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Stop Being Ridiculous: We Agree On Animal Alternatives  
While watching the games of 2016 -- not the Olympics, the U.S. presidential election -- I am reminded of the stare-down between drug companies and animal rights activists. Of this mounting conflict, you'd think the answer is simple -- that animals can and should eventually make their exit from so many labs and testing facilities. Alternatives are in the wings, if even in their earliest days.



But as in politics, neither side is listening, and declaring moral victory seems more important than making progress. Like convention delegates, each side is being ridiculous. Here are a few reasons why:

ABSOLUTISM Animal rights activists don't tolerate ambiguity. The ethics behind captive orcas for theme park profits is somehow equivalent to, say, the use of macaque monkeys to develop life-saving vaccines. For this lack of clarity, they earn the wrath of serious scientists and are slapped with extremist and absolutist labels.

RATIONALISM By the same token, researchers who use animals to advance their work are imbued with an intellectual bias that conveys as conceit and a dismissal of pain and suffering. For this, they are packaged by activists as genocidal monsters. This is not an overstatement.

ENTERTAINMENT What activists NGOs, particularly The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), understand so well is that entertainment is core to their cause. They know, for example, that researchers are largely incapable of rebuttal in terms that are anything less than boring. I'm a scientist, not a media whore, their targets complain. They also know that inside corporations it's the legal department that trumps communications -- hence, the tone-deaf verbiage that accentuates the appearance of guilt. At BioDrug Corp we are committed to humane animal welfare... But you can't be committed when so much of the public sees you as disingenuous. And you can't credibly claim to be humane when your otherwise healthy animals don't fare so well.

INFORMATION Consumed by regulations and allergic to negative media, those of the pro-research persuasion embrace an out-dated model to push their point of view and best practices: Social Education. But because media are drawn first to fire and second to Smokey The Bear, the defenses that pharmas and their surrogates mount are ignored, out-flanked or exploited for their wooden corporate-speak. Despite their lobbying and support of biomedical research associations, animal research and testing is out-gunned, easily ten to one by my estimates. The odds might be evened were it not for the consistent refusals of the super association PhRMA to snuff out the long fuse that is sparking toward its pharmaceutical member companies.

Indeed, national surveys confirm that activism works and activists are winning. For almost a decade, public approval of animal research and testing has dropped year-to-year, all to suggest that critical species will leave the labs, beginning with chimpanzees then others that society judges most cuddly and dear. It's a win for idealism and a disaster for commerce and healthcare.



Looking for answers, pharmas and universities have hit the panic button. After all, taking animals out of the equation is a seismic shift that threatens vital pipelines and requisite profits. Their first instinct has been to call on law firms and PR agencies to defend their freedom to operate and mollify the rising public upset. This is not to keep bunnies in lipstick labs; this is to preserve compelling and life-saving work that contributes to the cures, therapies and vaccines of ravaging disorders and diseases. Think polio, epilepsy, HIV, hepatitis. The list is long and an awesome demonstration of applied science, not only for humans but also animals.

You might think the status quo, habit or laziness are what keeps mice, rats, dogs, cats, rabbits, lambs, pigs, primates and other species in air conditioned vivariums. But the costs to breed or buy, house and feed happy and healthy animals -- a necessity for sound research -- is exorbitant and a natural inhibitor to their use. What binds pharmas, academia and their networks of contract research houses to animals is the sheer effectiveness of non-human testing and, in recognition of this fact, the many legal requirements to use animals in drug discovery and trials. Consider the example of oversight committees, called IACUCSs, required in virtually every modern animal testing facility. By law, researchers and testers are mandated to apply and prove among other things a Three Rs standard to animal use -- Replace, Reduce and Refine. It's a logistical and costly requirement that ensures best practices and moves us incrementally toward animal-alternative research.



Having stormed us with stunts -- some violent, even fatal to researchers -- activists are craftily now turning to supply chains and decision trees. They have easily gained the sympathies of shippers, particularly airlines on which researchers rely for safe delivery of their animals, and soft-hearted lawmakers who have produced what researchers regard as draconian, innovation-killing regulations.

Out of this handiwork have emerged two modes of strategy response by scientists and their employers:

-- Defensive, the default mode. This is the social education model, to inform and disseminate facts: Educate the public. Get into the classrooms. Issue PSAs. It's also the evasion strategy: Get to the legislatures. Find the work-arounds. Use trucks instead of planes. Start breeding. Start outsourcing. Start offshoring. And so it goes. But none of this is secret to activists who, again, are manifestly better mobilized, relatively unregulated, more focused, and simply better entertainers and storytellers. They are already lobbying, expertly. They are at work in China. And their cameras are everywhere.

