fieldnotes

• Read the Fine Print
• The Rush to Save a Thrush
• One Last Chance
• There Goes the Neighborhood
• Under the Influence
• Sticking Up for Endangered Species
• Green Babies
• Monkey Man
• Bambi Scanner
• Oldies but Goodies
• Magpies! Run for Your Life

White House
Read the Fine Print

It comes out on flimsy newsprint, and even fans call its dense pages "mind-numbing." But these days the Federal Register—a daily digest of new government regulations that's largely unknown outside the Beltway—is a must-read for environmental advocates. That's because the Bush administration is using the publication to unleash a barrage of often obscure regulatory "reforms" that critics say are designed to eviscerate long-standing environmental protections.

"It's a parade of horribles, and it's only the tip of the iceberg," says Gregory Wetstone, director of advocacy for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C. "New rules are being quietly issued in the name of 'streamlining' and 'efficiency,' which are code words for destruction."

Last summer the White House laid out a blueprint that it has since been following to alter the enforcement of many important environmental laws. In November, for instance, the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a 779-page plan that would rewrite an array of clean-air regulations, including some that would require utilities to update pollution controls at older plants. Environmentalists barely had time to choke that down, however, before other agencies piled more on the plate. A slew of new rules and internal memos eased controls on mining, grazing, road building, and logging. Others softened wetland protections. Still others watered down regulations controlling pollution from farms as well as efforts to clean up 20,000 polluted lakes and rivers.

Such moves highlight the White House's "pattern of sacrificing our environment to the demands of special interests," says Senator Jim Jeffords (I-VT), an ex-Republican and former head of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

To be sure, George W. Bush isn't the first President to use regulatory changes to chip away at laws he doesn't like. Administrative maneuvers are popular, in part, because they often receive little public attention and sidestep potentially bruising and protracted battles in Congress. President Bush, for example, turned to the regulatory process to advance a wildfire plan that justified logging after Congress failed to pass similar legislation.

But while past presidents were likely to face scrutiny from Congress, some environmentalists are skeptical that the current Republican-led body will aggressively look over this White House's shoulder. "There is not going to be congressional oversight," predicts David Alberswerth, a program director with the Wilderness Society. "That pretty much leaves the courts."

The New York Times agrees, editorializing that lawsuits "are the last best hope for stopping the administration's assault on the environment." Nine states have already filed suit against the clean-air plan, and green groups say they will challenge other decisions. They've already won some early rounds, with one federal judge blocking government plans to allow oil exploration next to Utah's Arches National Park.

The battle, though, must ultimately be won in the polling booth, environmental strategists caution. With greener politicians in government, they say, the Federal Register would read a lot less like a horror story.

—David Malakoff

WatchList
The Rush to Save a Thrush

As skiers hurtle down Little Whiteface Mountain in New York's Adirondack Mountains, it's doubtful that a lot of them are thinking about the Bicknell's thrush—a palm-size songbird. Many of them, however, might be alarmed to learn that if the state-owned ski resort and mountaintop restaurant proceeds with plans to expand, what little habitat the thrush has left in the park would be wiped out. "Because these birds live only above 2,500 feet, the peaks of the Adirondacks and Catskills are immensely important," says Jeff Wells, Audubon's director of bird conservation. "The Bicknell's thrush has only an islandlike distribution in a sea of fir forests." The proposed ski expansion would mean the removal of about 55,000 trees from the thrush's habitat, which has already been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by Audubon New York.

Not surprisingly, the thrush has landed in the "red" zone on Audubon's 2002 WatchList, a roster of North American bird species. Following a stoplight model, the WatchList ranks the danger to specific bird species as green, yellow, or red—with red indicating the highest alert. The Bicknell's thrush is one of 202 species that have fallen into the threatened red category, victimized in recent years by acid rain, deforestation, and development. (To see the full WatchList, go to www.audubon.org/bird/watchlist.)

Most alarming, perhaps, the WatchList points to precipitous declines in some North American songbird populations. Several species have been especially hard hit, including the Henslow's sparrow, whose population has dropped by as much as 80 percent. Though conservation efforts have spurred the rebound of some high-profile species, including the peregrine falcon, many lesser-known birds face unnoticed declines. "We shouldn't take any of our birds for granted," says Frank Gill, Audubon's director of science. "Because we weren't vigilant, we lost the passenger pigeon, and we almost lost the bald eagle. The WatchList is a call to be both vigilant and proactive."

That call to action might be just enough to rescue the Bicknell's thrush. "The WatchList, besides the IBA program, provides a scientific rationale for turning down the resort proposal and other similar proposals," says David Miller, executive director of Audubon New York. "A much more limited version of this expansion could still benefit the resort without encroaching too far into the thrush's habitat."

