fieldnotes

• The Acid Test
• The Comeback Kids
• Stay of Execution
• Answering a Call
• The Gas Tax
• Wild Reality TV
• Saving Nemo
• Leaky Fix
• The Real Playboy Bunny

Air Pollution
The Acid Test

Last fall in Monroe, Michigan, president George W. Bush donned a white hard hat, toured Detroit Edison's vast coal-fired power plant, and defended his administration's controversial overhaul of the nation's landmark antipollution law, the Clean Air Act. "We simplified the rules," he declared. Actually, he gutted one of them, specifically a provision called New Source Review, which requires companies to install scrubbers and other pollution-control equipment when they build new factories or power plants, or when they revamp aging plants in a way that will increase air pollution. Coal-fired power plants, in particular, spew high levels of the worst pollutants, including sulfur dioxide, the major ingredient of acid rain.

Under the administration's new rule, utilities can carry out huge rebuilding projects without having to install new pollution controls. As a result, power plants will be permitted to emit millions of tons more sulfur dioxide each year—including 36,000 tons of sulfur dioxide from the Monroe plant, according to a report by MSB Energy Associates, a Wisconsin-based consulting firm.

Many public health scientists and environmental groups have excoriated the rule change, charging it will make the nation's air dirtier. "Doing nothing is better than this plan," says Bob Perciasepe, director of public policy for Audubon, who, from 1998 to 2001, directed the air-pollution program at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). "If you just keep the existing Clean Air Act, more pollutants would get knocked down."

And save thousands of lives. For example, fully enforcing the old rule would have reduced power-plant sulfur dioxide emissions from 11 million to 2 million tons a year, noted a detailed study in 2000 by the Energy Information Administration, an independent scientific arm of the U.S. Department of Energy. This reduction would prevent 19,000 premature deaths annually, as well as 400,000 asthma attacks and 12,000 cases of chronic bronchitis, according to a 2001 EPA report to the White House.

Wildlife would also benefit. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides can make rain as acidic as vinegar, acidifying lakes and streams, killing fish, and starving birds, like loons, that eat fish. In a study published last year, Stefan Hames, an ecologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, concluded that acid rain also appears to make it tougher for the wood thrush to reproduce. The likely reason: Acid rain bleeds calcium from soil, depriving creatures that feed in affected areas, including the wood thrush, which needs calcium to make strong eggshells.

President Bush has proposed replacing much of the Clean Air Act with his own initiative, called Clear Skies, which relies mainly on economic incentives to cut pollution. But many environmental groups, including Audubon, support an alternative bill—sponsored by Senators Jim Jeffords
(I-VT) and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT)—that uses similar incentives but cuts pollution more, and leaves intact rules that protect health and communities. "The original Clean Air Act should be a guidepost," says Perciasepe. "If there's an easier way to implement it, we're in favor. But it can't be—and it shouldn't be—a dumbing down of the goals the act set out."

—Dan Ferber

Bird Recovery
The Comeback Kids

Photo by Arthur Morris/Birds as Art

Witness once more the achievement of a dedicated amateur: Jan Wasserman, a bird bander from Camarillo, California, is largely responsible for reversing the almost total extirpation of the tree swallow—one of America's most popular and far-ranging birds—as a breeding bird from a broad area of southern California.

In 1991 Wasserman called longtime Audubon biologist Jesse Grantham, now director of bird conservation for Audubon Texas. "Do you have any ideas on bird-banding projects that might help bird conservation?" she asked. Grantham had first become aware of the tree swallow's local decline in the early 1980s, when he was working with the California condor. During his stay in the area, he had managed to lure a few swallows to nest boxes. Historically, the species had been a fairly common nester there in riparian habitats.

What had caused the bird's decline? Tree swallows are secondary cavity nesters; unable to carve their own nesting areas in trees, they use those abandoned by woodpeckers. Some biologists guessed that the removal of trees for agriculture, the loss of riparian habitat, and the appropriation of remaining cavities by starlings forced out the swallows. Grantham thinks pesticides may have played a part, too. In this case, he recalls, "I suggested Jan revive my nest box project [for the tree swallows in California]. I thought it had great potential."