-- Offensive, the counter-intuitive option. This requires vision, some courage and competitive instinct: Invest in alternatives. Ramp up synthetics (e.g., organs on chips). Focus on less sentient species (e.g., zebra fish). Tap big data and cloud computing to simulate outcomes. Partner with or fund in vitro and virtual medicine start-ups. It all sounds good, but ask any clear-eyed animal researcher and they'll tell you soberly that real progress to virtual testing and research is a lifetime away. Animals, they insist, will always be needed in some capacity and, besides, the human body is simply too sophisticated to ever accurately mimic.

But science surprises itself with unexpected regularity, particularly when pressure is applied or incentive is offered. Pick up your smart phone or take your morning pills for proof. My rebuttal, then, to the DVMs, PhDs and VPs who say we can't move that fast is this: You won't know until you really start trying.

Out of duty, I have detailed policies and competitive strategies that defend the forts of animal research and testing. But these are prophylactic, even unnecessary, because what underlies the animal research-versus-animal rights rivalry is in fact a shared value and vision: Quality of Life. Researchers are driven by curiosity and a unique delight in explaining and taming what is life-limiting. Activists are driven by compassion and a dream for a higher standard of humanity. In my experience, no researcher would rather probe than pet an animal. And no activist would rather lose their child to a disease than spare the mice and monkeys that help cure it.

PERFECT STORM, PERFECT OPPORTUNITY

Still, animal research and testing is treated as a crisis, never yet in my experience as an opportunity. It needn't be, because we all agree that the future in biomedical research is not in animals but in actual humans. Virtual humans, to be precise.

If activists and scientists agree that animal research and testing should go the way of strip mining and whaling, then why are corporations and institutions resisting the call? The answer lies in reputation, profits and pride, perhaps not in that order. Corporations have to perform, always to the satisfaction of investors. Investments to replace so-called animal models are expensive and their returns can only be trusted through experience and success. In the mean time, activists are determined to alienate customers from the brands whose benefits are ensured by lab animals. They test bunnies! They murder monkeys! The consequences are policies that manage and mitigate (mode 1 as described above) instead of lead and innovate (mode 2).

Like liberals and conservatives, each side is lead by a point of view that is inarguable because it's based on a world view. It goes to philosophy and a life's purpose. So when one party is framed as a Frankenstein, or Pollyanna as the case may be, the natural reaction is to recoil and resist the impolite accuser. Because no one is wrong, no one can be right.



I describe the phenomenon as a battle for the back row and total anonymity. And as a prescription, I argue for a lock-step advancement of sheepish pharmas to mount a collective defense. No one need stick out their neck if they shuffle ahead together.

But this is an incremental play, and it only slows the progress of both activists and their targeted corporations. Again, the irony is that both sides want the same thing, but what they seem to value more than results is to progress on their own terms and most especially without the goading advice of their disdained detractors. As with party politics, they want to be the winner and the other guy the loser.

Inside this perfect business storm is in fact a perfect competitive opportunity. With drugmakers uniformly obscuring their animal research and testing activities, there is an obvious but counter-intuitive option to bolt the party. The risk is only temporary because while the pharma that steps out might draw activist fire it can simultaneously pledge its support of activists, declare a moon shot to produce animal-free drugs, and challenge others to follow. The pharma that flees the flock can become a darling of PETA and HSUS, not an enemy. And even better, it can gain a significant advantage over its cowering competitors.

By degrees, and particularly with our much-loved chimps and other self-aware species, a few pharmaceuticals have made this move though in far too tentative steps to exploit and disrupt the norm. Novartis is notable, so too is GSK, but on the whole the progress toward animal alternatives is halting and inhibited by the extreme caution and considerable fear of CEOs and their risk-averse legal and communications chiefs.

What has been treated as a problem by the businesses, institutions and associations that participate in and defend animal research and testing is, in fact, a chance to do great things. If we approach it more as a potential for innovation than an exercise in risk mitigation, we can step out of the back row and advance a kind of discovery that propels our collective success and defines a higher form of humanity. It's a way to be reasonable instead of ridiculous.