—Alyssa Worsham

Endangered Species
One Last Chance

Like shipwreck survivors tossed up on separate islands, the world's 13 remaining mountain caribou populations face a perilous future. In the past five years the species' total population has dropped from 2,450 to 1,900, and the mountain caribou's range—at one time it extended from central British Columbia to Montana—has been reduced to a few scattered remnants in Canada and northern Washington and Idaho.

Urgent efforts to reverse this trend are now under way in the Purcell Mountains of southeastern British Columbia, just north of the Canada–U.S. border. There a five-year program to transplant up to 60 mountain caribou from locations farther north is scheduled to begin this spring. The South Purcell population, which numbers only 20 and has a severe shortage of adult females, is among the most endangered. "Unless we get some animals in there," says Ian Hatter, chair of British Columbia's Mountain Caribou Technical Advisory Committee, "we could lose the herd through a chance event," such as an avalanche or a cougar attack.

Hatter attributes the caribou's plight to habitat fragmentation. Logging and road building have carved up the region's high-elevation old-growth forest, creating easy access for predators and snowmobiles while reducing the caribou's winter food supply. Although the British Columbia forest industry complains that government rules protecting mountain caribou habitat already take too big a bite out of its permitted cut—despite the fact that the cut has been reduced by just 1 percent to 2 percent—a recent report by Hatter's recovery team says existing measures may be inadequate to maintain current populations. The team's recommendations include more protection of critical winter ranges and restrictions on road use by forestry companies.

Because mountain caribou cannot live outside the boundaries of the interior West's wet belt and are highly sensitive to disturbance, they are considered to be this ecosystem's flagship species, says Hatter. Most important, their presence indicates healthy tracts of lichen-shrouded forest.

With the U.S. mountain caribou population down to a single herd, which ranges back and forth across the international border in the southern Selkirk Mountains, Washington State caribou biologist John Almack is also worried. In past years transplants have kept the South Selkirk population going, but with only 35 individuals left, it remains highly vulnerable. "Under 30, if we lose one reproducing female, there's an extreme hazard of losing the whole herd," he says. "If we get down to 15, statistically it's an extinct population."

—Frances Backhouse

Sprawl
There Goes the Neighborhood

Housing subdivisions and strip malls keep mutating ever farther from town centers, begetting more congested highways and roads. Now "Measuring Sprawl and Its Impact," a pioneering, recently published report by Smart Growth America, shows that the virus—that is, poor development patterns—has turned lethal. The study, conducted jointly by researchers at Rutgers and Cornell universities, cross-references land-use and transportation data from 83 of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States. Its findings reveal that sprawling areas have dirtier air and a higher rate of traffic fatalities than regions with more compact housing and access to mass transit.

"People wanted to escape from crammed cities after World War II, so they moved into the suburbs and became auto-dependent," says Reid Ewing, coauthor of the report and a transportation expert at Rutgers. Since then, he says, decades of poor planning and development have resulted in homes that are widely separated from shops, schools, and workplaces; a lack of transportation choices; and poor road networks—all with demonstrable public-health consequences, which the study bears out.

Photo by Mark Klett

For example, researchers discovered there are 180 cars per 100 households in Atlanta and in Raleigh and Greensboro, North Carolina, compared with 162 cars per 100 households in San Francisco, Boston, and Portland, Oregon. As a result, there are much higher ozone levels in the first cities, and a greater incidence of pollution-related breathing ailments. Similarly, there were more traffic deaths in sprawled-out areas, owing to the car-dominant culture. "In areas that sprawl a lot, you may have a great house to live in," says Don Chen, executive director of Smart Growth America. "But it comes at a great cost to your health and the environment."

The study concludes that if metro areas were more compactly laid out, thousands more people would walk to work and drive less—and breathe cleaner air. Indeed, high-density, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods are gaining currency in the real estate market, due in part to an increasing number of retiring baby boomers who prefer the convenience of in-town living. "People are getting tired of the traffic congestion and uniformity of the suburbs," says Ewing. "Sprawl is just not the American dream anymore."

—Vivienne Caballero

Special Interests
Under the Influence

In recent years the debate over campaign finance reform has centered on the corrosive influence of big-moneyed special interests in Washington, D.C. There, armies of industry lobbyists roam the corridors of Congress and the White House, putting their stamps on legislation that affects everything from acid rain to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Chart by Knickerbocker

But did you know that lobbyists feel just at home in state capitals across the United States? In fact, in 2000, $570 billion was spent by 36,959 companies, business associations, and other interest groups registered to lobby the nation's 7,400 state lawmakers exclusively. (Of course, environmentalists lobby, too, though they're vastly outnumbered.) These figures, drawn from a database of 100,000 pages of financial-disclosure statements, appear in a new book called Capitol Offenders: How Private Interests Govern Our States, by Diane Renzulli and the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group based in Washington. As the center notes, state legislatures are critically important: Last year state lawmakers "passed more than 40,000 bills affecting issues like health care, public safety, education, and the environment." For more information, go to www.publicintegrity.org.

—Keith Kloor