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. Walton Jones Foundation,
the Bullet Foundation, and Heming's Motor news, the Bible of the Collector Carhavi,
1-800-C-A-R-H-E-R-E.
Your host is Peter Burley.
Thanks, Thomas.
Coming up on this week's Environment Show, attacks on outdoor goods like kents and binoculars,
some wanted to help pay for wildlife programs, others object strongly.
We'll hear it debate.
An Arctic Explorer talks about the challenges facing the polar regions, and U.S. Forest Service
Chief Jack Ward Thomas reflects on his tenure.
We eat a dinner where all the food comes from farms protected from developers, and we explore
the origins of organic pickles in Maine.
These stories and more coming up on this week's Environment Show.
About 50 years ago, an excise tax was placed on fishing and hunting gear.
The money, along with revenue from the sale of licenses, is used to fund many state conservation
programs.
But the numbers of hunters and fishers are dropping.
Meanwhile, activities like bird watching, hiking, and canoeing are rising dramatically.
Now a proposal to raise revenue from a new excise tax is taking shape.
The proposal is called teaming with wildlife.
John Shane is the senior fishing game biologist for the state of Alaska.
He calls it a user fee in the form of an excise tax on outdoor products like canoes, backpacks,
and photographic film.
What this will do is enable the people who are outdoor users or bird watchers or wildlife
feeders to pay a very small amount of money over the course of the year.
And then this money is allocated to the states where they can put this to work on the ground
to address state priorities.
If you look at what the average user might pay over the course of the year, it's likely
going to be between $5 or $10 a year or perhaps a little bit greater.
We think that that's a great investment for wildlife and outdoor recreation in the
United States.
But not everyone is happy with a proposal.
When Interior Secretary Bruce Babatt mentioned it, he received a hail of criticism from those
who said it was a new tax, a taboo in this election season.
We're joined by David Jenkins, Director of Conservation and Public Policy of the American
Canoe Association, and Dr. Doug Inckley with the National Wildlife Federation.
They lock horns over the question, should the teaming with wildlife program be implemented?
Dr. Jenkins.
We feel the teaming with wildlife initiative is a misguided effort that will do little
to solve our nation's natural resource and conservation funding yields.
The American Canoe Association opposes the plan.
At the heart of teaming with wildlife is an excise tax proposed on outdoor equipment,
such as canoes, kayaks, paddles, and so forth.
By focusing on these types of products, this new tax will narrowly target the outdoor
enthusiasts to buy such equipment.
However, the funds raised from this tax are not targeted specifically toward issues
that affect paddles or other outdoor enthusiasts, or more importantly toward the nation's most
pressing natural resource needs.
The money in still will go to state fishing game departments to fund a broad array of projects
that are aimed at the general public, such as the building and maintenance of nature centers,
education projects, and so forth.
So we're opposed to this plan on that basis.
We think that the funds could be spent.
All right, I'm afraid your time is up, but Dr. Enkley.
Well, thank you.
Obviously our position is different.
Teaming with wildlife is an excellent proposal that the National Wildlife Federation and
our millions of members endorse.
Our supporters are saying that they're more than willing to pay a small price increase
in outdoor recreational products.
If that money is in turn dedicated to fish and wildlife conservation and associated outdoor
recreation, this way the people who enjoy the outdoors, conservationists and recreationists,
will be the ones who most contribute to conservation.
The beauty of the Teaming with Wildlife program is that it's non-regulatory and it will help
conserve all wildlife.
Furthermore, it has broad citizens support, including 13 governors over 300 businesses
and over 1,000 conservation and other organizations.
Teaming with wildlife is what our country needs to move conservation into the 21st century.
Mr. Jenkins in reply.
Well, when considering an excise tax on outdoor equipment, where the money goes is a critical
part of that discussion.
For Teaming with Wildlife, the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and
a few other groups have determined where that money will go, not the folks that are bearing
the brunt of the tax.
With so many natural, critical natural resource funding problems facing us, it makes little
sense to trust the proceeds of such a tax with one agency at the state level.
Mr. Jenkins, the last word.
Well, the National Wildlife Federation has found that there is broad support for this.
When we explain it to people and they finally understand it, then we find support from both
Republicans and Democrats.
The program has already worked for Game Wildlife because Hunters and Anglers are paying a small
price increase already for conservation.