Photo credits: Trailers From Hell, Shawn the Sheep

Graphics credit: Gallup

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Underwater Clarity  


By Drs. David Niesel and Norbert Herzog

Have you ever opened your eyes while diving in the ocean without a mask and realized that you really can't see very well? Well, the children among a nomadic sea faring people known as the Moken can see underwater with total clarity, but what is really interesting is that other children can acquire this ability too in just a matter of weeks.

The Moken people have historically been totally dependent upon the ocean surrounding the Mergui Archipelago, a group of 800 small islands off the southwestern coast of Myanmar. The Moken people are Austronesians who are thought to have migrated from southern China about 4000 years ago. For 8 to 9 months of the year, the Moken live aboard their boats, known as kabang, living on land in temporary camps only during the monsoon season. They live on what they can harvest from the sea and the beaches and by trading the sea life they gather with Chinese and Malay neighbors. There may be as few as 1000 Moken still living the traditional way.

Moken children spend much of their time in the water and participate in the gathering of seafood starting at an early age. As opposed to most of us, the Moken children see everything with perfect clarity when diving underwater. A Swedish scientist, Anna Gislen, has been studying the Moken for two decades to learn how this is possible. She measured how clear the underwater vision of 17 Moken children was and compared that with 18 European children all aged 7 to 13 years old. The Moken children had more than twice the visual acuity compared with European children.

Gislen hypothesized that part of the reason they can see more clearly under water is their ability to constrict their pupils. Just like with a camera lens, if you constrict the pupil, you increase the depth of field. That is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects that will be in focus. Measurements proved that Moken children constricted their pupils underwater to the maximum known limit for a human. However, there had to be more to this, somehow, either consciously or unconsciously, Moken children had to also be changing the shape of the lenses of their eyes to improve the focus of an object, called accommodating their lenses. This is exactly what she found. This ability is retained into adolescence. What is fascinating is that European children could be taught to make these same changes to their eyes to improve vision underwater. After 11 training sessions over one month, they developed the same visual acuity as Moken children. How long this took was different for each child, but their vision would suddenly improve. Interestingly, seals and dolphins have similar abilities to adapt their eyes.

The traditional Moken culture is rapidly disappearing as a result in part from a 2004 tsunami that destroyed much of the Moken homeland. Governments are relocating them further inland for their safety and providing other employment. Sadly, the life of these sea nomads, as they are also known, is changing and their children may not develop "dolphin eyes" because they will not be spending so much time diving. However, this is a remarkable example of how adaptable the human body can be.

Medical Discovery News is hosted by professors Norbert Herzog at Quinnipiac University, and David Niesel of the University of Texas Medical Branch. Learn more at www.medicaldiscoverynews.com.

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Recognizing The Value Of Food To Stop Waste  
From watermelon and berries to sun-ripened tomatoes and peaches, summer is when we most enjoy local fruits and vegetables, so fresh and plentiful just now. Produce defines summertime picnics; like many of you, I savor these foods because they're in-season, local and readily available.

However, in America, we don't always balance or value our bounty. We actually experience a food glut, daily, along with a resulting situation of horrible waste.

According to U.S. Department of Agriculture 2015 figures, a shocking 31 percent of all U.S. produced food goes uneaten; each American discards more than 36 pounds of groceries every month. The USDA further found that a typical American throws out 40 percent of all the fresh fish, 23 percent of the eggs, and 20 percent of the milk that they buy.

Imagine what that means for the 800 million people who suffer from starvation across the globe. Waste actually encourages a self-perpetuating cycle, driving the specious argument that we need to grow more food and use chemicals that promise increased yields. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, globally we waste 2.9 trillion pounds of food annually, enough to feed those 800 million people twice over, with millions of pounds to spare.

Why does this happen? In a way, the problem is too much food. Immense quantities of grain, dairy, meat and produce are reaching U.S. stores - but retailers' policies and consumer behavior translate into immense waste. By design, retail chains discard tons of fresh produce because it is "unattractive," and dispose of food nearing sell-by dates, even though it's still fresh. Consumers are encouraged to stock up on on-sale foods, but how many of us have thrown away food we thought we might eat, but never got around to cooking?

In the developing world, most losses occur further down the supply chain. Inadequate infrastructure, storage, refrigeration, transportation and similar, mean that most wasted food simply never makes it to the people waiting for it.