Wasserman is a passionate birder and holds a master banding license. With funds from the nearby Conejo Valley and Ventura Audubon societies and volunteer helpers, she was off and running.Virgil Ketner, a Ventura Auduboner, built hundreds of bird boxes, while Wasserman secured permission to erect them in such places as near sewage ponds and on ranches. As the birds readily took to the boxes, other volunteers assisted with the banding. The effort soon became a smashing success.

"In 12 years we've banded and fledged about 7,000 tree swallows," Wasserman says. "The swallows return to our boxes year after year." Indeed, her bands are now being spotted all over the region, and other groups—including the Sea and Sage Audubon Center in Irvine—from as far as 100 miles away have started their own nest-banding projects.

Additionally, Wasserman's presentations to area schools about the swallows' comeback have introduced many children to both birds and conservation.

(For the latest update on Wasserman's project, visit her website at www.treeswallows.org.)

—Frank Graham Jr.

Reprieve
Stay of Execution

For years biologists, conservationists, and animal advocates have condemned Maine's snaring of coyotes by the neck as cruel and unnecessary (see "Maine's War on Coyotes."Audubon, September 2002). Since the early 1980s the state's Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has used snares to curb coyote predation of deer. But snares are indiscriminate in their victims, and in the past they have killed federally threatened species, including the Canada lynx and the bald eagle. (During the 2002–2003 snaring season, 319 coyotes were caught, along with 19 other animals.) Now, threatened with lawsuits that accuse the program of violating the Endangered Species Act, Maine has temporarily shelved its coyote snares. "We applaud the department for suspending the program," says Jody Jones, a biologist at Maine Audubon. "But the best solution is to eliminate the practice."

Earlier this year Audubon and the NoSnare Task Force, another group that has led the fight against coyote snaring, supported a bill in the state legislature that would have ended the program altogether. But that effort was rebuffed; instead, legislators changed the bill to preserve coyote snaring. State officials, for their part, intend to keep the program intact; they're now asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for "incidental take" permission, a provision that allows for the killing of endangered species during certain wildlife-management operations—like the snaring of coyotes.

—Ke Xu

What countries are the biggest global warmers? It's no surprise that the industrialized nations, such as Japan and the United States, are among the leaders, accounting for nearly 28 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions between them. But developing countries like China and India are catching up. Combined, these four countries are home to roughly 44 percent of the planet's 6.3 billion people. —Lindsay Carswell

Illustration by Alex Nabaum

Progress
Answering a Call

Maybe the message is getting through, after all. The government's communications czar says his agency, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), will finally take a closer look at the impact television, radio, and cell phone towers are having on birds and the environment.
Biologists believe the nation's 138,000 communications towers, which range from tiny antennae mounted in church steeples to steel spires soaring 2,000 feet into the sky, kill between 5 million and 50 million birds a year (see "Faulty Towers," Audubon, September–October 2001). Historically, the biggest kills—thousands of birds at a time—have occurred on cloudy nights during fall migration at tall, lighted TV towers. "The birds appear to be attracted by the lights," then die in "gruesome" collisions with girders and guy wires, says Art Clark, an ornithologist in Buffalo, New York, who has studied the problem for decades.

Big tower kills have become rare in recent years for reasons that aren't clear, he and researchers admit. But ornithologists are alarmed by a telecommunications revolution that is adding thousands of new spires to the landscape. Three years ago the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) recommended that tower builders take voluntary steps, such as bunching towers and using fewer support wires, to reduce the threat. But efforts to convince the FCC to consider the effects on birds when approving tower licenses didn't get far—and neither did bids to win government and industry funding to study the problem.

Both initiatives may now be gaining some traction. In August FCC chief Michael Powell opened a formal inquiry into tower kills, inviting public comment on everything from needed scientific studies to possible solutions. In part, the inquiry was the result of legal pressure from conservation groups, including the Forest Conservation Council and the American Bird Conservancy. The groups have challenged dozens of tower permits across the nation.

Recently, Michigan has funded studies that could answer why birds seem particularly drawn to certain towers, and what can be done to keep them out of harm's way. Elsewhere, the U.S. Coast Guard will soon begin a study of 20 of its emergency-broadcast communication towers. "We're taking baby steps," says FWS biologist Al Manville, an expert on the issue. "But at least we're moving."

—David Malakoff