We're saying expanded and allow other people to pay for conservation as well.
Get involved, write your congressman and governor, and tell them to support conservation and
Teaming with wildlife.
Gentlemen, thank you both.
Thank you.
David Jenkins is Director of Conservation and Public Policy of the American Canoe Association.
Doug Inckley is on the staff of the National Wildlife Federation.
You're listening to the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burleigh.
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The Arctic and Antarctic regions of the Earth remain isolated and wondrous places.
In many areas, humans are scarce while animal populations roam.
But the polar regions are fragile and more susceptible to pollution than the temperate and tropical
parts of the globe.
Will Steeger is an educator and Arctic explorer from Ely, Minnesota.
Last year, two million schoolchildren kept in contact with them via the internet as he
traveled across the frozen Arctic Ocean by dog team.
This summer, Steeger plans to travel alone with just a canoe sled as he makes his way
to the North Pole from Canada.
He'll be bringing along his laptop computer, hoping to expand his audience through the National
Geographic webpage.
He says not everyone can experience the Arctic, but he hopes to give people a glimpse of what
it's like to be there.
The experience in the Arctic, it depends again on where you're at in the season and so
forth.
But let's take, for example, on the Arctic Ocean and the storm and the ice is moving and
breaking on your camp there along with 30 or 40 dogs.
In these situations, the Arctic or the Antarctic regions are quite humbling.
You see your fragility as a human being and that you're pretty much basically nothing
but a heartbeat and a little bit of warm blood, which could be extinguished very easily.
But at the other hand, you see your strengths as a person and maybe as a team of people
in terms of human spirit that you're able in these very harsh conditions to adapt,
to the flurition in many instances and it's a really wonderful experience.
But Steger and others are worried about the polar regions.
Threats from pollution, ozone depletion and global warming are dramatically altering
the area.
He says although these regions are thousands of miles from civilization, pollution has
become a serious problem.
The globe is like an organism that's interconnected.
So our actions influences the Arctic and likewise what happens in the Arctic will eventually
influence us.
A real simple example of that is what we call a transponderive pollution.
This is pollution that travels by either water or air currents.
And it works this way where you have the cold air now descending down to the United States
of course from the Arctic regions.
As that air heats up, it returns in the upper atmosphere and the upper winds and then
descends back into the Arctic ecosystem.
Right now there's a whole host of toxic contaminants from herbicides and pesticides,
PCBs and so forth that are in these air currents generally at the latitude of the United States.
These contaminants are broken down by the radiation from the sun.
However, the radiation of the sun in the polar regions is very slight compared to the
United States.
So these contaminants, toxic materials are not being broken down.
They are being mainline directly into the ecosystem.
This toxic contaminants are being concentrated as it goes up the food web and at the present
rate the polar bears in about ten years will be classified as toxic waste.
Steeger says we have the technology to reduce and even end the pollution but we like the
political will.
He will begin his next trip this coming summer.
You're listening to the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burley.
Still ahead, the Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, Jack Ward Thomas speaks about the future
of his agency and his tenure as chief.
A special dinner where all the food comes from farms protected from developers and we
explore the origins of organic pickles in Maine.
These stories still ahead on the Environment Show.
Jack Ward Thomas has announced that he will retire as chief of the United States Forest
Service.
In that capacity he has managed our national forests which include 284 units and 231 million
acres across the country.
He was appointed by President Clinton in 1993 shortly after the forest summit in Portland
Oregon began a process which was supposed to work out conflicts over logging and protection
of the northern spotted owl.
Previously he had done research in the Northwestern forests.
For years the Forest Service has been an embattled agency.
Environmentalist charge that has been the servant of the timber companies, making and selling
below cost timber that should be left standing to protect the ecosystems water quality, fish
and wildlife.
Lawsuits have abounded.
Many have criticized the Forest Service for selling excessive amounts of timber.
But the service points out that the actual cut level is fixed not by itself but by active
Congress.
The service has been buffeted by pressures from the timber dependent communities, the environmentalists,
and new attitudes about the importance of preserving biodiversity and achieving sustainability.
The latter concerns were not on anybody's radar scope when the Forest Service was originally
established.
Changing perspectives have led to controversy within the service itself.
Some foresters see their job as cutting out the cut and meeting the demand for wood.
