English

Carlos Jusino grew up a typical kid in Harlem, rollerblading near the Hudson River, eating at the McDonald's on 145th Street and Broadway, hanging out with friends in his building. Also typical was the fact that many of Jusino's neighbors and family members, including his mother, had asthma. "When I was growing up, she went to the hospital about once a month for asthma," he says. Although he didn't know it at the time, more than 30 percent of the kids in Harlem have asthma, one of the highest rates in the country. Jusino's family was worried about the air quality around Harlem, but most of its attention was directed to a sewage treatment facility built in 1985 along the West Side Highway next to the Hudson, where a foul-smelling settling tank lay exposed. The plant galvanized the community, including a group of environmental justice activists known as the Sewage Seven. They sued the city and won a settlement in 1994 that helped establish air-monitoring stations around the plant.

The biotech sector often yells for “peer review” when the anti-GMO movement refers to analyses or research-based findings to state its case. Despite Professor Seralini publishing his research findings (rats fed on GMOs) that were critical of the health impacts of GMOs in an internationally renowned peer-reviewed journal in 2012, his methodology and findings were nevertheless subjected to sustained attacks by the sector. Personal smears came his way too (1). Now he finds that his paper has been retracted by the journal. Peer review or no peer review, it seems to matter little to the biotech sector when research findings have the potential to damage its interests. In any case, peer review is only for the sector's critics. It doesn't seem to apply much to it. For instance, in the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientists had continually warned regulators that GM crops could create unpredictable and hard to detect side effects, including allergies, toxin production, nutritional problems, and new diseases. They recommended that long-term studies were needed to fully assess the effect of GM foods on other crops, the ecosystem, and animal and human health, but these warnings were ignored (2).

In March 2013, a group of non-governmental organisations filed a lawsuit at the Court of Justice of the European Union against an EU Commission decision allowing the use of Monsanto´s genetically engineered soybeans, Intacta, in food and feed (T-177/13-5). The complainants maintain that EFSA has not carried out the risk assessments for the genetically engineered soybean as legally required. Now Monsanto, the British Government, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) are all joining forces in court to defend the right to import the transgenic soybeans. Intacta is a transgenic soybean similar to the controversial genetically engineered maize SmartStax. It produces an insecticide and is resistant to glyphosate herbicides (such as Roundup). Owned by Monsanto, it was authorised by the EU Commission for import and usage in food and feed in 2012. The lawsuit against this EU decision was filed by three non-profit-organisations, the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility (ENSSER), Sambucus and Testbiotech. The complainants have the suppport of the Society for Ecological Research, the foundation Manfred-Hermsen-Stiftung for Nature Conservation and Environmental Protection, the Foundation on Future Farming and the German Family Farmers Association (ABL).

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to protect a vanishing California songbird by listing it as Threatened under the Endangered Species Act, but a national bird protection group says that doesn't go far enough. The Washington D.C.-based American Bird Conservancy (ABC) says that USFWS should give the western yellow-billed cuckoo full Endangered status, which would give the bird greater protection. A subspecies of the far more widespread yellow-billed cuckoo, the western yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus occidentalis), has seen between 90 and 99 percent of its preferred riparian forest habitat destroyed in California. Fewer than 500 breeding pairs of the birds remain in the United States. USFWS proposed the western yellow-billed for listing as Threatened in October, as part of a 2011 agreement with the Center for Biological Diversity to rule on listing proposals for 757 imperiled species. ABC made its recommendation for greater protection in a December 2 letter that the group made public December 6.

This letter is in response to Julee Boan’s excellent article about Ontario’s Endangered Species Act (Paying the Interest, Ignoring the Debt — CJ, Nov. 29). This act is extremely important and we ignore it at our peril. In towns and cities we have animal humane societies that ensure that the animals under our care in our homes are given the best protection we can offer. The animals, fish and insects in our wilderness are no less deserving. The act should be their voice to protect them from the harmful impacts of mining, fossil-fuel extraction, forestry, fishing and farming, not for the protection of these same industries. These impacts are real and can be devastating. Two examples from farming have come to my attention lately. Both were preventable.

Increasing and widespread use of neonicotinoid insecticides all over the world, together with their environmental persistence mean that surface and ground waters need to be monitored regularly for their residues. However, current multi-residue analytical methods for waters are inadequate for trace residue analysis of these compounds, while passive sampling devices are unavailable. A new method using Ultra-Performance Liquid Chromatography provided good separation of the five most common neonicotinoid compounds, with limits of quantitation in the range 0.6–1.0 ng. The method was tested in a survey of rivers around Sydney (Australia), where 93% of samples contained two or more neonicotinoids in the range 0.06–4.5 lg L1. Styrenedivinylbenzene-reverse phase sulfonated Empore™ disks were selected as the best matrix for use in passive samplers. Uptake of clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiacloprid in a flowthrough laboratory system for 3 weeks was linear and proportional to their water concentrations over the range 1–10 lg L1. Sampling rates of 8–15 mL d1 were correlated to the hydrophobicity of the individual compounds. The passive samplers and analytical methods presented here can detect trace concentrations of neonicotinoids in water.

We counted butterflies on transect surveys during Hesperia ottoe flight period in 1988–2011 at tallgrass prairie preserves in four states (Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin), divided into units cross-referenced to vegetation type and management history. H. ottoe occurred only in dry and sand prairie types, and was significantly more abundant in undegraded than semi-degraded prairie, and in discontinuous sod (with numerous unvegetated areas due to bare sand and/or rock outcrops) than in continuous sod. This skipper was significantly more abundant in small sites compared to medium and large sites, even when the analysis was limited to undegraded prairie analyzed separately by sod type. H. ottoe was significantly under-represented in year-burn 0 (the first growing season after fire) compared to an expected distribution proportional to survey effort. However, H. ottoe was also over-represented in fire-managed units compared to non-fire-managed units. However, by far most units and sites were in fire management and most populations declined to subdetection during this study.

Three of the 15 bumble bee species found in Vermont are thought to be extinct and at least one other species is in decline. Bumble bees pollinate crops such as apples, blueberries and tomatoes, making them critical to Vermont’s agricultural economy. Sara Zahendra, a field biologist with the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, says losing native bumble bees is cause for serious concern. “There’s a lot that’s bad about losing native bumble bees,” she said. “One of the main things is that they are far and away the best pollinators of tomatoes. Where there aren’t a lot of native bumble bees, people have to hand-pollinate, which is incredibly expensive.” Native bumble bees are more important than honeybees for crop pollination. Leif Richardson, an entomologist at Dartmouth College, said in a VCE news release that “Wild bees perform the majority of all pollination on Vermont farms, whether or not the managed honeybee is present.” “As an ecosystem service, pollination is worth millions annually,” Richardson continued. “But we don’t know how the loss of native bee species will affect our food supply or overall environmental health.”

Environmental authorities are worried about a huge reduction in Norway’s estimated number of the large bird known as rype (white grouse, or ptarmigan). They say that stocks registered by researchers were cut in half from 2002 to 2012.
Norwegian researchers tracking bird hatchings have been cooperating with colleagues in Sweden and Finland to register fjellrype in a mountain area covering around 250,000 square kilometers. For the first time, reports news bureau NTB, they’ve detected a sharp decline.