These impacts resonate. When food is wasted, the resources that it took to produce, process and transport it are also wasted. Massive amounts of chemicals, fertilizer and fuel; acres of land; and -- in the U.S. -- 25 percent of all freshwater used, go to produce food that is, incredibly, thrown away. Uneaten food ends up in landfills, where its decomposition accounts for nearly 25 percent of U.S. emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas more than 20 times more harmful than CO2, according to the EPA.

We have to be smarter about getting food to where it needs to be. It requires communication, policy revision and a different mindset.

• Firstly, greater coordination will be needed between farmers, wholesalers and retailers. Developing farmer-buyer agreements will be critical, as well as raising awareness among industries, retailers and consumers to the problem and challenges of food waste.

• We need to stop wasteful retail policies that dispose of imperfect looking produce, and need to work with sellers and consumers to rethink their idea of what's acceptable. Perceptions can change: heirloom tomatoes taste wonderful, but two decades ago, no one would have bought tomatoes that were not perfect.

• We also need to make good use of food that is presently thrown away, in addition to instituting industry practices to decrease the staggering levels of waste and municipal and Federal laws that indemnify donors, such as the U.S.'s Bill Emmerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act.

There's a common thread in these solutions, and that takes us back to our summertime picnic. It all comes down to value and respect. We value the food we are eating because we know its perishable. And, we respect the food we eat, and the resources it represents, by bringing a limited amount -- only what we can actually eat and share with friends. If we respect food, we aren't tempted to waste it, and that is what we need to recognize and rekindle.

The culture of mass consumption and production without respect to nature further distances us from our food. Through Natural Agriculture and organic production, respect for food is changing. As consumers, we should remember what goes into growing and distribution. By supporting smaller-scale, local agriculture and markets, buying what we can actually eat, respecting food and changing the way we produce, consume and distribute food, we will go a long way to correcting the epidemic of waste in our lives and in the lives of others around the world.

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Moth takes advantage of defensive compounds in Physalis fruits  
Researchers found that the specialist moth Heliothis subflexa benefits from secondary plant components by turning the original defensive function of these compounds into its own advantage. Withanolides, which are present in Physalis plants, usually act as immune suppressants and feeding deterrents in insects. Surprisingly, Heliothis subflexa uses these plant defenses as immune-system boosters. Moreover, withanolides protect the moth from harmful effects caused by pathogenic bacteria. The new study demonstrates a unique benefit to host-plant specialization.  
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SpaceX Dragon capsule lands in Pacific carrying 12 moustronauts  

NASA to watch Musketeer relatives carefully

The SpaceX team has successfully recovered its Dragon capsule which was sent back to Earth by the International Space Station.…

 
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Obama's Expansion of a Vast Pacific Reserve, Built on a Bush Foundation  
President Obama's expansion of a vast marine monument near Hawaii builds on Bush-era moves spurred by passionate ocean communicators.  
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Asthetically nothing in it...  

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Camera set for hunting the skies for morning flights, just noticed this through the eye piece and there was something in the morning light which I couldn't resist...

 
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Thames sunrise  

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Looking over the Thames early one morning; Tower Bridge and City Hall either side of the Tower Pier.

 
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Lost in translation  

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Photos of the Week: 8/20-8/26 (35 photos)  

Lenin underwater, a penguin weigh-in, monsoon flooding in India, an earthquake in central Italy, a deep blue lake in El Salvador, American partiers blown into Canada on the St. Clair River, towed back across the border by the Canadian Coast Guard, and much more.

 
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Syria à la Carte: Turkish Invasion Highlights Rapidly Shifting Alliances  
The Turkish advance into northern Syria marks a turning point in the Syrian conflict. Its nominal target was Islamic State, but with large powers reconsidering their alliances in the region, the Kurds stand to lose the most.  
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This EpiPen News Is Part of A Disturbing Trend  

The TV was on as we sat waiting to be called in for our check up.  My son, who is 11, turned his head as he heard the anchor use the word “EpiPen”. He is in tune since he has a life threatening peanut allergy and the EpiPen has saved his life.  His face was full of emotion as he listened to the anchor talk about how some people could no longer afford this life saving device. He shook his head and said “mom that can't be right, they can't be right, can they, everyone who needs an EpiPen should have one.”  

The media has exploded as word spread of some parents paying well over 600 dollars for this necessary life saving device. Headlines abound about big pharmacy greed and patients forced to pay outrageous prices, and this issue has enraged everyone.  I am heartened to see food allergies being taken seriously in the mainstream media.  As my son stated, everyone who needs an Epipen should have access to one.  But food allergies are a topic that is underreported. Even when we are armed with our EpiPens, we have a long way to go in getting the public to recognize the real challenges of living in a world where respect for food allergies as a potential life threatening disease is lacking.

