Alan Gregory’s Conservation News

Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection, often derided as the Department of Economic Promotion, has gotten a spine on at least one issue recently, the poisoning of several high-quality trout streams. Thirty-one cars being towed behind Norfolk Southern engines derailed in McKean County in the western half of the state June 30. Among the streams that were killed when sodium hydroxide spilled from tank cars is Sinnemahoning-Portage Creek.

Norfolk Southern says it will appeal the $8.9 million penalty DEP intends to seek. We’ll see how this all pans out. But clearly there was negligence. It’s bad enough that thousands of miles of streams across the state are dead due to acid mine drainage. Many more, principally in the big urban areas of Philly and Pittsburgh, were killed by other pollutants, especially those associated with drastic conversion of the natural landscape.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports on what happened when the train derailed.

Pennsylvania’s “environmental protection” agency has a long and sordid history of caving to politicians and corporate interests.

Interstate 99 was extended over Bald Eagle Mountain near State College, whacking in half one of the biggest unfragmented hardwood forests left standing in the state. It was DEP that gave state roadbuilders the wetland destruction permits. And the regulators acted when former U.S. Rep. Bud Shuster and his son (and replacement in the House) U.S. Rep. “Bill” Shuster rolled out the big guns.

And it was DEP that caved to business interests in Altoona when a developer sought permits to bulldoze 500 acres of forest on Brush Mountain, Blair County, in order to build a shopping mall. DEP Secretary Kathleen McGinty called it a “win-win” deal in which business interests were balanced against those of Wild Nature. Where have we heard that language before?

New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation has released the draft of its new plan for snowmobiling on public land within the Adirondack Park. It’s a mixed bag. Some dead-end trails will be closed, but the plan opens the door in the long term to more and longer trails. Among the provisions: widening of DEC-designated trails on “Forest Preserve” land to 9 feet, one more than is currently allowed but not the 12 feet that snowmobilers and their umbrella group wanted.

For some odd reason, the Adirondack Park Agency, arguably the only thing standing between preservation and unchecked development within the 6-million-acre park (about half of that is public “Forest Preserve” land), won’t review the plan.

The chicken Adirondack Council (it strangely supported Bush’s “Clear Skies” plan back in W.’s first term despite the fact that it would have done nothing to rid the park of the acid precipitation that’s killed hundreds of waterways) is on the right side of this issue. So is the Association for Protection of the Adirondacks.

The Albany Times-Union reports on the controversy. In a nutshell, the plan would set in motion a downward spiral toward more motorized recreation at the expense of traditional Adirondack values of solitude, healthy wildlife habitat and preservation.

No one ever confronts this question. At least not in public. There is always plenty of happy talk to go around: open space preservation plans, greenways, “sustainable growth” (what ever that is), conservation zoning, etc. The end result, though, is almost always the same. More wildlife habitat is lost, fragmented, degraded or otherwise spoiled.

In Oregon, folks are asking that tough question and confronting the cold fact that too much “growth” has already taken place.

Among the people who’re raising the question - in very public fashion - is one Andy Kerr. Kerr, a former executive director of the Oregon Natural Resources Council and owner and sole proprietor of The Larch Company, a conservation consulting outfit, has been writing about this question for years. Grass roots conservationists across the country would do well for their local wildlands by taking this question to their local governments.

Among Andy’s well thought-out papers on this topic is here.

Wilderness has entered the public discussion in Vermont as citizens there decide who they want as their next governor. Incumbent Jim Douglas killed legislation that would have designated 42,000 additional acres of the Green Mountain National Forest as wilderness. And that figure was reached after months of discussion and compromise, with all three members of the state’s congressional delegation signing on. Such support is an unspoken requirement for any wilderness legislation.

Douglas killed it by dispatching a letter to Richard Pombo, the anti-conservationist head of the House Resources Committee. Douglas said he was only questioning some of the bill’s language, but that letter alone was all it took to scuttle the legislation in the waning days of the pre-election congressional session.

The Rutland Herald reports on how the issue has made it into the forefront of the gubernatorial campaign.

Folks who’ve been following the behind-closed-door actions of Bush’s Interior Department for the last six years know by now that all is not as the department’s public affairs team says it is.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a plucky little pro-conservation outfit, spells out - again - what has become of “scientific integrity” in the department: “The proposed new U.S. Interior Department ‘Strategic Plan’ touts scientific integrity as one of its cornerstones even while its managers continue to manipulate technical data and findings for political reasons.”

There may be “junk science” floating around Interior’s headquarters building, but the political appointees have no place for real science.

Congressman Richard Pombo, R-Bombast, is the chief anti-conservationist in the House. And like all the others, Demos and Repubs alike, he’s up for re-election Nov. 7. His challenger is a fella named Jerry McNerney. Check Jerry’s home here. Conservationists who want Pombo to go (who the hell doesn’t?) can contribute to Jerry McNerney’s candidacy here.

Besides, any elected official the Safari Club International folks support deserves to be booted out.

An Associated Press report today indicates that the Corps of Engineers still hasn’t learned the lesson it most certainly should have after the Katrina debacle. Wetlands buffer storms.

The Corps’ response to this simple fact on the Gulf Coast is to make it easier for developers to fill small (under 5 acres or so) wetlands.

Yes there are plenty of places to build homes on the Gulf Coast without having to fill wetlands. But the Corps would rather cater to the Homebuilders Association and local politicians than do the right thing.

In order to truly understand today’s conservation trends and strategies one first has to understand all the underlying waves and rocks and worms and snakes. You get there by reading. And no one knows better what the top conservation books are today than the veteran conservationist Dave Foreman. Dave used to run a mail order biz called “Books of the Big Outside.” That was more than a decade ago. But Foreman, a founder of the Rewilding Institute that’s based in New Mexico, has updated his reading list. Just reading the list itself is a pleasure. OK, I know Lewis Mumford is not for everybody, but Aldo Leopold sure as hell is. And so is Ed Abbey.

A great idea for educating the great, naive public. Wolves not only reside in the northern Rockies but also in Minnesota and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. This Associated Press brief spells it out - and notes that there is not one documented wolf attack on a human in the lower 48 states.

Read how the U.S. Forest Service reacted when two of its employees in the field reported hearing and seeing wolves. Now I have no idea of how I would have reacted had I been in the same spot. But I know this: I’d sure like to hear and - especially - see a real, live wild wolf.

And for a second, albeit briefer, editorial look at the “rescue” by helicopter, check this out.