Genetically engineered crops being grown in wildlife refuges? WTF?

[Hannah Bell]

For Immediate Release: March 1, 2010
Contact: Kirsten Stade [phone]

LAWSUIT FILED TO BAR GE CROPS FROM NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE — Delaware’s Bombay Hook Lacks Required Environmental Review and Justification


Washington, DC — A lawsuit filed today in federal court against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service seeks to compel the Service to uproot genetically engineered (GE) crops from its Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware. As many as 80 other national wildlife refuges across the country now growing GE crops are vulnerable to similar suits.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for Delaware by the Widener Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic on behalf of Delaware Audubon Society, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the Center for Food Safety, the federal suit charges that the Fish & Wildlife Service had illegally entered into Cooperative Farming Agreements with private parties, allowing hundreds of acres to be plowed over without the environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”).

In March 2009, the same groups won a similar lawsuit against GE plantings on Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge. Ironically, Prime Hook has now been administratively incorporated into Bombay Hook, meaning that the same refuge management that is overseeing execution of the Prime Hook verdict is violating its tenets on Bombay Hook. In August 2009, several environmental groups led by the Center for Food Safety and PEER wrote a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to alert him to the implications of the Prime Hook ruling and asking him to “issue a moratorium on all GE crop cultivation in National Wildlife Refuges.” Secretary Salazar has never responded.

“By definition, these refuges are to be administered to benefit wildlife, not farmers,” stated PEER Counsel Christine Erickson, noting that Fish & Wildlife Service policy explicitly forbids “genetically modified agricultural crops in refuge management unless determine their use is essential to accomplishing refuge purpose(s).” “GE crops serve no legitimate refuge purpose, and in fact impair the objectives for which the wildlife sanctuaries were originally established.”

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1309

[arcane1]

1. Wait... WHAT???

:wtf:

[Hell Hath No Fury]

2. Make that a double --

:wtf: :wtf:

Hey Arcane, how are you doing?? Long time no see! :hi:

[arcane1]

3. Hey there!

All is well here in SF, stranger... it's been a while! How have you been? :hi:

[arcane1]

4. PS

I love your sig line :)