{"id":111,"date":"2008-03-18T14:14:25","date_gmt":"2008-03-18T18:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=111"},"modified":"2008-03-18T14:14:25","modified_gmt":"2008-03-18T18:14:25","slug":"policy-news-from-esas-public-affairs-office-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2008\/03\/18\/policy-news-from-esas-public-affairs-office-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Policy News from ESA&#8217;s Public Affairs Office"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A Bi-Monthly Publication of the Ecological Society of  America<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>CLIMATE: House members float bill to overturn California waiver decision<\/li>\n<li>ETHANOL: Agriculture leaders stand behind new sugar-to-ethanol program<\/li>\n<li>WILDLIFE: Fish and Wildlife Service says bear bill would not help stop  poaching<\/li>\n<li>PUBLIC LANDS: House panel votes to make Clinton-era conservation plan  permanent<\/li>\n<li>CAMPAIGN 2008: Scientist captures Hastert\u2019s old seat<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr>\n<p><strong>CLIMATE: House members float bill to overturn California waiver  decision <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>House lawmakers introduced legislation on March 6 that would overturn the  U.S. Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s (EPA) denial of California\u2019s request for  a waiver to allow the state to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor  vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cRight to Clean Vehicles Act,\u201d from Reps. Peter Welch (D-VT) and Brad  Sherman (D-CA) would immediately grant California\u2019s waiver and give an  additional 12 states the authority to implement tailpipe emission standards.\u00a0  Another 42 House members, mostly Democrats, have signed on to the bill as  cosponsors.<\/p>\n<p>EPA spokesman Jonathan Shradar said the agency had no comment specifically on  any introduced legislation but doubted the bill would change EPA\u2019s stance on the  waiver.<\/p>\n<p>EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson has defended his decision despite evidence  that many EPA staff officials recommended he grant the waiver.\u00a0 Senate  Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has promised that  Congress will subpoena communications between the White House and EPA to  determine if Johnson was unduly influenced.<\/p>\n<p><strong>ETHANOL: Agriculture leaders stand behind new sugar-to-ethanol  program <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Democratic farm bill negotiators plan to keep a controversial  sugar-to-ethanol program in the farm bill, despite objections from the Bush  Administration.<\/p>\n<p>The chairmen of the House and Senate Agriculture committees each said that  they are not considering cutting the federal program that would support U.S.  production of sugar ethanol, as negotiators continue to hammer out a conference  agreement on the farm bill over the next month.<\/p>\n<p>The Agriculture Department (USDA) had included the program\u2019s elimination in  its list of reforms that Congress \u201cmust include\u201d in order for President Bush to  support the farm bill.<\/p>\n<p>The program would require USDA to buy surplus sugar from U.S. producers then  sell it to ethanol plants. It is intended to help sugar farmers as they have to  compete with Mexican sugar producers under new provisions of the North American  Free Trade Agreement.<\/p>\n<p>The Congressional Budget Office estimated the program would have overall cost  savings, but the Administration has disagreed. USDA economists have predicted  the ethanol program could cost more than a billion dollars. They say the  government would probably not be able to recoup the cost of purchasing the sugar  through the sales.<\/p>\n<p>Brazil has a booming sugarcane ethanol industry, and many companies in Europe  rely on sugar beets for the fuel. The economics and scope of the commodity have  kept sugar from becoming one of the major biofuels feedstocks in the United  States.<\/p>\n<p><strong>WILDLIFE: Fish and Wildlife Service says bear bill would not help  stop poaching <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A bill intended to stop the poaching of wild bears would not give wildlife  officials any new tools to deal with poaching or help bear conservation, the  head of law enforcement for the Fish and Wildlife Service said.