My Take: Tree Huggers, NASDAQ, National Parks and Bioprospecting

There are certain social issues that appear on the top tier of my to do list. Like everyone else, certain world and local problems are fleshed out by traditional news services. Other areas are somewhat sub rosa. Associated Content producer Shawn Washington’s article states eloquently a young persons perspective in his article on Tree Huggers and Concern for the Environment.  View it here.

I have also contributed  articles on the closing of EPA libraries in the Dumbing of the Environment.  The mainstream doesn’t think either it is interesting or it’s just too hard to explain and then after the damage is done everybody asks; what the heck happened?

This is the case with the National Park Service present plan to open up the national parks to business enterprises to exploit national natural resources.  The association that represents the employees of the National Park Service is Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, PEER.

PEER sends out a periodic SOS from the abyss when things getting unusually out of kilter to people like me who they know like their work and in turn I write letters, e-mails, call and send carrier pigeons to DC or wherever to help them/us out.

The latest involves “bio prospecting” Yellowstone National Park on the Wyoming, Montana border.  This is close to home for me since I live in Montana.   As some may know, Yellowstone has some of the most interesting ecology of all the national parks.  Certain scientific study performed in Yellowstone by university-based researchers is the subject of treatises.

So what happened?  In 1997 private sector  Diversa Corporation entered into a non exclusive agreement with the National Park Service to “bioprospect” Yellowstone’s microorganism. Diversa would receive a portion of the possible future earnings of their work.