As founder of the No Nut Traveler, I collect the testimonials of food allergic passengers traveling on commercial airlines. Shockingly, many food allergic passengers are being ridiculed, spoken to rudely by the airline staff and most egregiously, sometimes asked to leave the airplane when disclosing a food allergy.   

Last month, a food allergy mom sent me a testimonial via FaceBook with a heart-breaking photo of her child, as her family was asked to leave the plane by the pilot for disclosing her child's food allergy.  She informed me that she had notified the airline ahead of time of her daughter's allergies. She brought their own food and a supply of medication. She said “We did everything humanly possible on our part. I do not know what else we could have done to prevent such a situation from happening”.  She went on to tell me “a supervisor from JFK was called on board and he took our passports and boarding passes. We were then escorted out of the plane under the threat of calling security on us. We were publicly humiliated as we walked through the full airplane. My daughter was brought to tears.  On the same airline the next day, a different pilot let our family fly.  I find this kind of inconsistency and rudeness unacceptable.

Later in the month, a 22-year-old girl from New Jersey shared another disturbing encounter with me.  She asserted that after asking for an announcement for her severe nut allergy, and asking for the surrounding rows to please refrain from eating nuts, the pilot told her that she was an inconvenience to have on-board, and that her thought process was selfish.  She further asserted that the pilot said to her “You should be thankful to be allowed on this flight due to the huge risk and inconvenience you may cause to other passengers”. Her aunt, who was traveling with her, then asked what they would do if they had someone with a disability on the airplane and the pilot said they would accommodate them. She then asked why not her niece and he responded because a food allergy is not a disability.

When you receive the diagnosis of a life threatening food allergy, your life is irrevocably altered.   Failure to treat a food-induced anaphylaxis quickly (i.e. within minutes) with epinephrine substantially increases the risk of death.  No one asks to have this condition.  There is the false perception that once you have your EpiPen, everything will be fine.  But the truth is that sometimes the EpiPen can only buy you time.  That is one of the reasons why you need to carry more than one-a reaction can require multiple EpiPens, and you always need to go to the ER to be monitored after using one.  

There is no ER in the air and that is why, as allergic passengers, we ask for reasonable accommodations to make flying safer.  Being able to pre-board, to clean the area from the last occupant, informing those around us to be cautious and asking politely not to consume what is deadly to us, and educating the airline staff of this potentially fatal disability, are reasonable requests for a legitimate medical condition. My greatest fear is that it will take a death in the air for meaningful change to occur.  

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Defenders of Wildlife: Protecting and Recovering Wolves  
This has been a tough week for wolves and those of us who are committed to their recovery. Wildlife officials in Washington state have made the decision to kill the Profanity Peak wolf pack due to repeated depredations since July 8.

This is a point we never wanted to come to. In our vision for wolves, lethal removal would never have to be used. Defenders of Wildlife has been working for decades to help avoid conflicts with wolves, specifically because of the deadly results these conflicts often end up having for them.

When we lose wolves, it is devastating for those who advocate for their recovery, as we have for decades at Defenders. It can be easy to feel that we are losing ground when decisions like this one are made. But as a biologist and president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, I want to let you know that as gut-wrenching as this loss is, the work we do every day is creating a safer landscape for wolves.

The Incredible Return

Gray wolves once roamed freely throughout much of North America, possibly numbering in the hundreds of thousands. But government sponsored programs to hunt, trap and poison wolves almost wiped them off the map in the continental U.S. by the 1930s.

Today the gray wolf is the true "comeback kid." It is slowly but surely returning to some of its former habitat in several states, including Washington, as a result of strong conservation efforts throughout the years - conservation efforts in which Defenders played a major role.

Defenders' Leadership on Wolves

Defenders has been at the forefront of wolf recovery for more than 20 years. We were the first conservation group to introduce the idea of bringing wolves back to Yellowstone. We understood that for wolf recovery to succeed it was vital that we worked with the ranching community. The ranchers of today have never ranched in wolf country so while we look at recovery as a natural restoration of the landscape, ranchers look at it as a new hurdle they have to jump to make a living. This might be hard for some wolf advocates to digest, but the reality is that without the cooperation of ranchers, wolves don't have a chance on the landscape.

