentives for miners in hinders sound land
management.
They want miners to pay what similar industries like oil and gas do.
Miners say they provide jobs and taxes.
Miner Alarillo is the staff scientist at the United States Public Interest Research Group,
a citizen and consumer organization.
And Jack Gerard is with the Miner Resources Alliance, a coalition of mining and other interests.
They lock horns over the question, should the mining industry pay a gross royalty return
on extraction on public lands similar to what oil and gas drillers pay now?
Mr. Zerillo.
The mining law of 1872 is the granddaddy of all polluter port programs.
It hurts our pocketbooks in the environment.
Under this law, the mining industry gets the gold and taxpayers get the shaft.
The U.S. Public Interest Research Group and many other environmental and taxpayer groups
want comprehensive reform of this law.
We taxpayers deserve a fair return on the billions of dollars of publicly owned gold, silver,
and other mineral assets extracted by the mining industry every year.
U.S. Perg believes that the mining industry should pay a gross royalty to give a fair return
to our assets.
A royalty such as that passed overwhelmingly by the House in 1994 would generate over
$200 million per year.
It's ridiculous that at a time when the federal government has actually been shut down
over how to balance the federal budget, we're giving away our gold, silver, and other minerals
to large multinational corporations such as Chevron.
Mr. Zerillo.
And a reply.
The mining industry is prepared to pay fair value for the minerals they extract from the
public lands just like the oil and gas industry pays today.
The mining industry worked very hard in the last session of Congress to pass legislation
that was supported by a bipartisan group of members, both Democrats and Republicans,
as part of the balance budget bill, which would have required miners to pay for the land,
to pay royalties on the minerals they extract, and it would have established a fund to clean
up environmental or environmentally sensitive areas of old historic minesites.
Unfortunately, President Clinton vetoed the bill, which would have raised $157 million
and required miners to pay just like the oil and gas producers pay on public lands today.
Mr. Zerillo, in reply.
Actually, that number is fairly bogus.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the loophole's an exemption in this royalty
would actually generate about 1.7 million in royalties to the federal treasury.
Our recent PAC report shows that this is about half of what the mining industry pays every
year in political campaign contribution.
Again, it's outrageous that the federal government is flashing programs that we all care about,
and the best the mining industry can do is about half of what they pay in political campaign
contributions every year.
Mr. Zerillo, the last word.
We think her statements are not only outrageous, but are unfounded and untrue.
The General Accounting Office at the request of one of industry's biggest critics on Capitol Hill
produced a report which demonstrates that very little production comes from public lands
and the $157 million that was passed as part of the balance budget bill that would be
required by miners to pay is a very significant impact on their operations.
We believe our critics have a cleverly disguised campaign to stop mining on the public lands
and to try to punish the industry because they believe it's taken too long to reform this
law.
Thank you both.
We've been joined by Anna O'Reilly-El, a scientist from the U.S. Public Interest Research
Group, and Jack Gerard, a representative of mineral resources alliance.
Thank you both.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm Peter Burley, and you're listening to the Environment Show.
Still ahead.
We hear about one man's fight to create ocean sanctuaries in New Zealand, and in our
Earth calendar we spread seeds in the West African Rainforest.
These stories still ahead on the Environment Show.
While 71% of the Earth's surface is covered by oceans, marine biologists build Valentine,
Professor at the University of Auckland's Marine Laboratory on the Northeast Coast of New
Zealand, says our whole way of thinking about preserving oceans is wrong.
He was in the United States last week to receive a Golden Environmental Prize, a $75,000
award-mage each year, to the outstanding citizen environmentalists of each of the five
continents and the island nations.
Through Valentine's advocacy, New Zealand has established 13 no-take marine reserves, where
no fishing, extraction, construction, or discharge of any kind is allowed.
More are being established each year.
In thinking about criteria for establishing reserves, Valentine's think's conventional
thinking needs to be reversed.
Well, most people talk a lot about selection procedures and just how you work out which
bits need protection, but in point of fact it's both more sensible and easier to do.
To come at it from the other angle, if it exists in the sea, if there's a habitat like
that, wouldn't we like to know what it would be like in completely natural terms?
In other words, if you have a mangrove swamp or a coral reef or a piece of level mud bottom,
wouldn't you know what want to know what it was like when it was full of life, not just
minus the bits that people could sell or eat or kill for amusement?
Valentine has found it is not been easy to get people to accept the idea of the marine reserve.
It took 12 years of citizen advocacy to establish the first one.
Looking back on it, however, it's surprising how long it took us to see the obvious, because
now we can say that it's really the other way up.
There is no advantage in fishing all the sea.
There's no theory that says it's a good idea.
There's no economic or social or scientific advantage.
It's just a bad habit we've mostly got into.
If you are starting again, you would of course have some places that you just left alone
so that you knew what you were doing.
