EPA Shutters Its Libraries

Justice Brandeis once wrote that "sunshine is the best disinfectant." If so, EPA's move to close its agency libraries, a process it terms "deaccessioning," seems to suggest an unhealthy aversion to sunlight. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility reports that EPA has already closed libraries or is closing libraries in Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City. Indeed, visitors to the Region 5 library are greeted with the message "The U.S. EPA Region 5 Library is permanently closed" and are advised to instead call the Environmental Hotline. On September 20, 2006 EPA published a Federal Register Notice announcing that as of October 1, its main library at its DC headquarters will be closed to the public and to agency staff. The notice opines that the public will access information through EPA websites instead. While the government has made great strides in providing internet access to government documents, the vast majority of EPA documents are not digitized and there seems to be no plan to make them available in the near future.

At least 10,000 EPA scientists, engineers, environmental protection specialists and support staff signed a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee objecting to the closures on the grounds that they rely heavily on the EPA technical libraries to perform their jobs. The EPA employees expressed concern that the closures would impede the agency's daily enforcement capabilities and would also render EPA unprepared to respond to emergencies.

At a time when the rest of the world is moving towards recognizing a right of access to environmental information, this decision takes the United States in the opposite direction. Shuttering these libraries will not only hamper scientific research, but will also impede the public's ability to monitor EPA's enforcement and regulatory activities. Justice Brandeis would be ashamed.

NYT Reports on Early Human Fossil Find

Today's New York Times reports the finding of the 3 million year old skeleton of a three year old Australopithecus afarensis girl. This little girl, named Selam (which means peace in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia) is the most intact child skeleton found from this period. Her skeleton adds to the already overwhelming evidence for human evolution.

According to the Times:

Her lower limbs supported earlier findings that afarensis walked upright,
like modern humans. But gorillalike arms and shoulders suggested that
she possibly retained an ancestral ability to climb and swing through the trees.

The lead scientist, Zeresenay Alemsweged reports his findings in the September 21, 2006 volume of Nature. In addition, Nature has an entire section on its website devoted to this find and to the field of paleoanthropology more generally.
http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/hominiddevelopment/index.html
Many of the articles are free.

Article of the week: Corridors Increase Plant Species Richness at Large Scales

Ellen I. Damschen, Nick M. Haddad, John L. Orrock, Joshua J. Tewksbury & Douglas J. Levey, Corridors Increase Plant Species Richness at Large Scales, 313 Science 1284 (Sept. 1, 2006) (DOI: 10.1126/science.1130098):

Habitat fragmentation is one of the largest threats to biodiversity. Landscape corridors, which are hypothesized to reduce the negative consequences of fragmentation, have become common features of ecological management plans worldwide. Despite their popularity, there is little evidence documenting the effectiveness of corridors in preserving biodiversity at large scales. Using a large-scale replicated experiment, we showed that habitat patches connected by corridors retain more native plant species than do isolated patches, that this difference increases over time, and that corridors do not promote invasion by exotic species. Our results support the use of corridors in biodiversity conservation.