Friday, 07 Sep 2001

The Promised Land Managers

In a victory for environmentalists, Israel's Supreme Court ruled last week that the Jewish National Fund, well known around the world for its tree-planting efforts in Israel, must now submit its forestry plans for public review. The ruling came on a petition filed by the Israel Union for Environmental Defense. The enviro group charged that the fund has managed forested public lands as if they were private holdings, damaged native landscapes, and, at times, threatened water resources by using pesticides, bulldozers, and controlled burns to clear lands. The group also claimed that the fund's policy of planting mostly single-species forests has left the trees vulnerable to disease and fire. Yehiel Leket, the fund's chair, rejected the accusations. He noted that the court did not rule on the fund's forestry practices, but only required that the fund make its plans public.

Nay-bors

Do your neighbors raise their eyebrows because the car parked next door gets lousy gas mileage? Has anyone ever called the town hall because the family across the street buys food grown on farms that pollute the Mississippi River? Well, why not?, asks Elizabeth Sawin in Grist. We give each other permission to criticize how we take care of our lawns, but not how we take care of the living systems that sustain us. Sawin argues from experience that neighbors can help each other to make choices that take the wider world into consideration. Read more on the Grist Magazine website.

Please Don't Feed the Sharks

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission gave preliminary approval yesterday to a ban on shark-feeding dives. The ban would cover "interactive" shark tours that use cut-up fish bait to lure sharks so that tourists can swim with them. Final approval of the ban could come as soon as November. The commissioners stressed that they didn't think the feeding operations had anything to do with the recent flurry of shark attacks on humans along the Atlantic coast. But several expressed concern that feeding the sharks could condition them to associate humans with food. Enviros celebrated the vote, while tour operators said the commission had betrayed them.

Let the Ban Roll On

Democrats in the U.S. Congress and environmentalists pressed the Bush administration yesterday to uphold the policy approved by former President Clinton to ban road-building and logging on a third of the country's national forests. They say that more than 2 million Americans have told the government they favor the ban, a record number of comments regarding a federal rule. The Bush administration disapproves of the ban and has been struggling to find a way to alter it since taking office. President Bush reopened a public-comment period on the ban in July; that period ends on Monday. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said, "We're here to urge [Bush] to turn a deaf ear to the siren song of special interests and to follow the will of the American people."

Old Mcdonald Had a Dead Salmon

A highly contagious disease that can be fatal to Atlantic salmon but is harmless to humans has spread to Maine, threatening endangered wild salmon and taking a bite out of fish farmers' wallets. So far this year, fish farmers in Maine have been forced to kill more than 700,000 salmon worth some $11 million in an attempt to stop the spread of infectious salmon anemia. Federal officials worry that the disease may jump to wild salmon if infected farm-raised fish escape their pens. In recent years, fish farmers in Europe and Canada have destroyed millions of fish to try to stop the spread of the disease. Fish-farming already isn't a favorite with environmentalists, who fear that farm fish, including genetically engineered varieties, may someday breed with wild salmon.