In the younger group want to focus on ecosystem protection.
An organization called PIR, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, headed by
a former Forest Service employee, boasts a great many service employees in its membership.
It's an active critic of the service, and PIR has challenged a number of the agency's
actions which it claims are ecologically unsound and overly supportive of the timber companies.
Thomas's appointment was heralded by the environmental community.
It was felt that with his background as a biologist he would increase the service's sensitivity
to the protection of ecosystems.
While the environmental community gives him credit, some charge he didn't go far enough.
In a conversation with Jack Ward Thomas, he reviewed his accomplishments as chief, which
included reducing the timber cut on our national forest by half and protecting public ownership
of the forests as well.
I'm proud that we've made a considerable number of now.
Changing the Forest Service, we've begun to shift gears to deal with the obvious changing
demographics and desires of the American people in terms of their public land management.
We hope our timber programs are better, but they are smaller.
Rather significantly, they were an 8-10 billion-board foot range, and now in the 4 billion-board
foot range, we could probably do more than that and still be sustainable.
But some of those questions or questions of aesthetics are of competing uses for the
land.
I am also proud that two years ago we started into an intense questioning of whether or
not the Forest Service land should be turned over to other people for management or even
disposed of into the private sector.
I adamantly oppose that, both in terms of being chief of the Forest Service and personally.
And I now think that that is not to occur at least in the near term.
Thomas also says that the Forest Service needs to complete its conversion from a fire suppression
agency to a fire management agency, as fires continually recur, and as fire is now recognized
as an important part of the ecology of many Forest systems.
Fire was also responsible for his most discouraging moments as chief.
The thing that I felt the lowest about was in the fire season of 1994 when the phone rang
in my house at 1130 at night and told me I had lost 14 firefighters in one fire.
And before that year was over, that we had lost 30.
That set us off on a whole new examination of fire policy, more and more emphasis on safety
and so far this year.
Keeping my fingers crossed, they are still fighting fire in California, but so far this year we have
probably the most extensive fire season in our history and we have not had any fatalities.
Thomas says the most difficult thing about his job is that the Forest Service has been
given numerous and frequently conflicting mandates by Congress and agencies have overlapping
responsibilities.
Threading your way through the maze is not easy.
In closing, I asked him what he planned to say to his successor.
I think my advice is going to be good luck, I'm going to have an outcome.
Jack Ward Thomas is the outgoing chief of the United States Forest Service.
Typically the food at conventions is tasteless and institutional.
Powdered mashed potatoes, soggy canned vegetables are trucked in from thousands of miles away.
But when the Land Trust Alliance held its annual convention they knew they had to do something
different.
It's their mission to preserve land like forests and farms.
This year all their food came from the farms they helped make safe from development.
It was the first time something like this had been tried and Environment Show producer
Thomas Lally ate his way through it.
When you have dinner with 1200 people you don't expect much from the food, especially
when it's at a convention.
But the Land Trust Alliance wants to stand out, so tonight they're serving salad with
an apple chutney, turkey with stuffing, and red potatoes topped off with pumpkin
cheesecake for dessert.
What makes it special is that all the food comes from farms preserved by environmental groups
called land trusts.
Land trusts by development rights from landowners like farmers.
This means farmers legally promise to keep their land farms and not sell them off for development.
Paul Stone is the farmer who raised the turkeys for tonight's dinner.
He says he preserve his land because he always wanted his land to be a farm.
I believe very strongly in the purposes of the Land Trust and the conservation that they
accomplish.
There are very few ways to really conserve good ag lands.
What I find in development rights is the fairest way both for taxpayers and for the land
owners because the land owner gets a fair price for selling the development rights.
The taxpayers are rewarded with beautiful open spaces with economically active farms, so
everybody benefits.
Stone says the land trust came through at a time when his farm was deeply in debt.
Several years ago he and his wife switched from a dairy farm to raising turkeys.
It cost them a lot of money, but selling the development rights helped pay some of the debt
while preserving the land.
Now no matter who owns the land, it will always remain undeveloped.
But will it always remain a farm?
That's what concerns Jeff Roberts with the Vermont Land Trust.
He says he wants the folks tonight to literally eat the fruits of their labors.
The hope is that tonight's meal will be the beginning of a long-term relationship between
preserved farms and markets where they can sell their goods.