Defenders was on the ground supporting the reintroduction: paving the way by working with ranchers through an innovative compensation program for ranchers who experienced depredations. The federal and some state governments now manage and support this same program.

We also put our own staff on the ground to help ranchers and save wolves. We provided resources and technical expertise. Our experts explored coexistence efforts from other countries to bring ranchers the best tools to live with wolves. And it has paid off for the wolves.

Now, thanks to these cooperative efforts, a large and growing number of ranchers and rural communities are finding ways to successfully coexist with wolves, taking proactive steps to minimize the chance of a conflict - which is a win for them and wolves. The prevailing attitude of ranchers 20 years ago was total opposition to wolves. We were - and still are -- trying to change an entire culture, one that was built on the absence of wolves over the span of decades. Now we hear, "The wolves are here to stay so we have to learn to live with them."

Our approach in the Yellowstone and Northern Rockies region is the best way to secure a real future for wolves in Washington.

Wolf Recovery in the Northwest

Because of our expertise in wolf recovery and coexistence, Defenders of Wildlife has a seat at the table once more, this time on Washington's Wolf Advisory Group (WAG). The WAG is a cross-section of organizations and individuals that work together to provide guidance to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife on how to implement the state's wolf management plan.

Each member of the WAG has different priorities -- ours being wolf recovery. As national leaders in coexistence, Defenders provides recommendations on how the state can handle conflicts between wolves and livestock. Working with the other stakeholders on the WAG, we have been able to negotiate a far better deal for Washington's wolves.

It cannot be overstated how big a difference the new protocols have made for Washington wolves. In just the past two years, the number of livestock producers in Washington that are participating in conflict prevention plans with WDFW has tripled -- a striking indication of how attitudes are changing across the landscape.

A Brighter Future for Wolves

While the authorized removal of the Profanity Peak wolf pack is a distressing loss to process for all of us, we strongly believe that this tragic situation will not undermine our overall goal of achieving wolf recovery in Washington state.

As the leader of the group that helped bring back wolves to Yellowstone and the Northern Rockies, I know we will be able to recover wolves in Washington and ensure their safe passage on suitable lands where they can rightfully roam freely in the wild.

There is tough work ahead. Together we can all make our vision for wolf recovery a reality.

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They Won't Feed the Bears at This Birthday Bash  
The National Park Service is celebrating its 100th birthday this week but it is not an untarnished history.
We have 59 national parks - from the steamy tropical Everglades in Florida to the alpine majesty of Denali in Alaska - that have been selected for their spectacular natural qualities. Congress in 1916 told the park service that its first and foremost responsibility was to conserve "the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wild life."
Yet at times park managers over the last century have engaged in such contrary actions as exploiting wildlife, running carnival-like spectacles, allowing wholesale development and even permitting massive destruction of what makes the parks so special.
One of the most egregious examples was at Olympic National Park in the Pacific Northwest, a majestic region dominated by forests of Douglas fir, red cedar, western hemlock and the iconic Sitka spruce. Loggers were upset when the Olympics were first set aside as a national park but they were appeased during and after World War II when top park officials quietly initiated regular timber sales.
The logging was only supposed to remove scrap and bug-infested trees, but it did generate significant revenue for park improvements. It was also illegal.
Some of the park's seasonal naturalists were so upset by these actions that they gathered evidence of the crimes. This included photos of stumps that had once held Douglas firs five feet in diameter, and fields that had been clear-cut. Working with national conservation leaders, they forced a showdown with park officials at a 1955 meeting in Seattle.
Conrad Wirth, who ran the Park Service and appears to have been aware of the logging, was faced with such overwhelming evidence that he had to agree it was wrong and that the timber sales would cease. Afterwards he began to hedge, until he was confronted with a transcript based on a secret tape recording. Many of the part-time naturalists, however, never worked in the park system again.
Park officials also liked to entertain tourists by feeding bears at the park dump. Yosemite constructed a platform that was illuminated at night to watch the bears feed. Sequoia and Yellowstone built bleachers at the dump. There is a photo of Horace Albright, then Yellowstone Park superintendent and later chief of the entire system, depicted picnicking at a table with several bears.
Such carnival tricks were commonly employed to lure visitors to the park in order to boost popularity and revenues. Yosemite valley featured tennis courts, a swimming pool, and nightly dancing capped by a spectacle called firefall. About 9 p.m. a large bundle of live embers and burning logs were tossed over a 900-foot cliff, a display that could be seen throughout the valley.
The parks at times were less sanctuaries and more as high-end resorts with high class hotels, restaurants and touring cars. And we are especially fortunate about some of the proposals that never got off the drawing boards, including dams that would have flooded the Grand Canyon, tramways up Mount Rainier, and a hotel at the foot of Mount Denali, just as starters.
What changed?
After World War II park officials realized they no longer had to find ways to lure visitors to the parks - visitors literally began to flood the parks. That's a dilemma that remains today, with attendance now topping 300 million a year.
At first park officials responded to this influx by building more roads to more priceless but fragile assets. Eventually a combination of more science-based naturalists who joined the park service along with a cadre of conservationists and environmentalists such as Ansel Adams, David Brower and Howard Zahniser, began to make a difference.
Some of the stupidity - such as feeding bears - became obvious. Stunts such as firefall went only with intense resistance. Today the park service has pretty much fully embraced the idea that they are stewards and not showmen of the national parks.
That's why when we celebrate history - as hundreds of millions of us will this summer - and why it is important to keep in mind that these priceless wonders are not here just for us to enjoy, but for future generations.
One need only visit the dining room 750 feet underground at Carlsbad National Park to find that old tendencies can be tough to eradicate. Or witness the recent controversies at Grand Canyon where new proposed developments - from gondolas to uranium mines - threaten the canyon's integrity.
We need to keep in mind that threats to alter this rich inheritance never end.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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Monster slugs are devouring defenceless baby birds in nests  
Nestlings are sitting ducks for giant slugs some of them invasive ­ that have been recorded feeding on the chicks of several birds species  
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Op-Ed Contributor: What's So Special About Another Earth?  
We're excited about the latest exoplanet because of what it says about our own celestial home.  
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The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) says the scale of... https://t.co/uG9hli0DhP 
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The planned city of La Plata, the capital city of the Province...  

