Saving Fish and Jobs

Saving fish and Jobs

In September, conservationists applauded as the U.S. Congress passed the Sustainable Fisheries Act (S. 39), which amends and reauthorizes the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976. (See “The World’s Fisheries: A State of Emergency,” July/August and September/October 1996). The bill limits catch numbers in federal waters, and ties allowable fish harvests to levels which will maintain productivity.

“This bill will help the environment and the thousands of jobs and scores of fishing communities dependant on healthy marine fish stocks,” says Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) marine ecologist Dr. Rod Fujita. “It also contains strong measures to reduce the terrible waste of fish and other marine life caught unintentionally.”

-Tracy C. Rembert

Globe Still Warming

For some curious reason, people in the pay of polluting industries want the world to believe that burning fossil fuels has no effect on changes in the global climate (see “Some Like it Hot,” cover story, January/February 1996).

The industry-sponsored Global Climate Coalition (GCC), for instance, has long wanted to derail the special 1995 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a distinguished panel of over 2,000 international scientists who reached the definite conclusion that global warming is both real and manmade.

GCC cried “foul” after it was released that one of America’s most distinguished climatologists Dr. Benjamin Santer of Lawrence Livermore Labs, had made some minor changes to the IPCC text – changes that did nothing to change its basic conclusions. GCC’s efforts seem to be backfiring, however. The criticism “has actually rallied a lot of serious scientists around him,” says Dr. John Michell, a British climatologist.

Further physical and biological evidence that global warming is real comes from a panel of six scientists convened by the Washington-based Ozone Action last June. They reported, according to the group, “that glaciers are retreating, mountain plants are moving upward and insect-borne infectious diseases are climbing to higher elevations in Latin America, Central Africa and Asia.”

-Amy Shellenberger

‘More Precious Than Gold’

Whether or not it was a political move aimed to boost his voting ratings, President Clinton’s decision in August 1996 to halt a proposed mine two miles outside Yellowstone National Park came as a welcome relief (See “Danger at Yellowstone Gold Mining Threatens America’s Oldest Park,” feature story sidebar, March/April 1996).

“Yellowstone is more precious than gold,” said President Clinton during his announcement that Crown Butte Mines, a subsidiary of the land owners, Noranda Minerals, Inc., will swap their estimated $650 million worth of land outside the park for $65 million worth of federal land elsewhere.

Bob Ekey, communications director of the Greater Yelllowstone Coalition (GYC), says the company also agreed to put $22.5 million in an escrow account to cover the costs of cleaning up the waste from a legacy of mining activity.

-Anne W. Wilke