The land trust alliance has never organized a banquet like this using foods and others
from other states where they've held the annual meeting.
So this was also an opportunity for them to try something new.
We're excited about where we think that this will go for the hotel as it turns out one
of our producers, Paul and Francis Stone, may in fact have an opportunity to develop
an ongoing relationship with the hotel.
And I think the product is that number one, we've been able to serve a dinner that was
in a budget.
They could do it.
It was a cost-effective way for them to do it.
But they were able to put food on the table that is locally produced, that helps to support
Vermont agriculture.
We've all become so used to bland processed institutional food that fresh organic food
tastes unusual.
Here behind the scenes in the kitchen, the reasons are obvious.
Institution like hotels, schools and restaurants need constant and large supplies of food of a
reliable quality.
And that usually is too much to ask from a small farm who aren't used to providing food
for giant dinners like this one.
Bruce Kirkke is the executive banquet chef for the Sheridan Hotel in Burlington, Vermont.
He says it was a refreshing change to work with local produce.
It's always nice to be able to get something fresh out of the fields from Vermont rather
than waiting for it to cure on a truck coming from California.
And of course, the turkey always has a little better flavor from right down the street.
We've also started using local bakeries.
The breadsmith was one of the bakeries we were using tonight for the bread for the meal.
And it's just nice to keep it in the family, sort of speaking.
Kirkke says the Sheridan like the food so much they're working to keep the relationship
between them and local farms going.
But how much good does an event like this do?
Sure the food was good.
I even broke my six year run as a vegetarian and ate some turkey.
We all had a good time, the farmers got business and the hotel mates and friends.
As the dinner guests moseyed out of the hall, he notes speaker Bill McKibben says small
events like this one eventually add up.
It doesn't seem like much.
You save 500 acres of something here and a thousand acres of something there.
And in the context of all the destruction that's underway, that might not seem like that
much.
But what you're saving is possibility.
What you're saving are chances.
You're saving places where some semblance of our present biology can be safe.
And be preserved for the day which will come eventually when we finally get ready to
and we finally get tired of what we've made it look like.
For the environment show, I'm Thomas Lally.
And now it's time for the Earth calendar.
As part of our series on the American harvest, last month we went to Corn and soybean farm
in the Midwest where the combines were running and the grain was pouring in.
The arrival of futures prices on the computer was as certain as the oncoming frost.
Now we celebrate harvest in the state of Maine as produced on the Darthea Organic Farm
found to 20 years ago by Cindy Athea and her husband Bill.
Bill is collecting brush in the woods to make Christmas trees to sell in the farm's
store.
The leaves are gone.
The land is getting cold and the harvest of organic fruits and vegetables which has been
going on all summer has come to an end.
The harvest is now in its second phase, packing and shipping for the mail order business.
We run the mail order business from about now until the middle of December.
And we grow and make everything in the catalog right here on the farm with the exception of
the blueberries that we buy from an ex-apprentice who lives down the road.
But all summer we're canning things as they come in and putting them away for the mail
order.
And now we'll be starting to ship in a couple of weeks and that's what we do in the fall.
Here's farm harvest is a little bit of everything from basil and garlic to beets and raspberries.
However she says the farm's major thrust is value added business meaning that much of
the harvest is made into products like vinegars, jams, pickles and salsa.
Well you have to like it because it's a lot of work and I guess that's why we do it.
I like it and it ensures that we get the extra money not the person who does the processing.
So if we were selling for instance to a plant that was making jams they would be making
a lot of money that we could be making right here.
On the fair farm with its diversified production something whether it be vegetables or firewood
is being harvested in almost every month.
What's next?
You guessed it.
It's free-range turkeys for Thanksgiving that quit essential American harvest festival
in which we celebrate by gobbling the gobbler.
Thanks for being with us on this week's Environment Show.
I'm Peter Burley.
For cassette copy of the program called 1-800-323-9262 and asked for program number 358.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions which is solely responsible
for its contents.
Dr. Ellen Shartug is the executive producer, Thomas Lally is producer and Stephanie Goytsman
is the associate producer.
The Environment Show is made possible by the W. Alton Jones Foundation, the Bullet Foundation
and Heming's Motor News, the monthly Bible of the old car hobby 1-800-CAR-HER.
So long and join us next week for the Environment Show.
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