The planned city of La Plata, the capital city of the Province of Buenos Aires, is characterized by its strict grid pattern. At the 1889 World's Fair in Paris, the new city was awarded two gold medals for the “City of the Future” and “Better performance built.” /// This is the fifth post in our week focused on urban planning. ///

34°55′16″S 57°57′16″W

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Photos of the Day: Aug. 26, 2016  

Explore the news of the day with these images from around the world.  
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Corals Clash on the Ocean Floor  
They may seem stationary to us, but corals are dynamic animals. In this film, researchers use time-lapse video to watch corals move along the ocean floor, unearth themselves when buried, and even...

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com  
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Ramen Noodles Are Now The Prison Currency Of Choice  

Ramen will buy anything from smuggled fruit to laundry services from fellow inmates, a study at one prison finds. It's not just that ramen is tasty: Prisoners say they're not getting enough food.

 
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This week's devastating earthquake in Italy, with more than 260 deaths, will be a leadership test for Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. The state's failures after the 2009 catastrophe in L'Aquila have not been forgotten.  
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Republicans Against Trump: Bush Advisor Wolfowitz Says He'll Likely Vote for Clinton  
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Big Oil's Scary New World  
"This was retail politics, and oil lost," was how Adrienne Alvord of UCS summed up the stunning environmental victory Tuesday in the California legislature, a victory which cemented the state's commitment to a 40% reduction in climate pollution by 2030.

Only a few weeks ago there was a strong consensus that the oil industry, by spending millions of dollars on behalf of a cadre of moderate Democrats in the Assembly, had blocked just such a doubling down on the state's existing 2020 goals. For the oil industry, victory was an existential necessity. Only by holding future climate commitments hostage could the industry hope to get Governor Brown to abandon the state's existing mandate that by 2020 the carbon content of fuels be cut by 10%. As a practical matter, the requirement means roughly 20% of California's more vehicles will be driving on something other than oil - electricity, natural gas or biofuels.

And oil knows it cannot withstand a competitive transportation fuels market. Once California creates such a market, and builds businesses that can produce low carbon fuels at scale, fuels competition will go global, and oil's empire will wither. But it looked like oil had survived to fight another day. Governor Brown had signaled his next move by forming a ballot committee for a (high-risk) initiative for the fall of 2018. But a small group of climate and environmental justice advocates refused to let the Assembly moderates off the hook. Demanding a vote, they re-energized their broad coalition of main-line businesses, EJ advocates, labor, climate greens, the faith community, clean tech and clean fuels businesses, local government and public health advocates.

Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon told them he would give them a vote once they had the votes - and on Tuesday he pulled the trigger, giving the oil industry, which thought it had won, only 24 hours to regroup. It wasn't enough, and the Assembly passed SB32 by 47 votes, a six vote margin over the 41 needed. The California Nurses Association was heard from, but so was Ebay. Governor Brown and the White House weighed in, but a lone Republican, Assemblywoman Catherine Baker joined them in supporting progress. Wednesday the Senate concurred, and the bill, linked to an environmental justice focused companion bill, went to the Governor for his signature.

Why the victory? Quite simply, retail politics. Clean energy now provides far more stimulus and creates far more jobs than fossil fuels. Clean power is seen by the public as the linch-pin of the state's economic future. Jobs on the ground trump oil industry ads on the screen. It's not accidental that states providing climate leadership are the states with the biggest clean energy sectors - California, Washington, Nevada, Oregon - and Iowa, with its nation leading wind sector and a public utility, Mid-America, that is planning to shortly hit 85% renewables and go on to 100%.

And it's cheaper.

The oil industry is in a state of shock. Their press release bizarrely asserted that Rendon had scheduled the vote to "cover up" the fact that the state's latest auction for carbon emission permits had attracted few buyers - a result oil called "terrible." The auction simply reflected the fact that emitters, uncertain if the law would be extended past 2020, did not know how many permits they needed to buy. The oil industry conceded as much, saying "Today's miserable auction result reflects the market's lack of certainty." But it is revealing that oil called it "terrible" and "miserable" that the cost of carbon permits was low - demonstrating again that what they fear is not that decarbonizing will cost too much and hurt the economy, but that it will prove irresistibly cheap and strand them. Also revealing --- SB32 was written precisely to provide the certainty whose absence the oil industry allegedly deplores!

(In fact, the legislature is going home next week, and Rendon had to bring the bill up more or less when he did. The short notice was tactical - but hardly conspiratorial.)

Ideological, right-wing opponents of climate progress and clean energy stayed more on message, releasing a poll purporting to show that the public, all the other evidence to the contrary, didn't really favor tougher clean-up of carbon pollution or California climate leadership after all.

Read carefully, however, the poll says something quite different. It confirms that most Californians want to move forward on clean energy and climate, believe that such progress is good for California even if others do not lead, and want action. Even California Republicans are part of this consensus. 62% of California Republican voters think that climate change is either a very serious or somewhat serious threat to the state. Again, of Republicans, 67% expect the changes resulting from global warming to occur in their lifetimes. A majority favor the state's current climate goals, and a plurality favor the longer-term, more ambitious goals just passed.

It is true that, if nudged to believe that after such action, "hundreds of local manufacturing facilities would be shut down and thousands of middle-class jobs would be lost in California" large majorities of Republicans, AND Democrats and Independents, lose their appetite. But if you said to the same sample that ambitious climate progress would mean "continued economic growth, an end to air pollution, cheaper gas, and billions of dollars of new exports for California industries" the supportive numbers among Republicans would probably jump from a plurality to a super-majority. The latter statement is the true one, it turns out - and, more or less, it is what most California voters are experiencing - which explains why, un-manipulated, even Republicans are happy that the state continues to move forward.

But California is not the only arena where oil's long regime is coming to an end. Investors are watching warily as the majors - Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell have now accumulated an unprecedented $184 billion in debt, fallen far short ($40 billion short in the first half of 2016) of their promised goals of paying their dividends from profits, not borrowing. Shell, Chevron, Exxon and BP have all seen their previous platinum grade credit ratings cut a notch. To placate investors, the majors pledge that they have new (but far from transparent) business plans to someday make money again - if only oil will stay at some magic level. For BP it's $50-55/barrel. Unfortunately, it has not been in that range since 2014.

Many of the independent oil producers, of course, have gone bankrupt. Oil remains stubbornly below $50. Most independent analysts believe that for the oil majors, prices in the $75 range are required to compete with Persian Gulf and other OPEC members in the long term. And those prices, unequivocally, require one thing: a continuation of oil's monopoly in transportation fuel.

California this week called the question. That monopoly is going away. Oil has lost before, but never because the retail politics of its competitors proved more compelling. This was no decisive battle. There may be none, just as there is no moment when the fate of the Roman Empire was sealed.

But the sands of time are running. Oil's empire is in its decline and fall.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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