<\/p>\n<p>House Democrats are pushing legislation that would prohibit the import,  export and interstate trade of bear viscera. The bill from Rep. Raul Grijalva  (D-AZ) is an attempt to deter poachers from illegally slaughtering wild bears in  American and Asia. The poachers trade the gallbladders and bile of bears for  traditional folk medicines.<\/p>\n<p>Benito Perez, head of law enforcement for the Fish and Wildlife Service,  spoke against the bill before a House Natural Resources subcommittee hearing.  \u00a0He said he appreciates the interest in bear conservation, but the bill would be  \u201clargely duplicative\u201d of existing authority in bills governing the trade of  wildlife.<\/p>\n<p>A 2002 report from the World Wildlife Fund said a law banning all trade of  bear parts at the national level would have minimal effect and could detract  from higher priorities for other more endangered species. Black bear populations  are healthy and growing in most parts of the United States.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PUBLIC LANDS: House panel votes to make Clinton-era conservation plan  permanent <\/strong>The House Natural Resources Committee cleared a proposal on  March 12 to make the 26 million-acre National Landscape Conservation System  (NLCS) permanent despite objections by Republicans that the legislation was  vague.<\/p>\n<p>Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt established the system during the Clinton  Administration to protect some of the agency\u2019s most ecologically and  historically important lands. It includes more than 850 federally recognized  areas and approximately 26 million acres.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike the National Parks and the National Wildlife Refuges, there currently  is no guarantee that the NLCS as a whole will exist in the future.\u00a0 The  conservation system includes the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in  Utah, Headwaters Forest Preserve in California, the Las Cienegas National  Conservation Area in Arizona and the Lewis and Clark Trail.<\/p>\n<p><strong>CAMPAIGN 2008: Scientist captures Hastert\u2019s old seat <\/strong>Former Energy Department scientist Bill Foster, a Democrat, captured  the Illinois congressional seat held for two decades by former House Speaker  Dennis Hastert (R).<\/p>\n<p>Foster won a special election March 8 over local businessman Jim Oberweis (R)  by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent.<\/p>\n<p>Hastert, speaker of the House from 1999 until 2007, resigned from Congress  late last year, forcing the special election.<\/p>\n<p>Foster worked at the Department of Energy\u2019s Fermilab for 22 years. On the  campaign trail, Foster often described himself as a \u201cbusinessman and a  scientist\u201d and in particular pegged energy issues and climate change as areas  where he would try to use scientific principles to develop policy solutions.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Sources: Environment and Energy Daily, Greenwire, and Land Letter<\/p>\n<p>Send questions or comments to Nadine Lymn, ESA Director of Public Affairs, <a title=\"blocked::mailto:Nadine@esa.org mailto:Nadine@esa.org\" href=\"mailto:Nadine@esa.org\">mailto:Nadine@esa.org<\/a> or Colleen Fahey,\u00a0Science  Policy Analyst, <a title=\"blocked::mailto:Colleen@esa.org\" href=\"mailto:Colleen@esa.org\">Colleen@esa.org<\/a><\/p>\n<p>If you received Policy News from a friend and would like to receive it  directly, please send an e-mail to <a href=\"mailto:listserv@listserv.umd.edu\">listserv@listserv.umd.edu<\/a> with the  following in the body of the message: sub ESANEWS {your first and last name}<\/p>\n<p>If you wish to unsubscribe to ESANEWS and your biweekly Policy News, send the  command \u201csignoff ESANEWS\u201d to <a title=\"blocked::mailto:listserv@listserv.umd.edu mailto:listserv@listserv.umd.edu\" href=\"mailto:listserv@listserv.umd.edu\"><span title=\"blocked::mailto:listserv@listserv.umd.edu\">listserv@listserv.umd.edu<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Visit ESA\u2019s website at <a title=\"blocked::https:\/\/esa.org\/ https:\/\/esa.org\/\" href=\"..\/..\/\"><span title=\"blocked::https:\/\/esa.org\">www.esa.org<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p>See past editions of ESA\u2019s Policy News at <a title=\"blocked::https:\/\/esa.org\/pao\/policyNews\/ https:\/\/esa.org\/pao\/policyNews\/\" href=\"..\/..\/pao\/policyNews\/\">https:\/\/esa.org\/pao\/policyNews\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Read the latest biweekly Policy News from ESA&#8217;s Public Affairs Office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecology-in-policy","category-policy-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}