Thinking globally, Valentine says we need to establish marine reserves to protect 10% of everything.
That's 10% of every marine habitat in every region.
He also says reserves must be scattered, not in single blocks.
It makes sense purely from fisheries purposes to have these refuges and that we need a
network of them, because fish breeding almost always involves a larval dispersal.
You don't know where the larvae go.
They drift off in the plankton.
Marine reserves are not like land reserves where you need single, very large ones for the
best case in the sea once you need it as a network.
The only things on land that really breed and disperse like most marine organisms are
things like fissiles.
Every farmer knows that if he's cleared all the fissiles from his land, he's still in trouble
if his neighbors have patches.
Well, that's a pest, so what becomes a worry on fissile control on land is a benefit if
you're talking about marine reserves in the sea.
Professor Ballantine calls for a reorientation in the way we think.
I think the problem here is that people have mostly got it upside down.
They feel that we need reasons to have particular reasons to have marine reserves, but I think
it's actually the other way up.
You would need very special, un-scientific reasons not to.
In farming, if you provide stud farms and seat banks to farmers, you are not thought of
as actually harming them, you're clearly a benefit.
We've sort of calmed ourselves into feeling that fishing should go on until there's a problem.
In closing our conversation, Professor Ballantine reminded me that coming from a small remote
country is an advantage if you're going to have new ideas.
There is the point that radical new ideas stand a better chance of getting going in small
remote areas.
New Zealand has exported ideas before 1893.
They gave votes to women.
Professor Ballantine is a 1996 Goldman Prize winner from New Zealand.
I'm Peter Burling.
You're listening to the Environment Show.
You can write us at 318 Central Avenue, Albany, New York 1-2-2-06.
And now it's time for the Earth calendar.
West African Horn Bills are mysterious creatures.
To begin with, they live in an area few scientists have investigated.
The West African rainforest.
They're also different from their cousins around the world.
Thomas Smith is a biology professor at San Francisco State University.
He'll be going back to West Africa this month and says he's excited to see what the horn
bills are doing.
But the horn bill schedule isn't the only thing baffling scientists.
Smith says horn bills nest in a unique way.
Couples build nest out of mud and other materials high in the trees.
But the nest is more like a cavity.
Horn bills nest in cavities and what the female and male will do.
The female will enter the cavity and the male and female will work together in sealing
the female in the cavity.
So exposing just a small slit that she can sticker her bill through.
The male will then feed the female.
The female will lay her egg and hatch an egg.
But depending on the size of the horn bill may spend three to four months incubating and
raising the young inside this wall in cavity.
The young are fully feathered.
The female will break out of the cavity, break the mud wall and fledge.
But it's a unique behavioral characteristic of horn bills.
And it probably, although we don't know for sure, it probably evolved as a way of both
deterring competitors for nest sites.
It's a way of defending your hole against other birds that might like to nest there.
And also it probably also functions to reduce predation, primate species and other predatory
birds may actually be deterred by this.
Horn bills play a crucial role in the regeneration of the rainforest.
West Africa suffers from the same sort of environmental degradation affecting other
rainforests, deforestation, human encroachment and the plundering of animals and resources.
Smith says horn bills are just one part of his research.
I've been interested in the processes that maintain rainforest structure and function.
And rainforests in West African, particularly, have been experiencing significant losses.
About 10% of West African rainforests have been lost in the last 10 years.
And well, there's a considerable interest, obviously, in concern about the loss of biodiversity.
Much of it is focused on identifying areas of high species richness.
So in other words, trying to design preserves and so forth where most species reside.
This is very important work, but there is another component of conservation that's also very important.
And that is that we understand the processes that maintain and produce biodiversity.
And so the work that we've been focusing on is trying to understand how ecological processes
come together to maintain and generate biodiversity.
And this specifically led to our interest in the role of these large forest horn bills
in dispersing seeds of major rainforest trees.
Horn bills fly great distances and spread seeds throughout the rainforest.
They also fly over areas where the forest has been cut down.
Seeds can't get to these places unless animals carry them there.
And because of their range and the types of fruits they eat, horn bills are perfect for the job.
As Miss says, the horn bills are just one part of the mysterious process of how to bring back a forest once it's been destroyed.
So if your car gets hit by a horn bill dropping, just consider it a crucial part of forest regeneration.
For the Environment Show, I'm Thomas Lalley.
Thanks for being with us on this week's Environment Show.
I'm Peter Burling.
We're going to set a copy of the program called 1-800-323-9262 and ask for program number 331.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions which is solely responsible for its content.
Thomas Lalley is the producer and Dr. Alan Shartog is the executive producer.
The Environment Show is made possible by Hemings Motor News, the monthly Bible of the Old Car Hobby, 1-800-C-A-R-H-E-R-E.
And the David and Lucille Packard Foundation for coverage of ocean science and fisheries issues.
So long and join us next week for the Environment Show.
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